Bonjour à tous! Hello, all, from Villers-la-Faye in the Côte d’Or and welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog. As promised (or forewarned), we’re blogging while we’re enjoying wine, food, and generally soaking up France! We arrived Saturday, May 7. Here’s the mairie, the town hall in the village.
Sunday was our first day to venture out after resting from the long journey. The first order of business was a walk to the boulangerie for a fresh pastry for Mary. It’s a tiny little shop in the village. The delightful lady who runs the shop can’t speak a word of English, but smiles are a universal language. We just call her madame.
Mary selected an apple tart for her first day. Here she is to describe it.
It was a wonderful little tart, not too sweet, with a papery thin crispy crust in several layers. The French have a lighter hand with sugar than Americans. Their pastries are not as heavy and not as filling.
Here’s a link to an amateur video produced by another visitor a few years ago. It gives you a good idea of how the village looks. We thought it was a very cute video.
Brian here again. We struck out through the countryside just to see what we could see. Every little village is a picture postcard. Here are a few pictures to give you a good idea of the topography and architecture. L’eglise, the church, dominates most villages and many of the churches are hundreds of years old. This is a hillside village near us called Arcenant.
Just a bit down the road is the village of Bouilland where we visited the ruins of an ancient monastery called Abbaye Ste. Marguerite, founded by monks of the order of St. Augustine and dating to the late 11th century. Now that’s old! Coming down from the mountain where the ruins are located you can see how these little villages seem to be just nestled into the countryside, white Charolais cattle dotting the hillside. To the east is a mountain ridge with steep stone cliffs.
The next town was Savigny-lès-Beaune. Used in names of towns, the conjunction, “lès”, means “near.” Beaune is the largest town in the area and Savigny-lès-Beaune is nearby, or Savigny “near” Beaune. We happened onto a vigneron, a wine producer, who was ouverts pour dégustation et vente, tasting and sales. Once again, not a word of English, but we managed to figure out the wine we tasted was from the vineyard directly behind the winery. It is delicious and we picked up a bottle for what I think is a bargain price of €20, which would be about $29 at the current exchange rate.
Back at the house in Villers-la-Faye and just before heading out to dinner we visited my mother for Mothers Day in Georgia via Skype while she attended a family gathering at the home of my sister, Kaye. Technology is amazing. A slightly belated Happy Mothers Day to all you moms reading the blog.
On the recommendation of the owners of the house where we’re staying, we had dinner at a restaurant in Beaune called La Ciboulette, just inside the arch of the castle of Beaune.
We were not disappointed! I started with escargots, which we forgot to photograph, and which were delicious. Mary had rack of lamb and I had filet of Charolais. The food was wonderful and the presentation exquisite with tiny portions of spring peas, scalloped potatoes, onions and carrots. Mary said, “I would have liked vegetables growing up if they tasted like this!”
The third course was a plat du fromage, a cheese platter. We selected a Brie, a Chèvre, a Camembert, and an Epoisses and they were all wonderful.
Dessert for Mary was mousse de deux chocolat, a white and dark chocolate dessert. We both had coffee. It was a long, lingering dinner on the sidewalk outside a small French restaurant, just like you would imagine it, the air fragrant with blooming stock. Mary and I fell in love all over again.
Domaine Patrick Javillier-Guyot Pommard 2004. The perfume of this wine was amazing. It showed wonderful earth and dark fruit notes, even a bit rustic, which I enjoy, raspberry, blackberry and plum. The palate was silky with medium acidity and polished tannins, but with the structure to stand up to the beef and the lamb. The flavors showed delicious dark cherry, berry, plum, exotic minerality, and spice notes. It was wonderfully balanced, complex, and long finishing, an excellent wine. We both loved it. 13.0% alcohol. The restaurant price was €55, which is about $79.
Well, everybody, that’s our first post from Burgundy. Check back frequently here at Cépage et Cuisine for more articles about our wine and food adventures in France. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment