BURGUNDY'S SPELL
“There” A deep, nearly chest cracking breath in and, “There it is. Only this place smells like this”
I had just opened the passenger door of our rental car, my chest intuitively taking deep, chest filling breaths. We had just pulled up in front of the apartment we were to be renting in one of my favorite places in France, the city of Beaune in France’s Burgundy region.
“When I arrived in Burgundy I felt I’d seen that landscape all my life, even before I got here. Like part of me was already here” As I heard the words coming out of Pascal Marchand’s, (of Marchand-Tawse) mouth at the beginning of the documentary Grand Cru, my heart began to beat and head started slowly nodding. I’d never heard anyone explain my feelings about Burgundy so concisely, and in a way that seemed to purr a secret language. I knew then that I was in a different category of wine lover, I was a Burgundian wine lover, and that is the kind of love that becomes part of you, almost as if were woven in long before you even tasted the wines. Like they have been there, hundreds of years, just waiting for us to return.
My first trip to France was in 2003 and I spent 6 days nuzzled into that smell, those landscapes, the aromas, and flavors that spoke to a nearly primal part of me, and it was on that trip that called Randy, 3:00am our time in Beaune, to tell him that I wanted to take over buying for our Burgundy department at The Wine Country. Every time I bury my nose in a glass of Burgundy I feel the little hairs on my neck slowly rise, my heart starts pounding just a little, and I feel like I am chasing that first love, and it might just let me catch it again.
Join me this Friday night, November 17th, as we open, pour and discuss red Burgundy from the lean, earthy and racy wines of the Cotes de Beaune to the luscious, deeper and more curvy wines of the Cote de Nuits. Pinot Noirs so varied and confidently wearing the accent of their place.
Nicolas Rossignol Pommard
David Duband Gevrey-Chambertin
Marchand-Tawse Vosne Romanee
Gachot Minot Nuits-Saint-Georges
And more.