Day 12 - The best wine tour in the world - Chateau Meursault
This morning we woke to the church (eglise) bells and Joanna at least got up. I stayed in bed, having had a bit of a poor night's sleep due to eating rich food late, just before bed. I didn't really get out of bed until after 8am, but I saw the farmer leading his goats out to the pasture at 7:30am when Joanna called to me from the sundeck. There has been churchbells in every town, because almost all of the towns are built around a mega-hundreds of year old church.
We had our petit-dejeuner (breaky!) at 9:00am and enjoyed home made jams, their own grapes and of course their fresh award winning goat cheese. We troughed well, and still didn't dent the amount of food that was set out for us. The goat cheese was outstanding! Especially with the homemade peach Jam!
They actually have a small museum built on their farm as well housing old family relics like combines, threshers, plows, yokes, various implements, and a great collection of fossils found in the vineyard. Most of the fossils were snail-like stuff some getting quite large (20cm in diametere) Quel escargot! I took a few pics then we said our goodbyes and hit the wine road. Jacqueline really took a liking to Joanna, and praised her understanding of French when I stood there like a dummy a few times. They both had a good laugh when I was the last to figure out what she was talking about. It's a real horse race, but that may have been our best B&B yet.
We continued North aiming towards Dijon as an approximate goal for the day, and we really only had maybe 60 kms to cover. We were driving the scenic routes and came to the chateau Montrechet vineyards which produce some very famous dry white wines. We were unable to find the Chateau Montrechet itself, doh! Little lost because Joanna doesn't really care for dry whites anyway. Alors! We had taken another rest around lunch because of course nothing is open between noon and two.
Just before two we arrived in another town called Meursault. It had a famous Chateau, and we stopped for a gawk, and a tasting of their wines. They charged an admission, and they had an art gallery of semi famous art from the early 1900's when the chateau owner had been actively restoring the Chateua Meursault to it's former glory. It was a beautiful chateau, and the self guided tour of the art gallery took an interesting turn as it headed down into the wine cellars.
"Cave" is the French word for cellar, only they pronounce it 'kav' an these were underground, dark, cool, passages and small rooms like a dungeon labyrinth. Each hallway and room filled to the low ceilings 6 bottles deep with wine of various vintages. We came to this huge room full of oak barrels all laying in rows where the wine ages for as much as 2 years before being bottled.
All of the bottle had a ton of dust on them, apparently they dust them off and label them as required. We are talking about Caves from the 12th century to 18th century with some of them holding 170,000 bottles of wine each. The wine was about 30Euro ($45) for the good stuff, and the Premier Cru, the really good stuff was more like $60/bottle.
After leading yourself (following some arrows ) through all of the dark passageways and rooms (seriously a 20 minute walk I think) you get to their tasting cellar where a guide let us try about 12 wines explaining all about them.
Without a doubt, this was the most awesome wine tasting experience of my life, and beats the pants off anything I have done in Napa or the Okanagan. I'm tempted to drive back down and do it tomorrow again!!
We made our way North toward Dijon for our late afternoon adventure of finding a place to stay. Armed with our B&B books, maps and tourist information, 2 hours later we still had nowhere to stay. We use our best bloodhound skills to track these remote B&Bs down through the narrow streets and mazes of small villages, only to find they are full…
We found this nice place up on a hill in a town called Chamboef, and proceeded to work at our next objective which was get some food. Once again, it was a little early for dinner which was OK because the village we were in was so small, it didn't have a patisserie or restaurant etc… We eventually found a shop in a nearby town that had a few baked goods left on his shelf. We bought a few quiche, and some cold drinks and made our way back to our B&B. In the twilight of the day, we are sitting out on the patio with an older couple from Antwerp. Joanna is doing her crosswords, and I'm updating the blog as we both enjoy a few? glasses of wine.
Tomorrow's agenda hasn't been discussed other than we are heading for the Champagne region and Joanna is going to be happier than Oprah on a honey-ham. This central region of France is a wine lovers playground. The Loire and Bordeux are west, beaujolais is south, Burgundy is where we are, and Champagne is just north. All the while you are being stuffed with Goose Liver, Snails, Cheese, and Cured Hams. Aix!!!! Bon nuit.
We had our petit-dejeuner (breaky!) at 9:00am and enjoyed home made jams, their own grapes and of course their fresh award winning goat cheese. We troughed well, and still didn't dent the amount of food that was set out for us. The goat cheese was outstanding! Especially with the homemade peach Jam!
They actually have a small museum built on their farm as well housing old family relics like combines, threshers, plows, yokes, various implements, and a great collection of fossils found in the vineyard. Most of the fossils were snail-like stuff some getting quite large (20cm in diametere) Quel escargot! I took a few pics then we said our goodbyes and hit the wine road. Jacqueline really took a liking to Joanna, and praised her understanding of French when I stood there like a dummy a few times. They both had a good laugh when I was the last to figure out what she was talking about. It's a real horse race, but that may have been our best B&B yet.
We continued North aiming towards Dijon as an approximate goal for the day, and we really only had maybe 60 kms to cover. We were driving the scenic routes and came to the chateau Montrechet vineyards which produce some very famous dry white wines. We were unable to find the Chateau Montrechet itself, doh! Little lost because Joanna doesn't really care for dry whites anyway. Alors! We had taken another rest around lunch because of course nothing is open between noon and two.
Just before two we arrived in another town called Meursault. It had a famous Chateau, and we stopped for a gawk, and a tasting of their wines. They charged an admission, and they had an art gallery of semi famous art from the early 1900's when the chateau owner had been actively restoring the Chateua Meursault to it's former glory. It was a beautiful chateau, and the self guided tour of the art gallery took an interesting turn as it headed down into the wine cellars.
"Cave" is the French word for cellar, only they pronounce it 'kav' an these were underground, dark, cool, passages and small rooms like a dungeon labyrinth. Each hallway and room filled to the low ceilings 6 bottles deep with wine of various vintages. We came to this huge room full of oak barrels all laying in rows where the wine ages for as much as 2 years before being bottled.
All of the bottle had a ton of dust on them, apparently they dust them off and label them as required. We are talking about Caves from the 12th century to 18th century with some of them holding 170,000 bottles of wine each. The wine was about 30Euro ($45) for the good stuff, and the Premier Cru, the really good stuff was more like $60/bottle.
After leading yourself (following some arrows ) through all of the dark passageways and rooms (seriously a 20 minute walk I think) you get to their tasting cellar where a guide let us try about 12 wines explaining all about them.
Without a doubt, this was the most awesome wine tasting experience of my life, and beats the pants off anything I have done in Napa or the Okanagan. I'm tempted to drive back down and do it tomorrow again!!
We made our way North toward Dijon for our late afternoon adventure of finding a place to stay. Armed with our B&B books, maps and tourist information, 2 hours later we still had nowhere to stay. We use our best bloodhound skills to track these remote B&Bs down through the narrow streets and mazes of small villages, only to find they are full…
We found this nice place up on a hill in a town called Chamboef, and proceeded to work at our next objective which was get some food. Once again, it was a little early for dinner which was OK because the village we were in was so small, it didn't have a patisserie or restaurant etc… We eventually found a shop in a nearby town that had a few baked goods left on his shelf. We bought a few quiche, and some cold drinks and made our way back to our B&B. In the twilight of the day, we are sitting out on the patio with an older couple from Antwerp. Joanna is doing her crosswords, and I'm updating the blog as we both enjoy a few? glasses of wine.
Tomorrow's agenda hasn't been discussed other than we are heading for the Champagne region and Joanna is going to be happier than Oprah on a honey-ham. This central region of France is a wine lovers playground. The Loire and Bordeux are west, beaujolais is south, Burgundy is where we are, and Champagne is just north. All the while you are being stuffed with Goose Liver, Snails, Cheese, and Cured Hams. Aix!!!! Bon nuit.
posted by Paul at 1:48 PM
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