Domaine Emmanuel Giboulot and lunch at Le Montrachet, Thursday 30th October

After coffee we still had time for a wander round Athenaeum, the shop on Place Carnot which sells books and all sorts of exciting wine gadgetry. ACC found a wonderful book with very detailed maps and explanations of vineyard names, while I was particularly taken with this giant glass. I found out the next day what it's for!

Then it was time to meet Bill at Place Madeleine and head on down to Domaine Giboulot. Here we were greeted by a very nice young man wearing an interesting ensemble including a floppy hat and some pale pink tracksuit bottoms. It seemed that Emmanuel wasn't there - he'd had to see a man about a tractor, or something - so this chap and another young lady, who was possibly the secretary, gave us the tasting. It would have been nice to see Emmanuel but his wines spoke for themselves.

We tasted eight altogether, all from the 2013 vintage. For me the highlights were the Terres Burgondes blanc, which is made from pinot beurot (the local name for pinot gris) - this was very attractive, easy drinking with notes of lemon and butter, and had a great balance of acidity and weight. I've been drinking the 2009 lately, and it's been going down very well. On the red side, the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits en Gregoire was amazing, with a heavenly nose and crunchy fruit, and the Côte de Beaune Les Pierres Blanches had a lovely rich nose, good weight and was just generally beautiful. As usual the domaine's trademark purity and elegance were present and correct.

Afterwards, we said goodbye to Bill and met up with Alain le taxi who took us off to Puligny yet again for an occasion I'd been looking forward to for ages - lunch at Le Montrachet! I have fond memories of the sommelière twinkling at me when we went there last year but sadly she wasn't around this time. A kir soon cheered me up and we embarked on the accomplished set lunch which is a steal at 32 euros. We enjoyed perusing the magnificent wine list (available online here), and in the end settled on a bottle of 1998 Beaune 1er cru du Chateau from Bouchard which caused the sommelier to raise an eyebrow but we stuck to our guns and didn't regret it - it was a wonderful golden colour and opened up after half an hour or so.

We were in no great rush so decided to have a comparative tasting of fine and marc from Domaine Roulot to finish - half a measure of each, but happily the free-pouring sommelier seemed to give us quite a generous glass of each both! We took it outside on to the terrace, which was warm in the afternoon sun, and had the place to ourselves. One of these days I'm going to spend a weekend here...