A Culinary and Cultural Spectacle

May 21, 2016 – Beaune Market Day and La Ciboulette

Hi, everybody.  Bounjour a tous!  Welcome back to our blog, Cepage et Cuisine, as we chronicle our return to Burgundy and points beyond over the next couple of weeks or so.  My traditional practice is to wake up before Mary and go to the boulangerie down the hill at Ladoix-Serrigny and pick up a croissant or other baked item for Mary’s breakfast.  Today I got a simple fresh croissant.  Mary says there is just no substitute for the real thing.  Surely there is an authentic bakery somewhere in the U.S. that can make these, but we haven’t yet encountered one.  She says the real McCoy is lighter and more buttery and just not easily duplicated back home. 

The Beaune market on Saturdays is not to be missed if you’re in Burgundy.  What a spectacle of people, food, and other specialty items!  We always schedule our travel so that we can shop the Beaune market and have a few more days to enjoy our fresh items. 

The market consumes la place de centre ville, the square or plaza at the center of town, and spills out into nearby streets.  All manner of vegetables, cured and fresh meats, dairy products, cheese, flowers, olives, you name it, are sold.

Shoppers are elbow to elbow, literally, and sometimes there is a little jostling.  Vendors offer samples for tasting as we walk past, and it’s all so appetizing.  You just have go with the flow and keep the river of humanity moving slowly past the stalls of a bewildering array of choices.  If you want to spend more time really browsing a particular display, you just about have to go around the circuit and catch it on your next pass.  Same applies to dawdling tourist photographers … like me!

Traiteur translates to caterer.  In this case, the name of the company is a rather unfortunate English meaning.

We decided on cuisse de confit de canard, haricot vert, pomme de terre, ail, champignons blanc, courgettes, confit tomates, olive tapenade vert, fraises, et fromage de Beaufort d’Alpage.  That translates to duck legs preserved in their own fat, green beans, potatoes, garlic, white mushrooms, zucchini, sundried tomatoes, green olive tapenade, strawberries, and a cheese from a nearby region (managed to remember all those in French except the zucchini … had to look up that one). 

After dropping off our loot at the gite, we drove the 10 minutes to Nuits-Saint-Georges to one of our favorite lunch spots, Bar L’Etoile.  We stumbled onto the place six years ago and have been coming ever since.  The weather was beautiful today (ille fait beau), and we enjoyed lunch on the patio.  

We ordered a simple rosé, which is locally produced, inexpensive, and comes to the table in an ordinary, unlabeled bottle.  It’s practically consumed over lunch on a warm day the way Americans might consume iced tea.

         Here’s Mary, enjoying a refreshing lunchtime quaff. 

                            And Brian doing the same. 

The restaurant is located in the heart of Nuits-Saint-Georges in an area called the Place de la Liberation, so named to honor the liberation of the area by the advancing American army in World War II.

Later in the afternoon, we dropped in at a tasting of Crémant de Bourgogne, a locally produced sparkling wine.  Our wonderful friend and host, Marie, gave us the flyer for it.  It turned out to be sort of a school project for students of l’école du vin, the school for wine professionals in Beaune.  They had produced a lovely sparkling wine for us to try.  Our host could understand English a little better than he could speak it.  I asked him if the wine was all chardonnay or if other varietals were present.  He replied, “cent pour cent,” 100% chardonnay.

Here we are with our young student hosts.

Dinner was at La Ciboulette, one of our very favorite restaurants.  I make reservations many weeks in advance, which isn’t easy because they have no website and everything is done by phone.  We’ve become friendly with the owner, Isabelle, who speaks enough English for us to place the reservation.

Isabelle greeted us warmly.  "You have not changed!" Here she is, reviewing the wine list with me.  

I just placed ourselves in her hands and she chose a wonderful wine for us.

Mary loves this salad of warm goat cheese called salade chèvre chaud.  White asparagus is in season and I enjoyed a cream of asparagus soup called velouté asperges. 

The main course for Mary was joue de porc, roasted pork cheeks.  I had the same dish a few years ago and enjoyed it very much.

I had pave de boeuf, sort of like a strip steak, which I ordered mainly because I love the sauce Époisses, a fantastic sauce made from cream and the locally produced cheese.  The steak was fine, but I think the best American steakhouses produce a better, more tender cut than is generally available in France.

The wine was a Domaine Tollot-Beaut Chorey-les-Beaune 2013, a straightforward village wine that was nonetheless perfumed and delicious.  We’re familiar with Tollot-Beaut, have several bottles in our collection at home, and have visited the domaine.  The aromas showed the typical earth, floral, and red fruit profile.  The palate was smooth, fresh, with a beam of vivacious red cherry, consistent with its youth.  It was wonderfully balanced and a terrific accompaniment to both dishes.  The bottle price was 48€, which converts to about $55.  In a fine U.S. restaurant, I imagine it would be priced more in the $65-$75 range. 

Here’s Mary, enjoying the evening with me in Beaune while she waits for dessert …

       … which was this collection of various chocolates.

I enjoyed the assortiment de fromages, a selection of local cheeses.

Here’s the arch to the heart of Beaune.  It’s a beautiful and fascinating place, even more so at night, a place to return to again and again.

Thanks for reading and commenting.  We hope you find our posts interesting.  Keep coming back.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian

Return to Burgundy - A Little Slice of Heaven

May 19-20, 2016 – Back to Magny

We never seem to get enough of Burgundy.  Here we go again, back for our seventh year in a row.  For those who have read us in the past, you know that we go to Burgundy and then some other place.  This year, the plan is to spend a week here in Magny-les-Villers and then mosey northward, spending a few days in Champagne, a couple of days in the ancient German city of Trier, then a week in the Mosel valley.

Here’s Big Dee in Detroit, waiting to take us to Paris.

  

And Mary waiting at the gate.

I managed to score exit row seats.  For me and my long legs, that’s a big deal, especially on a flight of 8 hours!

We had to change some of our plans at the last minute.  We intended to take a train from Paris to Dijon to pick up the car.  Dijon is only a half-hour from Magny and we could have slept on the train.  Alas, French train workers went on strike, so we cancelled the train and drove from Charles de Gaulle, between three and four hours to Magny-les-Villers.  The arrival in Paris was at 8:00 a.m., which is 2:00 a.m. in Detroit.  By the time we were on our way with the car, it was 10:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m. in Detroit, setting out on a long drive around Paris and down the autoroute, having been up pretty much all night.

With frequent stops and a couple of those tiny little cups of coffee that you get in France, we made it.  

Here’s the view from the bottom of the Hill of Corton, looking up the slope as we drove the mile up the hill to Magny.  They may not look all that impressive, but these vineyards produce some of the most sought after wine in the world.

When we arrived at the gite, Marie and Yves were out running errands, but we walked right in.  They left the place unlocked for us.  It is sort of like coming home, even better this time because they installed a new router for an improved internet connection.

The first thing I did was walk around the corner to Domaine Cornu to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner.

By wonderful coincidence, Claire Naudin, proprietor of Domaine Naudin-Ferrand in Magny, just steps from us, is hosting her annual Marché Gourmand this weekend.  It is a small market of regional producers of wine, food, pottery, and other artisanal products.

We enjoyed tasting through the wines of Domaine de Mouilles, a Beaujolais producer.

The dinner wine was the Domaine Cornu Savigny-les-Beaune 2012, selected for us by Isabelle Cornu based on our planned dinner of saucisse aux herbes with peppers, onions, potatoes, and a little St. Nectaire cheese.  The wine is exactly what Isabelle said it would be, fresh, aromatic of flowers, earth, and red fruit, smooth and medium in body on the palate with red berry and cherry notes, beautifully balanced and perfect with dinner.  The price was 16 €, about $18 at the current exchange rate.

A quick note about the cheese … it is one of many wonderful cheeses that are not available to us in the U.S.  It is illegal to import because they are made with unpasteurized milk with fewer than 60 days aging before sale, but we both love it.  As I saw in a news article recently, it is easier to buy a gun in the U.S. than it is to buy many French cheeses.  I’m hoping I can get it from a Canadian shop one of these days since I live just across the border from Ontario.

After dinner, we both collapsed into bed for a good night’s sleep.  Tomorrow is the day of the Beaune market!

Thanks for reading us.  I’ll try to post a note and photos from time to time.  Feel free to offer comments and ask questions.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Brian♥Mary

Back in La Bourgogne - May 14, 2015

Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s blog about wine, food, people, and culture.  We’re back in Burgundy, a place we’ve come to love for so many reasons, a place where we’ve established friendships, relationships, and not only because of wine.

Above is our plane in Detroit.  I’m fascinated by the sheer size of these things, so big it has two jet bridges for boarding and deplaning.  We can both testify to the fact that the on board experience is the same as for every other plane, pretty much jammed in there.  Sleep was almost impossible. 

We departed at 6:30 p.m. Eastern and arrived Charles de Gaulle at 8:00 a.m. Paris time.  After a bus transfer to the train station in downtown Paris, Gare de Lyon, we trained down to Dijon where we picked up a car and grabbed lunch, including a refreshing Saint-Véran, a Chardonnay from the Maconnais region of Burgundy.  Sorry I don’t have a photo.  

We finally arrived at Magny-les-Villers, our destination, at about 4:30, very fatigued but happy.  This photo shows our gite, which is translated basically to cottage.  It has all the comforts of home, including laundry facilities and full kitchen.  We've learned to travel light and do laundry, shop for a few groceries, and occasionally cook at home with local ingredients.  Marie Zecchini, her son Florent, daughter Severine, and three grandchildren were waiting for us and greeted us enthusiastically.  Bonjour, bonjour!  They’ve become our French family.

I went for a stroll around Magny to unwind after the long journey.  The top of the blog shows a photo of the village from a hillside.

Domaine Cornu is just around the corner, steps away from the gite.

Magny is a wine village, but lots more is going on.  It’s tiny, population 200 (deux cent habitants).  Here’s a back yard with fruit trees and roses.

And strutting around is this free range friend.

Irises are prolific here in Burgundy and are well ahead of ours in Michigan.  I love purple irises.

Here’s the church, the oldest part built by the Romans.

And here’s the village school, which doubles as the city hall and community gathering spot.

As strange as it might seem after such as long trip, Mary cooked for dinner.  That’s because we were even less motivated to go out to a restaurant.  Plus, today is a holiday in France, Ascension Day.

Mary emailed Marie a shopping list ahead of our arrival and Marie had everything on hand for us.  Saucisse aux herbes, champignons blanc, poirve rouge, oignons, ail, pommes de terre, which is sausage with herbs, white mushrooms, red bell pepper, sautéed onions and garlic, and potatoes.
  

Marie picked up a nice cheese for us, Saint Marcellin, a soft cow’s milk cheese from the town of the same name near Lyon, a couple of hours south of us.

We asked Marie to get a recommendation from Alex Cornu at Domaine Cornu.  We’ve visited him before and actually hoped to walk around there and see him today, but I guess he wasn’t available on the holiday.

Alex suggested a Côte de Nuits-Villages from a vineyard right here in the village, Le Clos de Magny.  It was very young, a 2012, and had fresh, bright aromas and flavors of red cherry, raspberries, and strawberries, good acidity, a smooth texture, and paired nicely with dinner.  It wasn’t highly complex, but it was a solid red Burgundy that hit the spot for a couple of tired travelers.

That’s our post for today.  Thanks for reading us at Cépage et Cuisine.  We’ll be here for a week or so, then take a couple of days to transition to Bordeaux.  We’ll post up a blog post whenever we can with photos of our adventures.  In the meantime,

Cheers,

Brian♥Mary

Spring Is On Its Way

Baby, it's cold outside! Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary's and Brian's blog about wine, food, culture, and people.

February here in Detroit was the second coldest on record. We've had several days recently with low temps below zero. Our temp this morning, Feb 28, 2015,  was -3° F, or as Mary says, "There's a minus in front of our 3!"  I took the photo you see here yesterday while I attended a meeting in downtown Detroit.  The view is across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario.  You can see the river is frozen almost completely across. The joke is that in winter you can walk from Detroit to Canada. The Coast Guard has an icebreaker that keeps the channel open for shipping. Quite a sight to see.

Here's a montage of snow photos on the deck in our back yard, digging out the barbecue grill. The neighbors probably think I'm strange, and they are probably correct.

Ok, that's the context for the title of the blog entry. Spring is on its way! In just a few more weeks, baseball season opens! I got an email announcing pre-arrivals of Bandol rosé at Morgan and York in Ann Arbor, one of our favorite shops for wine and cheese.

If you're one of our Michigan readers (either one of them) or visiting Detroit or Ann Arbor, Mary and I recommend visiting Matt Morgan and Tommy York. They're great folks with great products, a fun place to hang out and browse on Saturday afternoons.

So, thinking warm thoughts, Mary and I decided to have our own little private blind tasting of a couple of rosés from Provence. As you may remember from earlier posts from our travels, Provence is a region in southeast France on the Mediterranean, very sunny and warm. It is especially known for its rosé, refreshing and fruity, most popular during warm weather and with light summery fare. We enjoy it all year but we enjoy it most in warm weather.

There are lots and lots of producers of rosé in Provence. They are usually refreshing with brisk, food-friendly, lip-smacking, mouthwatering acidity and bright flavors of red fruit, readily available and not too expensive.

Here are the wines we compared.  Domaine Tempier is a prestigious estate in Bandol, a particular part of Provence. Their rosé is in high demand and quite expensive for the category, about $45. La Vieille Ferme is produced in another Provence area called Ventoux. It is widely available in wine shops and supermarkets, delicious, and a great value at $8. We try to keep a bottle in the fridge at all times. Rules to live by.

So, the question is, tasted side-by-side without knowing which is which, can we tell them apart?  And even if we can, is there enough of a difference to justify the price of the Domaine Tempier that is more than five times the price of the La Vieille Ferme?

Ok, right off the bat, we could easily tell them apart. The color difference is less noticeable in the glass than in the bottle, but the experience on the nose and in the mouth of the first wine, which turned out to be the La Vieille Ferme, was very characteristic. The aromas were of fresh berries and melon, perhaps some white floral notes. The palate was light-bodied with brisk acidity and flavors of fresh raspberry and strawberry, maybe a little bit of a spice note. The balance was really nice and the finish was short, barely over 10 seconds. Finish is the amount of time the flavor remains noticeable after swallowing the wine. The cépage, the blend of grapes, is Cinsault, Grenache, and Syrah. The alcohol level is 12.5%, quite modest.

By contrast, the Domaine Tempier Bandol showed quite a different profile. The aromas were more floral and with a noticeable savory quality, a little gaminess, no doubt a reflection of the cépage, which is 50% Mourvedre. The other grapes in the blend are Grenache, Cinsault, and Carignan. The palate was round in comparison with the La Vieille Ferme, a bit lower in acidity, and clearly had more weight and density, even while finessed and elegant in its presentation. Red fruit notes were there, but riper in flavor, and there were also savory herb and spice characteristics.  The balance was beautiful, it is a much more complex wine, and the finish was almost twice as long. The exact alcohol percentage isn't labeled, but I'm sure it's higher than the La Vieille Ferme, indicating the grapes were riper when harvested.

So, what can we say about the comparison?  The Domaine Tempier Bandol is clearly a more complex, interesting, and serious wine, a wine that deserves attention and not simply consumed without thought, and a wine that pairs with serious food, what the French call vin gastronomique. Here's Veronique and her mother, LuLu at Domaine Tempier in 2013.

The La Vieille Ferme Ventoux is easy to drink, not too complex, doesn't require a great deal of contemplation, pairs with just about anything, just drink it down. Heck, keep a bottle in the fridge and sip on a glass while cooking. Throw a splash into whatever's on the stove. It's inexpensive and delicious.

What about the cost difference?  Is the Bandol really worth five times more than the Ventoux? Probably not, but it's a value judgment that varies from person to person. Mary and I treat the Domaine Tempier as a bit of a special occasion wine, enjoyed on a weekend when relaxing, perhaps with some friends out by the barbecue grill or around the table, enjoying good food. At $8, the La Vieille Ferme is a terrific value. If you buy a case and get a 10% case discount, it's about $7 a bottle. Just can't beat that. So, for Mary and for me, both wines have their place, both bring pleasure, both enhance food, and both can be shared with friends. Isn't that what wine, food, culture, and people are all about?

Before you know it, we'll be enjoying flowers in the back yard and relaxing under the umbrella over the patio table!

That's our post for today. Thanks for reading us at Cépage et Cuisine. Post a comment and let us know your thoughts. And, as always, in the meantime,

Cheers,

Mary♥Brian