Saturday, April 23, 2022 - Cold and rainy

The weather today is supposed to be in the 40s and rainy by lunch time. Not good for sightseeing, but great for wine tasting. So that's our afternoon plan. While Dave, Janis, Joann, & Larry took a quick 3.5 mile hike around "Le Lac de Panthier" (Panther Lake) just a short distance from our house, Clark researched potential wineries without good results. (Plenty of winery pages, no one answering phones to make appointments, and no costs listed for many places.) Wine tasting here is very expensive as the wines tasted are very expensive. Some wine tastings are over $100 per person. Too much for our blood. 

Le Lac de Panthier is a large lake that was formed by building a really long earthen dam (.6 miles) to feed water into the Burgundy canal. It serves as a bird sanctuary and recreation area and is the largest lake in this part of France. 

walking around Le Lac de Panthier

 

Janis, Joann, Larry at Lac de Panthier

Le Lac de Panthier

Over lunch, the group decided to head off toward Pommard and see what we see since online searches weren't fruitful. And we stumbled on a most happy accident. There are wine "caves" every few houses in Pommard, but parking is impossible. A wine cave usually is the property from which wine is sold, where equipment is stored, where wine is bottled and aged. Then we found a wine cave with parking on the street and a woman who spoke only French, who sent for her English-speaking son to conduct a wine-tasting for us. Thomas (pronounced Toma), age 30, is one of France's new generation of wine-makers. His family's story is charming and illuminating. Thomas and his older brother, Floriant, bought a cave 3 years ago, bringing with them the brother's wife's inheritance of 3 hectares (7.5 acres) of vineyards in the Pommard region. Thomas and Floriant run the winery themselves, only hiring help in harvesting season. Both had worked for 10 years in the wine industry, learning everything from growing to bottling. Thomas has studied oenology (wine-making) and this is the 4th crop for them. A risky business. 2019 wasn't a good year, 2020 was good, and 2021 had too much rain which cost them half of their crop. Nevertheless, Thomas' enthusiasm for making great wine is palpable. They bottle wine under their name: Domaine Jeanson Parigot. 

Domaine Jeanson Parigot 

Thomas offered us 6 reds from 2020. These wines were all the same grape (pinot noir), the same year with the only difference being the location of the vineyard (and its height up the valley). What an interesting experiment for us. He explained how the age of the vines, the soil and its micro-climate affected the grapes and affected how the wine is made each year. All the wines we tasted were good. So we bought a variety of bottles to take home. 

Clark, Janis, Joann, Larry in cave (basement of the house above)

One other tidbit we learned that there is a minimum price that must be charged in Burgundy - for Pommard, 34 Euros per bottle, the price of his Pommard offering. They hope to get more customers by keeping prices low (at least for now...)

We wondered how new winemakers even got any vineyards as we know that vineyards are usually handed down in families often with siblings sharing ever smaller and smaller portions of the land - sometimes only one row of grapes. Thomas told us that in Burgundy, when someone decides they want to sell land, anyone interested in buying must submit a letter explaining what they plan to do with the land. The qualifications and commitment of the applicant is considered in choosing the winning application. A committee then reads and decides who they think should be offered the land. This allows small growers to compete with the huge corporations on equal footing. Also, Burgundians are preferred owners. Burgundy has a great stake in keeping up its reputation (and prices...) In this case, the backgrounds and ambitions of the Jeanson brothers have allowed them to win several applications and they hope to continue to add vineyard parcels each year. 

We may visit there again. 

We drove home via the Route des Grands Crus, passing through Meursault and a half-dozen other small wine towns. 

Each town was worthy of a stop (but not today as the weather isn't the best). While each town is small - often only a dozen or so houses clustered together - the sturdy stone buildings feel strong and bound to the earth.

church at St Sabine

St. Romain

from a lookout point, St. Romain, Auxey-Duresse, and in the far background, Meursault

Stacked stone walls partition the yards of these houses and most have one or more outbuildings for farming equipment and harvesting. Rooted as they are in the verdant greens of early spring crops, these medieval buildings seem to promise that they will be here forever. 

Our plan for pizza for dinner at the lake didn't look like a good option, so we went back to the house, ordered take-out (à emporter) from the next town and picked it up 45 minutes later. 

We picked up pizza from Chez Lucotte along the Burgundy canal in Vandenesse-en-Auxois, just 5 minutes from our house. 

The plan for tomorrow is Cluny (monastery) about 1.5 hours from here. However, we are supposed to get some serious rain. So we'll see.