Hello, everybody! Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog. We’re off again on our annual wine, food, and
cultural vacation in France. Like
always, we spend a week or so in Burgundy and then go to some other place we’ve
never visited. This year we’re going to
Bordeaux.
We plan and save all year for this
trip, looking forward to visiting places that are now familiar to us in
Burgundy, seeing people that have become friends as we encounter them every
year.
Here are a couple of photos from Detroit Wayne County International Airport, first in the Delta SkyClub where clocks are posted with times from around the world.
Here’s the busy Concourse A. There’s even a wine bar at DTW to get
everybody in the mood.
Here’s the monitor at our gate. Departure is on time!
Our plane awaits …
… and at the gate next
door, Air France stands by for a slightly later flight.
Here’s an excited Mary on
board, ready to depart.
After the overnight
flight and picking up the rental car, we made our way around Paris and onto the
AutoRoute toward Beaune. We stopped for
lunch at this restaurant in Auxerre.
We arrived in Burgundy,
tired but happy. On the drive from
Ladoix-Serrigny up to the gite in
Magny-les-Villers, we saw one of the iconic vineyard tractors, made so that
they can straddle the vineyard rows.
The first thing we
noticed in Magny was how much more foliage was on the vines than when we were
here last year, even though we’re a week earlier on the calendar this
year. Last year was much cooler and
wetter. This year has been milder with
better weather, so things are coming along much sooner.
We went over to LeClerc,
the supermarché in Beaune to get some
essentials and ingredients for dinner. As usual, we
picked up saucisse aux herbes and
some veggies and potatoes.
We also picked up a round
of Époisses, a wonderful washed rind cheese from
Burgundy. It costs about $35 at home,
but here it was €6.50, which translates to around $10. Amazing.
When we got back to the gite, Marie Zecchini greeted us with
exclamations and hugs. We quickly
exchanged news about family, especially grandchildren. Keep in mind that Marie speaks pretty much no
English and we speak only the most basic French, but somehow we get our
messages across.
A couple of years ago we
visited Domaine Cornu around the corner here in Magny-les-Villers, and I do
mean around the corner. A leisurely
stroll takes two minutes. I asked Marie
if she would telephone Alex Cornu to ask if we could get a bottle of his wine
for our first dinner. She gladly called
and told me to go right over, tout de
suite!
Alex was a bit puzzled at the request,
but he remembered me from a couple of years ago. We talked through his wines and settled on a village wine from Ladoix-Serrigny. Even though it was quite young, it was
smooth, very approachable, with very nice red fruit flavors and aromas. The palate was fresh with good acidity,
medium body, moderately complex, and with medium length.
Mary cooked up dinner, we enjoyed the wine, then it was lights out by 8:00 p.m., which was
2:00 p.m. back in the U.S. eastern time zone, but we were running on fumes. The food and the wine was an altogether fitting end to a very long travel day.
Check back for more
episodes of Cépage et Cuisine over
the coming days as we travel around France.
May 17 is Beaune market day!
Thanks for reading us!
Mary♥Brian
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