Beaune and Dijon

  Beaune, Burgundy, France
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

So we arrived in Beaune last night, only to discover that there was no one at the reception desk. Finally someone came around, and when we asked her for a place to eat, she looked at us with a confuzzled look - I guess this town is much sleepier than the busy Cote towns that we became accustomed to.

We decided to be a bit adventerous and drove into the center of Beaune, a town of 25,000 people. We found a nice little bar, and feasted on chicken nuggets and a curry flavored chicken burger. Another side note - every single town we go to has a carousel. Not sure why the French love these, but it is in every town center we go to. Very random, but we have also decided that we will ride one of these things before we leave France. It was a bit hectic trying to find our way back to the hotel since we didn't have any town maps, but after lots of circling, we made our way back safely.

Wine out of barrel

This morning we drove out to make our 10:30 am appointment at Louis Jadot. We met our tour guide, Anthony, and he was definitely a wine expert. A former sommelier, he came to work at LJ about 7 years ago. The way he sloshed his wine around and spit them into the spitoons showed he was truly an expert. He was spitting out the wine like a fountain - whereas when we spit out the wine it was just ugly (and landed everywhere, like on our faces). Let me also say that having a tasting at this winery is not very common as LJ is not open to the public, and it was through a work connection of mine that we were able to visit this very fancy winery and do some barrel tasting. Anthony was very nice and explained so much about the Burgundy wines. We learned a lot, and this winery is definitely one of the most impressive, cleanest, and coolest wineries I've ever gone to. Thanks Bryan and Bryan's poppa!

Anthony then directed us to Aloxe-Corton, where we had some more tastings. He also said that if we told other wineries where we came from (LJ), that it gave us some credence, and that wineries would be more open to allowing us to taste. This area is not really and area that you can go around and taste, like in Napa, Sonomoa, Santa Barbara/Ynez, or Temecula. Each area of Burgundy is manned by very small farmers/owners. So after visiting Aloxe-Corton, and after the 9 types of wine we tasted at LJ, along with jet lag setting in, we decided taking a nap was the way to go.

Aloxe Corton

4 hours later (:p) we decided to have dinner in Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, which is only about 40 min north of Beaune. This town pleasantly surprised us - it was much bigger than Beaune, had many shops, cafes, and bars around. We had a nice dinner at a local cafe, and later made our way to Le Kilkenny, an Irish pub recommended by the Frommer's guide. Plenty of young people around, which was surprising given the area that we were in.

Tomorrow we head through to Colmar and Strasbourg to do some Alsace wine tasting, aka rielsings and gerwertraminers (not sure if I spelled that right).