Wine Tasting in Burgundy—-mmmmm!

May 10, 2009

OK so we went on a wine tour with some lovely people from England who now live in Burgundy next to Charrolais cattle (good beef). They run a company called “Discover Burgundy”. We went to 3 vineyards and had a lovely lunch. This is not Napa Valley. These places are family owned and there are actual law on the books about what you can call your wine and the quality–ie village (you can put the name of the village on the wine if the grapes were all grown within the village), vineyard–all the grapes came from the same vineyard, premiere cru–the grapes came from a certain plot of earth in a certain vineyard in a certain town and grand cru–same as premiere cru but more chi-chi. Luckily Ben and I are are more village and vineyard sort of people–we don’t plan to cellar these wines for any period of time–I forgot that “cellar” was a verb as well as a noun. Anyway, on this tour–very personal–we went to a guy’s house–Baptiste Gay–and we went to his basement or in this part of the world, his cellar and low and behold there were wine barrels down there. He popped one open and let us taste his 2008 Burgundy which was quite done lactofermenting yet–out of the barrel–I am not kidding. Anyway, the 2007 Chardonnay that was bottled and came out of the “Belle Filles” vineyard in Pernand-Vergelesses was even better–we bought 3 bottles which is not enough and will go back and get a case later this week. All in all a very successful day!