France Adventure – Friday, May 23, 2014 – Departing Burgundy Today

Hello, everybody.  Bonjour, à tous!  Welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  We’re leaving Burgundy today and on our way to Bordeaux.  According to Google Maps, it’s less than a six hour drive on the Autoroute, the France equivalent of an interstate highway.  We decided to take the back roads instead and mosey along through small towns and the countryside for two days.  We’ll stop here and there to take photos and visit interesting sites.  The overnight destination for today is Saint-Saturnin, a small town in the Auvergne region, pretty much in the very middle of France.

We’re always a little sad to leave Magny-les-Villers and Burgundy.  We’ve come to love the place and the people, and the wine and cuisine, of course.  This is our fifth year in a row to come here.  Until next time …

By wonderful coincidence, our backroads path took us through La Rochepot, a village with a castle we mentioned in a blog post a couple of days ago, so we stopped to tour the Château de La Rochepot.

According to the printed tour guide, the history of the Château begins in the 12^th century, about 900 years ago.  The Pot family acquired the castle in the 15^th century, which is when it became important to the history of Burgundy and the Dukes of Burgundy.  Philippe Pot was the ambassador to London for the Duke of Burgundy.

After the French Revolution, the castle was confiscated by the new government and put up for sale along with all of its furnishings.  It then became a stone quarry and was soon in ruins.

What remained of the castle was acquired in 1893 and a restoration began that lasted until 1923.

These ports along the walls show how the fortress was defended.

The narrow opening was for crossbows and the round opening for small cannons.

The living quarters are accessed from turreted tower staircases.  These furnishings are not original to the castle, of course, but are about 100 years old as they were added during the restoration.

The glazed tile rooftop is a good example of a style that is common in Burgundy.  Below is another image of a rooftop of the castle.

The well was dug in 1228 through solid rock.  I’m often amazed at accomplishments such as this and the underground cellars of Burgundy.  The well had to be dug with hammers and chisels because 1228 is before the introduction of gunpowder to blast through rock.

The well is steps from both the original kitchen and this restored kitchen, seen here in a brief video.

The chapel is the oldest part of the castle, dating to the 1300s.

This is a view of the village of La Rochepot from the terrace of the castle.

Some of the Pot family are buried at the church.

Charolais are grazing on a distant hillside.

A little way down the road we stopped for lunch in Épinac.  This town is not on the beaten tourist path, which suited us fine.  Nobody at the restaurant was English-speaking.  All the other diners were road workers or agricultural workers.  Like many of the French, they take a couple of hours for lunch, including wine, cheese, and coffee in addition to the entrée and the plat, which today looked like pork cutlets with parsley potatoes.  Everything else stops during lunch.  The bank, pharmacy, and small shops all close.  The French would probably be horrified by how Americans often treat lunch, especially someone like me who often just grabs a couple of energy bars while I work at my desk.

The place was named just to describe the business, a café, a restaurant, and a hotel de la place, which is to say it was next to the town square.

The weather was pleasant and we enjoyed dining a la terrace.

Mary enjoyed a salade paysanne with its warm potatoes, lardon, which is basically like bacon, greens, and egg.

I had the omelet fermier, which also includes lardon and cheese.

Standard fare avec déjeuner is a half liter pichet of vin blanc, in this case aligoté, the lesser known, less well regarded, everyday white wine of Burgundy.

Back on the road, we passed through La 
Palisse, a pretty big town by French standards and an old castle town.

We stopped to take a break almost literally in the shadow of the castle.

Our stopover for the night was another castle, this one in Saint-Saturnin, Château Royal.  Mary was enthralled by the enormity and majesty of it.  It was raining when we arrived so today’s post includes photos only of our room off the castle tower.  We’ll include outside photos and more history of the castle in our next post.

I asked Mary to write about the experience of spending the night in the castle.  Here she is.

The castle is truly beautiful. Like Brian, I am amazed at what people of so many centuries ago were able to accomplish.  We have stayed in many nice B&B’s, which were about the oldest buildings I’ve stayed in before now.

This castle is amazing!  The owner, Mme. Kristin Penicaud, showed us around and to our room up a couple of levels of a spiral staircase in the castle tower and into a beautiful old room with a four-poster canopy bed, sitting area, and a beautiful bathroom. 

I thought about Lisa and Catherine and how they love the Disney princess movies and how I really felt like a queen in that room.  We had a great view of the garden, which was nice and green but nothing much blooming yet.  When we returned to the room that night after dinner in town, I pulled the drapes around the bed, lit the bedside lamps, and felt like I was in the most luxurious tent I could ever imagine.  What fun!

Here’s Brian to talk about dinner.

Dinner was at Auberge La Gargouille in the adjacent village of Saint Amant Tallende.  

Honestly, we both thought the meal was unremarkable.  Mary had a steak and I had duck confit, both of which we thought were not as good as outstanding examples of the same dishes elsewhere in France and in the U.S.  To be clear, it was not a bad meal, but it didn’t quite measure up to what we’ve come to expect of French cuisine, even in small towns.

Also, the very nice young lady who served us had not been trained in proper wine service.  She just brought the wine to the table, didn’t present it; pulled the cork, but didn’t pour a taste for soundness or pour portions for us.  It wasn’t a big deal or a major distraction, but good wine service does enhance the enjoyment of dinner in a nice restaurant.

Here's a view of the interior of Auberge La Gargouille.

A couple of things about dinner were interesting.  First, this appetizer that Mary ordered is called Charlotte au chèvre chaud de Nadaillat.  Here’s Mary to describe it.

I love warm chèvre salads. Sometimes they come with the chèvre melted onto a small piece of toasted French bread, but this time the chèvre and pastry were baked until the outside was toasty and the inside was oozing creamy goodness.  Wonderful!

Mary finished with this glace of mélange de fruits de la passion, banane et ananas, passion fruit, banana and pineapple.

I had fromages d’Avergne, regional cheeses including an Auvergne bleu, Saint-Nectaire, Cantal, and Salers.  These latter two cheeses are seasonal variations of the same cheese.  Cantal is named for the nearby Cantal mountains.  It is a firm cow’s milk cheese made from raw milk of the Salers breed.  The interesting difference in the two cheeses is that Cantal is made from milk of cows fed with hay during the winter.  Salers is made from milk from the same herd that passes the summer high in the mountains.  As a result, Salers has a more floral and herbal aroma character.

The wine was also interesting and unusual.  It was a Domaine de Lescure Fronton 2010.

It is 100% Négrette, a varietal that is indigenous to the Fronton appellation in southwest France, near Toulouse.  Neither of us had ever tasted Négrette.

We liked the wine with its powerful dark aromas and flavors, dark berries, mocha, earth, maybe even licorice and tar notes.  Its most conspicuous characteristic was fierce tannins.  The texture was astringent when sipped on its own, tamed somewhat by the food, but definitely a wine that will be more of a pleasure after a few more years of bottle aging.  I’d like to try it again if we can ever find one that is more mature.  It was well balanced, though, had moderate complexity, definitely stands up to hearty dishes, and had good length.

The best part of the evening and the whole experience is all the time I have with this very special person.

That’s our post for today.  Tomorrow we’ll walk the grounds of the castle and take more photos.  Then, on we go to Montagne in the Bordeaux region where we’ll spend the next week.  Keep checking back for more blog entries as we continue with our wine, food, and cultural vacation in France.  Thanks for reading us at Cépage et Cuisine.  We’d love to see your comments here at the blog and on Mary’s Facebook page. 

Cheers! 

Mary♥Brian