May 15, 2011 France Adventure

Bonjour, everyone!  Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  We are on a wine, food, and cultural vacation in France.  We’re posting notes and photos about our daily experiences, beginning with May 8, 2011.  If you haven’t read the blog in a while and you would like to see the earlier posts, scroll down below this one, as well as click on dates of earlier posts on the right hand side of the blog.

Saturday, May 14 was a travel day.  We transferred from Villers-la-Faye in Burgundy to Le Puy Notre Dame in the Loire Valley, our new home away from home for the week.  It is an easy day’s drive, about 6 hours.  Sunday is a quiet day in France.  The day started with a walk to the boulangerie, just a minute or two from us, for pain chocolat, a bread roll with chocolate.

We got eggs at the grocery on Saturday for breakfast on Sunday.  The groceries here have giant stacks of trays of brown eggs and you select the eggs you want individually.

Most wineries and other businesses are closed on Sunday, so we went to church, sort of. Le Puy is translated to “the hill.”  It is literally a village on a hill, surrounded by vast plains of vineyards and gardens.  It is much larger than Villers-la-Faye, but still a small town.  The overwhelming architectural feature of the village is Collegiale Notre Dame.  It is massive, ornate, and can be seen for miles.  Mary did a bit of online research about it and learned that some of the building dates to the 5^th century, but most of it dates to the 12^th to 13^th centuries.  Services are held on a circuit basis every few weeks, alternating with churches in other villages.  Here are photos we took on a self-guided walking tour of the village.

As we entered the church, words like magnificent, amazing, and awesome come to mind.  “Awesome” is a term that has been cheapened by contemporary use, in my view.  My adult children say Mary’s meatloaf is awesome.  I think people of my generation and older reserve the use of the term for more serious descriptions, which is what we’re describing here.  Mary grew up Catholic and attended Catholic schools, so she is more familiar with Catholic churches than I.  Here are some of her comments.

This church truly is awesome.  When we entered the church, there was a button for lights and music. We were the only ones there, so we pushed the button, and the music was beautiful.  We walked up to the altar past very plain chairs and unbelievably uncomfortable kneelers.  There was one lone confessional near the back that brought back memories of Saint Gabriel in San Francisco and all those confessions (especially during Lent). The church has quite a few statues of Mary, which I, of course, found very interesting.

These memorial markers in the church list the members of the community or the church who died in World War I.  Every village has these and they all have a long list of names.  World War I was absolutely a slaughter, so many boys from a small town.  These are the names only for 1914 and 1915.  There is another marker next to this one that lists the names for 1916 – 1918.

The architecture of this area of France includes many structures built of a light colored limestone called tuffeau.  Magnificent castles, chateaus, and everyday homes are built of the stone.  Here’s a typical example of a building in Le Puy Notre Dame constructed of tuffeau.

We’re staying in a rural gite, a guest house.  It is within a cluster of buildings that previously included a chai, a winery.  Much of the building materials is of the same tuffeau stone.  Our hosts, Sheila and Brian Barcroft, a very nice English couple, live on the property at Le Clos des Guyons and invited us for aperitifs before dinner to relax and get to know each other.  They are very knowledgeable about local wine and shared a wonderful example of a Saumur Crémant, a type of sparkling wine.  I was surprised to learn that about half the total production of the Saumur appellation is sparkling, not as well known around the world as Champagne, but highly regarded and much less expensive.  Here are a few photos of the gite.

We shopped Saturday on the way to Le Puy Notre Dame to cook dinner Sunday.  Mary prepared a simple baked salmon with parsley potatoes.  We picked up fresh spring peas in the pod, which were delicious and reminded me of experiences earlier in life when I sat with my mother, grandmother, and sisters while we talked and shelled peas.  It was tedious back then, but a nice memory.

Dessert was a little Epoisses and a chocolate éclair for Mary we bought at the boulangerie while we were walking around the village.

Coincidentally, we brought the Domaine Simonnet-Febve Crémant rosé with us from Burgundy and opened it with dinner.  It was cool, refreshing, with a nice creaminess, baked bread, and fruit character.  It was a very nice pairing with dinner.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Domaine Simonnet-Febvre Crémant de Bourgogne Brut Rosé NV.  This is the first time I have had a Crémant of Pinot Noir, not to mention a rosé.  Like many rosé wines, it had nice aromas of melon and strawberry.  Like many sparkling wines, it had lovely yeast or baked bread on the nose.  The palate was refreshing, bubbly, had bright acidity, and the same berry flavors.  Nicely balanced, not highly complex, not long on the finish, but a pleasurable experience and paired well with dinner.  12.0% alcohol.  We paid only €8 for this enjoyable wine.

That’s our post for today.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine for more wine and food adventures in France as we transition to the Loire Valley.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian