purelyfrance

When my friend David Hammond of Burgundy Discovery asked me if I could help out with one of his wine tours I accepted with alacrity. Which is quite fast in Burgundy.

David’s wife Lynne was indisposed, so they were short of a driver for a day. No problem, and I didn’t even have to wear a chauffeur’s uniform.

Hang on a minute.  If I’m driving, what about tasting? Oh shoot. I guess there’s always spitting.

We had an eclectic mix of people to expose to some of Burgundy’s finest vineyards. Five Chinese ladies from Hong Kong and San Francisco; a young American chap studying philosophy at Princeton Uni; and another American couple from Reno, Nevada.

We plunged straight into the crème de la crème of pinot noir country taking in the vines of Vosne-Romanée where I learnt two interesting facts.

There are 33 Grand cru vineyards in Burgundy, and 23 of them lie within 10 kms of Vosne Romanée; how about that for star status.

And David explained how some vignerons were resorting to horses to hoe weeds and turn the soil between the vines. I thought David may have been using some touristic license but within 20 metres of our RangeRover we could see two horses plodding their way through two different vineyards. Voila!

Moving on to the Vosne-Romanée situated Domaine Michel Noellat & fils the first tasting was on offer, plus the first test of my discipline. I passed on the regional aligoté; stayed away from the Chambolle Musigny chardonnay; even waved away the Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots premier cru. How tough am I.

Then we were offered a rare taste of  a grand cru, their Echezeaux pinot noir. It would have been rude of me to refuse  a grand cru - wouldn’t it?

Next stop was at Pernand-Vergelesses, Domaine Baptiste Gay. Baptiste, a sole owner/operator greeted us ready for work in his orange shorts and red t-shirt. Or the colours may have been the other way round.

His passion for his wines were evident as he sedately waltzed us through his range of chardonnays. His village Les Belles-Filles was delighful, full of floral flavours, and very good value for money at 12 euros.

The subject of Rugby arose, Baptiste (you have to love that name!) was just as passionate about French Rugby, particularly their record against the All Blacks in World Cups. I think he really enjoyed reminding me of that.

But he was graceful enough to offer us a taste of his Corton-Charlemagne grand cru chardonnay. What could I say?

We bade farewell to Baptiste and headed for lunch at the Auberge Saint Martin in the small village of Bouilland.

An excllent lunch it was too, Marieluce delivering excellent service and her husband Didier producing the goods in the kitchen.  A starter was the traditional Burgundy specialty, jambon persillé, followed by a choice of coq au vin or trout.

The trout, boneless, was particularly tasty. Cheeses, and a rich sumptous chocolate cake followed, all washed down by a Baptisite chardonnay. Of course I just sipped. 

Last call of the day was at Domaine Marcillet located in Fussey in the Haut Cotes de Beaune appellation. Here, Nadine talked us through their approach to wine making before inviting us to their well appointed cellar/tasting room.

Not only did we taste (sipping and spitting for moi) a range that included aligoté, a Savigny les Beaune chardonnay and a Chorey-les-beaune pinot, but Nadine also produced a tasting of cassis (black current juice) which is used in the Burgundy drink of Kir.

So with a number of different flavours lingering on our respective palates we headed back to Beaune somewhat more educated on some of the intricacies and skill involved in producing high quality Burgundy wines.

And that was my day as a Chauffeur.  As enjoyable as it was, I would prefer to be on the tasting side of the table!

To paraphrase Mae West - so many wines, so little time!

A Bientot, Bruce.

When we bought our property in 2002, (where have those 8 years gone?!) the real estate advertisement made a big thing of the property featuring une ancienne gloriette.

We couldn’t quite see what the fuss was about as most of la gloriette was buried under  a mass of trees, vines, creeper, blackberry, rocks, stones, and tiles. Cared for, it decidedly wasn’t!

When we looked up ‘la gloriette’ in our well worn French dictionary it translated to a gazebo. 

Hmm, we thought, this overgrown morass doesn’t look much like a gazebo, ancient or otherwise.

So we asked around some of our French friends who commonly labeled it une serre, which is a glasshouse.

This made much more sense as the rusted iron frame was clearly visible and it faced south presumably to maximise exposure to the sun.

It has been well made with an iron ladder on the side leading to a platform which ran along the top of la serre. We guess this was to either train plants or perhaps to enable the glass of la serre to be cleaned easily. Needless to say there is not today one pain of glass to be seen, so no cleaning required there!

All of that is really by and by. La gloriette/la serre has sat there in its untidy, mangled state for the past 8 years.

That was until a couple of weeks ago when old friends Peter and Dianne Elmsly came to stay. They are keen gardeners (I mean who brings their own gardening gloves on holiday!) and motivated by their generous nature they very kindly set about uncovering said serre.

So out came all the rocks and stones some of which could only be levered using a steel rod - goodness knows what they had been doing there, they were too heavy for even two of us to lift. And out came the aforementioned, tiles, blackberry, creper, trees, and vines.

After the first day I think Peter and Dianne wondered what they had started, particularly as the mercury shot up to over 30 degrees and stayed there!  But they are made of sterner stuff and manfully, and womanly, stuck to their task.

We did wonder if we would make any exciting discoveries as la serre was cleared, like a tombstone perhaps. But other than an almost unmovable stone sink, a 20-25 yr old looking grape vine and an egg, no other treasures were to be found.

The egg is a bit of a mystery, we still don’t know what it is or what to do with it.

So now we have a beautifully designed serre, its iron frame crying out to be brushed down and some anti-rust applied to it.

I wonder if Peter and Dianne will think to bring their painting gloves next year?

A Bientot, Bruce.

It has been fashionable over the past 12 months or so to launch a few verbal grenades at Banks and the banking system in general.

Impersonable service, high charges, lack of loan funds have all come under the spotlight, or often, under the blow torch.

Subscribing to the principle of ‘credit were credit is due’ (if you’ll forgive that terrible pun!) I am pleased to write about a Bank whose performance is, well….. highly creditable.

Banque Rhone Alpes in Beaune have been our personal and business bank since our arrival in Burgundy in 2002.

What we like about them is the fact that they are very customer service orientated, and we are able to get face-to-face with real people.

In 8 years we have had only two ‘counsellors’. I recall at one time in New Zealand we seemed to have a different advisor every three months.

Honorine De Mari and Angelique Gaudillere (pictured above) typify Rhone Alpes service. They are very knowledgable about all the bank’s products, and they also project warm and friendly personalities.

The advice we receive from Rhone Alpes has always been very soundly based and helpful to the extent where it places our interests first. Recently they proposed some changes to our financial arrangements which not only improved our cash flow but resulted in lower bank fees for us.

The branch in Beaune is well balanced in terms of staff/customer ratio, we rarely are keep waiting at the counter for service.

The stability of management and staff has also enabled us to develop a good rapport. We regularly have exchanges about topical matters such as the World Cup, holidays, weather, and of course whenever the All Blacks and Les Bleus are contesting Rugby tests.

The only small niggle is that they will only handle cash during the mornings. C’est la vie.

But in his world where automation, phone systems asking you to press 1,2,3, etc, and distantly located centralised call centres it is  a delight to be dealing with humans blessed with brains and pragmatism.

Definitely a Banque to Bank on!

A Bientot, Bruce.