France 7

So Thursday saw us driving Kai over to Dijon to catch his bus to Munich, after dropping him off and saying our goodbyes after a fabulous week with him, we decided to spend some more time checking Dijon out, so we moved the car to a long term carpark and started wandering. Its a very beautiful city, huge wide streets and promenades, feels very slow and relaxed, no one rushing or stressing! Its sort of the perfect size city for us! Big enough for the title of city, but small enough to have a great feel.

We stumbled across the Jean Jacques precinct which was full of bars and restaurants and on the spur of the moment booked dinner for that night at a lovely looking French-Japanese fusion restaurant, L’Aspérule. So we decided we better find a cheap hotel so we could stay the night, but first we went to visit the Cité de la Gastronomie et du Vin – basically the French Gastronomy Center, and specifically the Cave de la Cité, a wine shop with 3 floors form a sort of ‘wine library’, 3000 bottles of wine, 250 of them sold by the glass. They range from a few Euros to a lot more when you descend to the Cave des Grand Crus. Here they have some of the most expensive wines in the world. The wines sold by the glass are mounted in special cabinets, you load a card with cash and then insert the card above the rows of bottles, and select the wine you want and how much, 30ml, 75ml or 150ml and then it pours the glass from the bottle. The small 30ml glass means you can afford to taste very expensive wines that would be otherwise outside your budget.

We did a series of blind tastings with 2 glasses, one with a cheap Burgundy and the second with an expensive one, eg a grand or premium cru. (cheap one was €2.50 for 30ml, expensive up to €35 for 30ml) It confirmed our existing opinion that we are not the greatest fans of the reds of Burgundy. They are a little light and thin tasting for our palates, something I would put down to the singular use of Pinot Noir grapes. We also were consistently able to pick the €20 bottle from the €400 bottles – but the difference in taste in no way justified the difference in price in our opinion. Give us a $25 bottle of good Australian Shiraz or Cab Sauv any day!! We finished with trying a few Côtes du Rhône, including some very old Grand Crus, as these have a flavour profile more to our palate.

We followed the tasting with a quick bite of lunch at one of the brasseries in the city of gastronomy and then found a room at the Hotel de Paris and had an afternoon nap before heading out to find a bar for an aperitif before dinner.

It was in the Jean Jacque precinct again that we found an amazing underground bar, in a back street with no other shops, restaurants or bars, was a sign on the footpath and stairs leading straight down underground to a beautiful space. Apparently most of the old hotels in Dijon had a cellar like this that was the restaurant for the hotel, this had been such a space and long after the hotel was gone, repurposed as an underground bar, Le Caveau de Saulx. The staff were very knowledgeable and helpful, again a great range of wines, many very old ones. They had a simple system, you could get a glass of a range of newer wines for €10 or a glass of a range of old wines for €15 a glass.

So, time for dinner, and round the corner to L’Aspérule, they were only offering their degustation menu tonite, either 5 or 7 courses and the option of the Sommelier choosing the wines, we went for the 7 course and the Sommelier’s choices. Most courses he gave us a glass each, from different bottles, we then shared the glasses so we got to try both wines and compare them and discuss how they matched the food, so in the next gallery are the courses and the wines he presented,

Ok, lets take a breath before reloading! As you can see, the food was beautifully presented and I can tell you the flavours were just incredible, a real journey of discovery over a few hours, the wines too were amazing, obviously very high end French wines. By this stage we are starting to feel rather fat and full, but there was plenty more to come!

 

As you can imagine, it was a bit of a waddle back to the hotel, although despite us having put on what felt like a couple of kilos, this was offset by my wallet being much lighter – to the tune of €400! We checked out mid morning and drove back home to Montbard, ducked into the markets to pick up a couple of things, including the most amazing roast chook with potato slices cooked in the chook fat below the roasting bird! (lunch for a few days!) and did very little over the next couple of days! Simple dinners at home and NO wine!

Of course resistance was short lived and Sunday night saw us driving 10 minutes over to neighbouring village, Saint-Remy, to La Mirabelle, a cosy little restaurant we had been trying to get a table at since we arrived. It was another surprise with a very unusual menu for this region, none of the typical dishes. It was another incredible meal, the food was thoughtful, clever, beautifully presented and the setting was intimate, almost like being in the dining room of someones house. We chose a few of the seafood dishes because we have come to appreciate that the distribution networks in France mean the seafood freshly caught in the Med or Atlantic coast, is in the restaurant here the same day. I am glad we did because they were stunning, and talking to the chef afterwards he told me he was born and trained in Brittany so seafood is his passion!

We treated ourselves to a very nice Chardonnay from Burgundy, we have learnt we much prefer the whites from Burgundy to the reds and in fact I think they are the equal of the Chablis chardonnays, often at a much lower price point.

Somehow I have missed that the afternoon before this dinner we had a drizzly drive thru the countyside to visit a hill top town called Vézelay which has a huge 11th century basilica. Its certainly very pretty and we will likely come back one day when the weather is better. You can see the scale of the basilica if you zoom in to the person standing in front of it!

Well that is quite enough for what was meant to be a quick and short update of a week that it felt like we really didnt do much!! Maybe because for the first time we had a few days where it was just Sal and I on our own? Anyway, luckily its been a dreary drizzly morning so lying in bed and updating the blog has been a perfect activity!