Hello, everybody. Bonjour, tout le monde! Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s
and Brian’s wine and food blog, and another installment of our 2012 French
wine, food, and cultural adventure.
Sunday is a day I like to cook breakfast for us, so I scrambled eggs
with parsley from the Beaune market, stirred in some crushed truffles, and
opened the jus de pomme, the apple
juice from Château d’Entre-Deux-Monts in Corboin. You can read more about that visit in the
blog post for May 17, 2012.
Sunday is a quiet day in Burgundy and rural France so we decided to drive to
the Jura, about an hour or so away and bordering Switzerland. The Jura area is part of the larger Franche-Comté region. Mary and I both love Comté, which is
fortunately readily available at home in the U.S. It is a great all purpose cheese, semi-firm,
mild in flavor, great for a cheese course, for cooking, and pairs well with
many wines. The town of Arbois was our
destination, which is the center of an area that also produces wine from the
Savagnin grape, available almost nowhere else in the world, even in many other
areas of France.
The drive to Arbois was beautiful. Once we got out of Beaune, the plains of the
eastern part of Burgundy, leading into the Jura, are as flat as the Mississippi
Delta. Vineyards disappear and are
replaced by grazing animals and row crops.
About an hour into the drive, we crossed the Loue River at Parcey. Restaurant La Plage is situated just below
the highway bridge and overlooking the river, a perfect place for lunch on the terrasse on a pleasant day.
Mary wanted a light lunch and selected a salad of greens, Roquefort
cheese, walnuts, and fresh croutons of French bread.
I had the special of moules-frites,
mussels steamed in a broth of white wine and herbs, served with fries. The mussels are cooked in a small pot. The lid is used for the shells. I like to dip the crisp fries into the broth
(a variation on sopping!). 
The cheese course included a Comté, shown in the
front of this photo. I asked for encore un verre du vin blanc, another glass of white wine since that is what came with the moules. “No!” said mademoiselle. “Rouge!” And that was that. Rouge, it was. She insisted these particular cheeses must be
accompanied by red wine. “Cote du Rhone!”
We got to Arbois around 3:00 p.m., just in time for a thunderstorm,
starting right after Mary took this photo of me at the fountain in centre ville.
As the front moved through, the temperature dropped and we took cover at
Hirsinger, a famous chocolatier in
Arbois. I had a cup of coffee while
waiting out the storm, which didn’t seem to want to stop.
Walking around town in the rain was unappealing, so we eventually
decided to mosey on back to Magny-les-Villers and maybe come to Arbois another
day. On the way, things really opened
up. I started worrying the road was
going to flood and, sure enough, it did.
Some drivers tried to drive through the rushing water, but I was afraid
I would stall, be stranded there in rising water and driving rain, and not know
how to get help. I drove through a
residential neighborhood where a homeowner was in the street, frantically using
a push broom to try to keep a drain open and the water from getting into his
house. His front lawn was under water
and his obviously worried wife was standing in the doorway. I managed to get us around the flooded
portion of the road and we pushed on, hoping the weather would let up. In Parcey, where we had a lovely lunch only
three hours earlier, I snaked along in a line of cars and all of a sudden we
were in standing water, about three quarters of a tire’s depth, no choice but
to try to get through it, which we did.
I must say we were both a little scared.
After that the rain started to let up and things got much better. Back in Beaune, it hadn’t rained at all, no
wet sidewalks, no puddles, nothing. I wish we had taken some photos of the weather to put here in the blog, but we were hyperfocused on the task at hand.
It was great to be back at the gite. Mary cooked dinner with our Beaune market
items. My job was to shell the peas, le petite pois, which I have done on
each of our France trips. It’s kind of
becoming a tradition. 
Each time I do this, I have the pleasant memory of my mother’s kitchen or the back yard, shelling garden peas with her or with my sisters, probably watching more than actually shelling.
A simple meal of pork cutlets, peppers and onions, parsley potatoes, and fresh
spring peas hit the spot.
The wine was Alex Cornu’s Côte de Nuits-Villages. The 2009 vintage was
warm in Burgundy, allowing the grapes to ripen more than usual, and producing
wines that are approachable early. They
are softer, rounder, and fruitier than the 2008 and 2010 vintages, which will
benefit from a bit more time before opening.
This illustrates that vintage variation is another factor to consider
when selecting wine. Although it seems
counterintuitive, the 2009 vintage should generally be consumed before the 2008
vintage. Here are my notes on Alex’s
wine.
Domaine Cornu Côte de
Nuits-Villages Le Clos de Magny 2009.
It was fruity in its aroma profile, along with earthy notes. The palate was smooth in texture,
medium-bodied, had medium acidity, nicely balanced. The flavor profile was mostly red and dark
fruit, cherry, plum, berries. Moderately
complex, medium length, a very nice everyday wine. 13.0% alcohol. We paid only €13.50 for this nice wine.
That’s our post for today.
Thanks for the positive comments.
Keep checking back for more at Cépage et Cuisine. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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