May 13, 2011 France Adventure

Bonjour a tous!  Hello, all, and welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  This is our Friday the 13^th report from France (Happy 3rd birthday, Catherine, from Gram & GrandDad), our last day in Burgundy before our transfer to the Loire Valley for the next part of our trip.  You’ve read about our daily walks to the boulangerie for pastries or croissants and the very delightful lady who runs the shop.  Well, here she is.  We never learned her name.  Her English is even more limited than our French, which is to say she doesn’t speak a word of English, not a word.  We just call her Madame.  She is always friendly, just jabbering away in French as if we know what she is saying.  We’ve taken to writing things down in French, based on Google Translate, which she appreciates, then she corrects our grammar and shows us the corrections the next day.  We were sad to say goodbye.  She wished us well…I think.  Goodbye, Madame.  See you next time.  Au revoir.

We had no appointments for today and so we decided to head south of Beaune for a look at the villages in the Côte de Beaune and especially some of the famous vineyards there.  We stopped in Pommard for lunch, which turned out to be one of the memorable dining experiences of our trip so far.   Auprès du Clocher is a new restaurant in Pommard, adjacent to l’eglise, the church, so we loved hearing the bells ringing.  Auprés du Clocher translates roughly to “with the bell.”   The chef is well known in Burgundy.  We encountered an American couple from Vermont outside the restaurant perusing the menu with us.  They know the chef from his previous restaurant and were basically following him to his new place.  She is a high school French teacher so she helped us understand the menu, which you see here, so in we went.  This is elegant, white linen, formal, modern, creative French dining.  We arrived about 12:30 and departed about 2:30, not a lunch for busy people trying to grab something quick and then run errands on your lunch break.

First things first, we ordered a half-bottle of vin blanc from the Côte de Beaune, a Domaine Lafouge Auxey-Duresses Les Boutonniers 2007.  Once again, it is classified as a village-level wine and we were thrilled with it for an elegant lunch like this.  It was clean, crisp with refreshing acidity, and tart lemon citrus and fresh minerality.  Many restaurants in Burgundy, and increasingly in the U.S., offer wines by the glass, half-bottle, and bottle.  A half-bottle is 375 milliliters, 12.5 ounces, or about a nice glass or so per person for two people.  Over a period of a long, leisurely lunch of two hours, it is almost completely metabolized by the time lunch is over and you have a cup of coffee.  I wouldn’t do it on a business day, but on a leisure day, it was very enjoyable.

The first dish was these little gougeres, tiny little breads with thinly sliced almonds, which Mary adored.

The first course was a cool spring soup in a cream base with fennel and a red pepper glace…very different.  The next preparation was so good we ate it without taking a photo, but it was a broccoli puree with smoked mackerel.  The Chardonnay was really singing with this course.

The main course was a chicken with zucchini, onions, greens, and the juice of red bell peppers.  Who knew?  It was just fantastic.  The flavors blended seamlessly, the chicken was flaky and tender, the wine accented it perfectly.  I am just continuously amazed at how they know how to pair food ingredients and tell us how this or that wine will interact with the food.  There is a level of knowledge among many restaurant workers that we don’t commonly encounter in our typical restaurant experiences in Jackson, to say the least.

Dessert was a glace de framboise, or raspberry ice and fruit concoction that Mary said was just delicious.  Like Restaurant Simon the previous evening, the chef prepared a fresh fruit course for me.

Confections for Mary and coffee for both of us finished off a memorable lunch by mid-afternoon.  We left happy and, once again, astonished.

The church and the mairie, or town hall, was next door.  We saw children crossing the street and going into the town hall and we concluded it also serves as a primary school.  It looks like an old building and I doubt the classes are now single gender, but the school was apparently segregated by gender in the past.  On one end above the windows you see, garçon, or boys, and on the other, filles, or girls…very interesting.

We also took some photos from the second floor window of Auprès du Clocher, just looking down the street.  I thought these pictures were really interesting as a lesson in Burgundy.  You see the street in Pommard, ending abruptly at a vineyard, which is part of Pommard, but in the distance just on the other side of the vineyard, you see the next village, Volnay.  Pommard and Volnay are both household names to Burgundy enthusiasts, but what many people don’t know are these Burgundy villages are just a stone’s throw apart, often separated by just a field or a vineyard.  Their wines are quite different, however, Pommard being more tannic and rustic, Volnay being more elegant and refined, just a reflection of the difference in terroir.  The difference in distance is not more than a city block or two in our frame of reference.

After leaving Pommard, we went to Meursault and sought out the “cellar door” or tasting room of Domaine Patrick Javillier, the producer of the Pommard we enjoyed so much at La Ciboulette last Sunday.

Mary wanted to mail some postcards, so we went to the post office in Meursault.  A plaque on the wall of the post office commemorates the relationship between France and Thomas Jefferson, who was the American ambassador to France from 1785-1789.  Jefferson traveled extensively in France, including in Burgundy, and became America’s first true wine expert.  He was particularly fond of the white wines from Meursault  It was inspiring to me to see the Burgundians acknowledge the relationship between our two countries this way on the occasion of the bicentennial of their revolution.

Here’s a photo of the Meursault town hall, another good example of typical Burgundian architecture.

After leaving Meursault (which is to say we drove for a couple of minutes), we found ourselves in the rarefied world of the Grand Cru vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.  In the late 1800s, with their economy struggling, the Burgundians decided to append the names of their most famous vineyards to their village names to stimulate tourism and in hopes of attracting economic support.  Since the famous Chardonnay vineyard, Le Montrachet, was partly in Puligny and partly in the village of Chassagne, Puligny became Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne became Chassagne-Montrachet.  Well, it worked.  I have never tasted a Montrachet because they are hundreds of dollars per bottle.  Perhaps one day I’ll have the opportunity.  Other villages did the same, such as Morey-Saint Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, and Gevrey-Chambertin.  The last part of their names are actually names of their most prestigious vineyards.  Here are a few photos of us in the promised land of white Burgundy and a few other images we thought were pretty, including Le Montrachet through the gate of the section owned by Bouchard Père et Fils.

We cooked in for dinner, a simple dinner of jambon persille, a terrine of the local ham with a salad and vegetables.  We opened the Bouchard Volnay Les Caillerets and enjoyed it so much.  It had refinement, elegance, finesse, complexity, everything we want in a mature red Burgundy.  Wines like this are a big part of the reason why I want to come over here so much.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Bouchard Père et Fils Volnay Caillerets 2009.  We expected this wine to be memorable and we were not disappointed.  With 11 years to mature, it has reached optimum drinkability, although I'm sure it would last much longer.  The perfume is wonderful, great earthy, forest floor notes with dark cherry, floral aromas, maybe even some leather notes.  The palate shows that great Pinot Noir velvety texture and richness while retaining elegance, finesse, and delicacy.  I think the glory of Pinot Noir is as much about texture as it is about aromas and flavors.  The same earth, dark cherry, maybe currant fruit shows on the flavor profile.  The acidity was medium for excellent balance.  The wine was complex and long finishing, just a terrific wine experience in Burgundy.  13.5% alcohol.  It is a great memory.  We paid €75 for this wine.

That’s our post for today.  We leave Burgundy and Villers-la-Faye tomorrow to move to the Loire Valley for the next part of our wine and food adventure in France.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine.  In the meantime,

Cheers,

Mary♥Brian