wineshark: Wine tour 2012

On every Wednesday and Saturday there is a market in Beaune, with the individuals putting up stalls selling their wares. Today before starting our tour we went for a walk in the market, and each of us buying some interesting things as souvenirs. The people were all very friendly and some of us would simply want to spend more time but we had to leave to go for a 'picnic'.

Heading to Cote de Nuits, you can guess we were aiming for the holy grail of Pinot Noir - Romanee Conti. We passed through Aloxe-Corton and Nuits-St-Georges along the way, finally arriving Vosne-Romanee. At the village centre, David showed us where one of the owners of DRC (the de Villaine family) lived. With no sign whatsoever connecting to DRC, it probably had avoided the tourists spotlight.

Walking along, we also stopped in front of the DRC winery. It was very difficult to go in and normally no visitor would be allowed. Just taking a few photos, David pointed out the winemaker to us, who could be seen busy preparing for the coming harvest.

All of these were not our destination, as mentioned it was a 'picnic', and we walked further to the vineyards, passing through the grand cru Romanee-St-Vivant and the really ripe, healthy Pinot Noir grapes, arriving at the Romanee-Conti parcel.

Romanee-Conti is definitely the most famous estate in Burgundy if not the world, with the monopole having about 1.8 hectares. There are another 5 grands crus under DRC in Vosne-Romanee which were all famous too, and another white from Montrachet. I promised myself that I would own a set one day.

Taking enough photos, it was time to drink some wines. It would be too expensive to open a DRC here and we settled for something more manageable, a Francois Larmarche Vosne-Romanee and a Louis Jadot Beaune 1er Cru Bressandes. With some fresh bread, we had a wonderful time enjoying the scenary and weather.

After that we went to Chateau du Clos de Vougeot which had been making wines as early as the 12th century by the monks. Looking at the huge barrels and wine presses, one could imagine how in the old days the wines were made. This is where the Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin had their event also, which hopefully I could also join sometime in future.

Moving along we passed through Chambolle-Musigny, Morey-St-Denis to arrive at Gevrey-Chambertin, to meet Pierre and Marie Naigeon in their estate for lunch and tasting. Marie was the one who helped me organize this tour in Burgundy, and through her connections we were able to get a lot of exclusive visits. We proceeded to go down to the cellar, which was maintained at the natural way to preserve the eco-system there, providing an ideal environment for the maturation of the wines. It was also where we were having our lunch.

Pierre was very friendly and explained the winemaking process to us, and we also tasted the new wines from barrels of all his impressive range of wines, covering 6 grands crus, 8 premiers crus and 8 villages. Pierre is a true believer of terroir and the traditional practices and in my opinion the wines also showed clearly the different characters. A very valuable experience!

Over lunch we had good chat about wine and tasted 6 bottles of their wine, which were all very good. The production was small and with insufficient to service all customers, it was never seen in HK too. I bought two bottles to bring back home and they were a good bargain: a 2009 Bonnes-Mares at EUR 86 and a 2009 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Cazetiers VV at EUR 83. If only I have more room...

Leaving Pierre and Marie we headed to try something different - aperitif. In Burgundy it is also renown for producing good fruit, like blackcurrant, raspberry, peach and so on. Taking these fruit people made liqueur and we went to an award-winning producer Gilles Joannet to look at how he made them. It was interesting to see how the fresh fruit was soaked in high alcohol to extract the flavors, and for tax purposes he had to keep the used pulp for audit.

Of course we needed to taste them, with Benny and myself tasting all the 10 liqueur. At 20% alcohol level, even a small portion could get you dizzy, but since we were all well-trained now it was not an issue. I bought a set of three: Creme de Cassis, Framboise and Peche de Vigne. Anxious to make my own Kir when I am back to HK!

Returning to Beaune, we had dinner at a Michelin restaurant Loiseau des Vignes. This restaurant was located in the old part of Hotel Cep, with beautifully restored high-ceilinged rooms where we could see the ancient stones. The food was fantastic and again bringing another happy memory for me to bring back home.