Lunch at Le Montrachet, Wednesday 11th Sept

On Thursday morning, we headed over to Puligny-Montrachet where ACC had an appointment with Madame Joly. Since G and I had visited her domaine as recently as January, we felt it would be too much of an imposition for us to tag along, so we killed an hour wandering round Puligny.

We checked out Le Pelugney (that is the correct spelling!), a new Belgian restaurant which looked quite good, actually. I was particularly interested in their "Crêpes maison flambées au Marc de Bourgogne". Across the square is the Olivier Leflaive restaurant, which had a creepy waxwork-type figure standing outside. I wasn't tempted to take a photo. The menu here didn't appeal and we were particularly disgusted by the offering of a "Duo" of cheeses which seemed unusually stingy for this part of the world - usually you get at least four!

After that, we made friends with an elderly tabby cat sitting on a mat outside its home in a very quiet back lane, which cheered me up immensely - normally we never see cats in Burgundy but on this trip we saw quite a few - and then we walked up to have a look at the vineyards before returning into the village to hit the wine shop.

Here we had a very enjoyable glass of Bourgogne Blanc 2011 from Bzikot while perusing the wine list. They literally went across the road to get it. It was interesting for me to try this, as I've been getting through large quantities of the 2008 vintage from this domaine. G bought a couple of premier crus, and after we left we suddenly thought maybe they hadn't included the two glasses of wine on the bill. It turned out that they had, but they were just three euros each! Not something that would be possible in Angleterre.

It was now time to head over the road to Le Montrachet where a table for lunch awaited us. The sommeliere gave me a wink which was possibly meant to be encouraging, as I was attempting to speak in bad French at the time, or could have been an allusion to the chaos caused on my last visit in May 2009 when I and the other female member of the party had to take matters into our own hands when it came to pouring the wine, and thereby created an international diplomatic incident.

While waiting for ACC to join us, G and I indulged in a kir, and when ACC arrived, he fancied a glass of cremant but it turned out that they don't do a cremant by the glass so he was forced to have champagne. We had the 28.50 euro menu which included lots of amuse-gueles including a little chicken nugget wrapped in filo and deep-fried which was possibly the most delicious thing I ate on the entire trip.

To drink, ACC suggested a bottle of St-Romain 2004 from Domaine Chassorney at 47 euros. I hadn't come across this domaine but he told us it was the real deal - biodynamic, unfiltered and cloudy. The sommeliere clearly approved of this choice. I managed to take a sneaky picture of it. It was like no other burgundy I've ever tasted; if anything, it reminded me of an old, dry Vouvray. Very interesting. We also discovered that "snacke" means in the form of a snake, and that Cafe Liegeois is a sort of coffee ice cream sundae - very nice indeed. The total bill, including a bottle of old friend 1er cru Auxey-Duresses from Roulot, came to 205.50 euros. We spotted that they had left ACC's glass of champagne off the bill and drew this to their attention but they said not to worry about it, which I thought was very decent.

By the time we'd finished, it was about 2.15 and time to head off to our next appointment when all I wanted to do was lie down on a park bench and sleep. Memo to self: next time I go to Le Montrachet, don't schedule anything immediately afterwards. Best lunch of the trip!

Tuesday evening at Le Goret

On Tuesday evening, the others went over to Volnay to see Vincent Perrin, while I got caught up on my reading material - the New Yorker and Lucky Peach - at the gite. We then met up in town and headed over to "the pork place" aka Le Goret. Googling it just now, apparently it's the no.1 restaurant in Beaune on Tripadvisor. Could this be because our cousins from over the pond like large portion sizes?

We certainly enjoyed the experience. The decor is quite basic, with wooden tables - a dog stretched out under one of them - and the menu scattered about on various blackboards. The chef/proprietor, who clearly enjoys his food, explained our options to us - basically it's sausages or pork. Or jambon. That's it! We chose the pork, and he disappeared to cook it. A few minutes later, an absolutely enormous piece of pork arrived for each of us, about 5 cm thick.

It was slightly pink in the middle and the chef explained to us that it was supposed to be like that and was nothing to worry about. I see this debate has cropped up today, article in the Observer here. None of us got food poisoning so this guy knew what he was doing. It was very good, but defeated me - I think I ate about half! To drink, we had a Moulin-a-Vent which was the perfect accompaniment to this sort of food. The total bill for three, including wine and a pre-prandial was 115 euros so about £35 each. Overall: hearty, rustic, pleasurable.

Domaine Chaudat, Tuesday 10th Sept

On Tuesday morning, ACC had an appointment in Monthelie while G and I opted for a lazy morning and a spot of shopping. This included a trip to the fromagerie on Place Carnot, Alain Hess.

Here we bought some Bonnat chocolate, as I'm exploring the world of serious dark chocolate, along with an excellent saucisson aux noisettes, and some Comte (cut using the laser-guided cheese-cutter). G hilariously inadvertently asked for some "Flagey Echezeaux" which is our nickname for the little goaty thing on a stick that looks like a flagpole, but didn't mean much to the woman behind the counter. I still don't know what they're actually called!

After lunch at the gite, Julien picked us up and took us to Corgoloin, for our appointment at Domaine Chaudat. I don't think any of us had been to Corgoloin before - it's not a Burgundy wine village as such, but is between Ladoix and Nuits-St-Georges.

This small domaine is run by Madame Odile Chaudat. ACC was scouting it out as a new possibility, so hadn't met her before. I particularly enjoyed the 2012s - the Bourgogne Aligote, which I found charming (not always the case with aligote), the Cote de Nuits blanc which had a lovely mouthfeel, richness and acidity, and the red Ladoix which had a heavenly nose and was very elegant and typique of Ladoix. All in all, quite a find, with some nice goodies off the beaten track.

Afterwards we had some time to kill before our ride was due so I took some photos of the vineyards which had apple trees growing in them. The rural idyll.

Domaine Jean-Claude Rateau, Monday 9th Sept

By now we were a few minutes en retard and Alain le taxi whisked us from Vosne to Beaune, to our third and final appointment of the day, at Domaine Jean-Claude Rateau. ACC called him en route to let him know we were running late and he was very nice about it.

He took us down into his cellar which was relatively big and empty - perhaps only one fifth of the space was being used. It appears that he doesn't make as much wine now as in the past. The domaine is biodynamic and G and I first came across it when G found a white Beaune Coucherias 2008 in Monoprix last year - I wrote about it here. Now there seems a good possibility that the Burgundy Portfolio may start selling some of these wines in the UK - great!

We tasted 10 wines, and my favourites were the white Beaune Coucherias, the Bourgogne Rouge and the red Beaune 1er cru les Bressandes which was the biggest of the Beaunes we tried. It was very interesting to try the Coucherias 2011 in bottle which showed us what the 2012 would begin to look like in a year's time when the different components had begun to knit together, and the Bressandes 2009 which was top notch - it had a beautiful perfume on the nose, elegance and complexity. Sniffing it, I felt as if I'd died and gone to heaven. Given what a great vintage 2012 is shaping up to be, it all bodes very well. Thank you very much to Jean-Claude for showing us these wonderful wines.

Afterwards, we walked past the vineyards back into Beaune. Consulting the map in Coates, I'm pretty sure this is Les Teurons.

It had been an amazing day, with loads of two of my favourite appellations, so I drew an infographic to celebrate. Hi-tech!

Domaine Audiffred, Monday 9th Sept

We were collected in style by Julien le taxi who has a snazzy black Audi with blacked-out windows so you feel like a VIP (edit: G tells me it was actually a Mercedes. Shows how much I know). He took us from Chambolle-Musigny to Vosne-Romanee, another village which I'd never visited before and was very excited about. Here we lurked for a few moments before popping into La Toute Petite Auberge for lunch. This offers a menu of 3 courses plus a glass of wine and coffee for a whopping.... 21.50 euros. What a steal! The food was lovely and I believe a gougere or two may have appeared with our pre-prandial kirs. Fantastic.

Then it was time for a wander through Vosne-Romanee and our first proper look at the vineyards. Everything seemed incredibly green for the time of year - they're perhaps a month behind the normal schedule, which is problematic, and we saw lots of adverts for help with the harvest. It's so tempting to go back in a couple of weeks.

In the centre of Vosne there was a kind of bus stop which had a giant map of the village and buttons you could press to make the different domaines light up.

We popped into the wine shop where I found a couple of unusual premier crus for the Premier Cru Project. We also spotted a house for sale just across the square from Domaine de la Romanee Conti HQ. Now that's a tempting proposition...

Then it was time for our next appointment, at Domaine Audiffred. Once again I'm a huge supporter of this domaine and have bought quite a lot of their wines over the past year or so, which are all tucked away to mature, so I was really looking forward to this.

This domaine makes relatively small quantities of quite a few different appellations in both the Cote de Nuits and the Cote de Beaune. When we visited, they were in the middle of pumping some of the wines into tanks, and there were lots of hoses lying around the place which we had to be careful to step over, and an assistant occasionally popped down to do things, which made the tasting feel enjoyably informal.

We tasted 20 wines altogether and once again I'll just give edited highlights. In some cases the wines had just been sulphured and had something going on which I decided to call "foxy nose" in my notes, but this will disappear in time.

As usual, I loved the Beaunes. After tasting the white Beaune, I was licking my chops like a cat that's just been fed some smoked mackerel, while the red Beaune had a lovely nose and was very jolie. The Morey St Denis was sensational and intense, with a great finish, while the Pommard en Mareau was amazing. At this point, as G and I were both going "Aaaaaah", there was a funny gurgling noise and it turned out that one of the hoses had become dislodged and Beaune blanc was pouring all over the cellar floor. "Excusez-moi" said Henri politely as he dashed over to fix it.

The Gevrey-Chambertin had redcurrants and blackcurrants and I was dribbling quite badly at this point. Then we tasted a series of Vosnes. The village Vosne was elegant and fruity, while the Chalandins had more richness, but for me the Champs Perdrix was where it was at. It was very complex and had it all going on. I see I have some of the 2010 and the 2011, so I guess I'll just have to get some of the 2012 too... Then we tried the 1er cru Reignots, the jewel in the crown. Henri made just one barrel of this and told us it was quite a responsibility. It was wonderful, and the finish went on for minutes. I have three bottles of the 2010, so that will be something to look forward to in a few years' time.

This was a remarkable tasting. There's something about the house style here that really appeals to both G and me, and the wines express the terroir of the different villages very clearly. Merci beaucoup to Henri for showing us so many lovely wines.

Domaine Felettig, Monday 9th Sept 2013

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of this domaine. G and I have got through industrial quantities of their cremant, bourgogne rose, and particularly the vieux marc de bourgogne which is our "house marc". G visited back in May 2009 but this was my first visit. Alain le taxi took us to Chambolle-Musigny and dropped us off at the domaine where building works were in progress ahead of the harvest. Fortunately the dog was asleep. I believe this isn't always the case.

We met Christine, and then Gilbert gave us a tour of the cellar. We mainly tasted wines from 2012 which were still in barrel. Altogether we tasted 15 wines and then a couple of older vintages in bottle, what a way to start a week. Generally they seemed to be showing very well and I came away with a very positive impression of the 2012 vintage.

I won't give a blow-by-blow account, but for me, the highlights were the Bourgogne Rouge which was very stylish, the village Chambolle-Musigny which jumped out of the glass at me with its succulent fruit, the Chambolle 1er cru les Feusselottes which had an amazing richness, the Chambolle 1er cru les Charmes which I described as "beautiful, truly charming" and the Vosne-Romanee 1er cru which is a combination of three different premier cru parcels - Reignots, Petits Monts and Chaumes - and had lovely intense berry fruits. My kind of Vosne!

A mention must also be made of the Echezeaux grand cru. There was just one barrel of this. It was sensational, so much so that G didn't spit his out, disgraceful behaviour. It's probably out of my reach price-wise but it was a real privilege to be able to taste it. Thanks to Gilbert for a fabulous tasting!

Almost as much marc as at A de V Towers!

Epic trip continued...

On Sunday morning, G got carried away at the bakery so we enjoyed a huge breakfast of ficelles au lardons, almond croissants, pains au chocolat and normal croissants. Then eventually we heaved ourselves into action and wandered into town to have a look round some shops.

At last! The new 2013 cassis has arrived!

We found a few choice goodies particularly in Magnum, and then came back home where I plugged my ipod into a little speaker in order to play Now That's What I Call Disco while I made some gougeres. Eventually G, who has no sense of fun, banned Now That's What I Call Disco and we had to revert to Paul Van Dyk's Vonyc Sessions podcast. My favourite tracks on here are Incarnation and a jazzed-up Lana Del Rey thing which you can listen to here if you want to recreate the mood.

I made the gougeres smaller than usual which had the advantage a) that there were more burnt, crunchy bits and b) the mixture made about 200 gougeres with lots left over for me to pig out on during the rest of the week.

With the gougeres, we had this bottle of Pernand-Vergelesses 2010 from De(ux) Montille. Let's just say it was on the acidic side, and was much improved by the gougeres. Not one I'd rush to have again.

Then some cheeses - an amazing Ami de Chambertin (which according to a cheese website I've just consulted, is "related to Epoisses, but more stout in appearance"), a Trou du Cru, a Delice de Pommard and a young Comte which had been bought primarily to make the gougeres. These all came from the local supermarket but despite that were sensational. The Trou in particular was oozy nine millimetre.

Also some pate, terrine and cornichons.

To drink with all that, we had this 2005 Cote de Brouilly from Chateau Thivin which went down a treat. We were intrigued by the Cuvee de la Chapelle gold sticker, and check that label out! The Inverse Law strikes again.

After all that, a restorative glass of marc was in order. That morning, G and I had been keen to get in the traditional "bottle of marc for the house" and ACC had suggested a trip to Dennis Perret on Place Carnot as they had a good range. Indeed they did - we picked up this Chateau des Jacques 1986 for 31 euros. Being a bit thick jetlagged, we hadn't registered that this was actually a Louis Jadot marc, but despite that, it was pretty damn good, as it should be after 27 years.

I can't remember what we did in the afternoon - watched some crap French TV and went for a little lie-down, I suspect. Then in the evening it was off to la Ciboulette (aka "Cibbers") which is one of the few places open on a Sunday night. It was packed and we had to wait a while for things to happen. We struggled with the wine list and eventually ACC consulted the owner who found us a nice white Savigny from Catherine and Claude Marechal. For our red we were able to have a 2011 Auxey from the same producers, which really hit the spot - young and fruity. Then it was back home to the spooky cave for marc and coffee to prepare for an action-packed day of appointments on Monday.

Epic trip to Burgundy, Sept 2013

Last Saturday G, ACC and I set off to Burgundy in our usual style i.e. a cork was gently eased out of a bottle of Pol Roger as the Eurostar drew out of St Pancras, much to the amazement/jealousy of fellow passengers. This was accompanied by some Roka Cheese Crispies, which didn't last long. There was a slight altercation when it turned out I'd forgotten to bring forks for our salad, but G manfully went to the buffet car and stole some plastic numbers so harmony was soon restored.

At last we got to Beaune station and found the heavens had opened. We made our soggy way to the local supermarket to stock up on essentials like pate, cheese and 200 bottles of Badoit, and then after multiple attempts managed to find a taxi. We were staying at a new place which was allegedly in the centre of Beaune, so it was quite surprising when the taxi hurtled out of the town centre and had practically made it into open countryside before drawing up at a very ordinary-looking house with a clothes-drier outside sporting several pairs of gentleman's socks. Nevertheless, this was the address we had been given.

A man inside overheard us talking and came out to see what was going on. It turned out that this was the home of madame who was renting us the gite and not the actual gite itself. Oops! Since our taxi had by now disappeared into the distance, the chap phoned madame, who was waiting for us at the gite, and she drove back to collect us. G and I got in the back of her car/van where there were no seats, so we had to crouch on the floor and hold on as best we could, while ACC had the benefit of the front seat. You know you're in Burgundy when stuff like this starts happening. G claims that his mackintosh will never be the same. Eventually we made it to a street we recognised and then turned off down an extremely narrow lane. I was very impressed by madame's precision driving - there was about a millimetre of clearance on each side.

It's still not entirely clear why she gave ACC her own address instead of the address of the gite, but we were happy because the gite was much closer to the town centre than the house with the socks had been. She showed us round, including unnecessarily detailed instructions on how to use the microwave, dishwasher etc., and explained at length the additional tariffs for towels, cleaning etc. I left the others to it at this point and went to get the luggage, managing to give myself concussion on the low ceiling of the utility room. Then it was time to go for dinner. Hurrah!

Usually we go to Caves Madeleine for our first dinner of the trip, but shockingly, it was fully booked, so Cheval Noir was our second choice. We walked through Beaune in the rain, G leading the pack and accelerating like Mo Farah as he spotted his destination. Getting out of the horrible rain and into the warmth and serene atmosphere of that place was one of the nicest experiences of the trip.

We sat at the same table as last time and had a wonderful kir to start with. Afterwards we debated whether it was only so good because it was the first of the trip. I guess we should have gone there again on the last day to test the hypothesis. Amuses-gueles quickly appeared and then a melon thing in a glass, with slivers of bacon in it. We had the 30 euro menu with extra cheese at a supplement of 9 euros. The highlight for me was the Norwegian trout with "espuma" potatoes - the wonderful fluffy, cheesy potatoes we had last time - while ACC had a piece of pork with loads of girolles. I really enjoyed my main course but was nevertheless jealous of his and started hinting that we needed to come back again later in the week, but to no avail. To drink, we had some white Auxey-Duresses and then some red Auxey-Duresses 2009 from Domaine Bzikot, both of which were very good. The bill was 200 euros for the three of us, and we had eaten and drunk very well. Once again, we felt Cheval Noir was on the verge of a Michelin star. Certainly the 30 euro menu is excellent value.

ACC wanted to go to "Route 66" on Place Carnot afterwards but it looked packed and we ended up in another cafe where we had a disappointing marc and then decided to go home and try out our very own cellar!

Chorey, Chorey everywhere

Madame had generously provided us with a bottle of 2006 Chorey-les-Beaune from the family estate. Obviously we were very excited to try this as we know from frequent missives from the Wine Society what a great vintage 2006 was for red Burgundy (#sarcasm). It was predictably revolting. We had a look round the cellar to see what else there was, but it was literally just bottles and bottles of this stuff. Quite sad really. Fortunately while at the supermarket G and I had taken the precaution of getting a bottle of Maranges 1er cru la Fussiere from Domaine Pagnotta, so at least we had something drinkable, even if on the rustic side.

In fact the cave itself was strangely spooky, with weird agricultural implements on the walls, and an odd stone semi-religious figure in a hole in the wall presiding over proceedings. On a subsequent evening, G closed the door which made it feel incredibly claustrophobic. Something out of a horror movie could have happened at any second. Imagine being imprisoned in there, with just 5000 bottles of revolting 2006 Chorey-les-Beaune to drink... It didn't bear thinking about. Fortunately this was not our fate, and we made it to bed soon after midnight, knowing that we didn't have to get up early the next morning.

A pair of ports

The other day, when I opened my credit card bill I unexpectedly found a £20 off voucher for Waitrose wine, but the catch was that I had to spend £100. Seconds later I was on their website to see if they had any decent madeira left. Sadly, they didn't - no great surprise - but then I saw they had some Taylors 40 year old which reminded me of the period a couple of years ago when I got into 20 year old tawny port. As this is the big year, I thought "now or never", and went for it. A few days later, this arrived.

Imagine my surprise when I mentioned this self-indulgent splurge to G and he informed me that he was in possession of a bottle of Taylor's Crusted Port bottled in 1973, which he got at auction. A sort-of-horizontal port tasting ensued!

We tried the 40 year old tawny first, pouring it straight from the bottle. It looked glossy and clear. On the nose, we got fruit cake, with a hint of ginger. I also found a vanilla custard thing going on which G pointed out was due to the use of oak casks. I loved the palate, which was very smooth, with a creamy texture, and not too sweet. It was very crowd-pleasing and reminded me slightly of Woodford Reserve bourbon - easy drinking. I was very happy with it and might even buy it again, as I think I know some people who'd enjoy it.

Then it was on to the crusted port. Here's the cork, which came out whole, more or less, thanks to G's expertise with the corkscrew.

And here's a delightful photo of the sediment in the sink. Ew!

I had to ask G exactly what a crusted port is. Apparently it's made from a mixture of vintages that weren't declared and is bottled early so that it will throw a crust. It's a style that isn't made any more. G thought that this one was probably mainly from the 1971 vintage which wasn't declared. As the 40 year old tawny is a solera, you'd expect there to be quite an overlap between the two wines, but the tawny was aged in barrel, while the crusted port matured mostly in bottle.

We decanted it, and it looked murky in the glass (on the left in the photo below). On the nose, it was frankly offputting. G said it smelled of burnt rubber, and there were also some sharp chemical notes and a sort of over-ripe tropical fruit thing going on. Let's just say expectations were low!

But the palate wasn't congruent with the nose, which was good news. It was more powerful than the tawny, with figs, panforte and cocoa. It had more depth and intensity and was altogether more interesting, with a marvellous finish.

We continued to drink them side by side on a subsequent evening but found that the crusted port was starting to fade, so at that point we polished it off by itself. The tawny is still going strong and claims to last 7 weeks after it's been opened. Somehow I doubt it'll last that long...