Let’s talk about your Champagne education. No, not the neighborly kind offered at your local wine shop. Nor the delightful kind that you can get on a wine bar tour with me in Paris. I’m talking about the well-advised independent kind that a curious traveler—you—can get by visiting the vine-growing area and production zone of the world’s most famous sparkling wine. Yes, I’m talking about your Champagne daytrip or overnight.

For most destinations in the Champagne wine region your coursework on the making and variety of tastes and styles of Champagne requires a road vehicle, whether a rental car, a taxi, a car service or an organized car/van/bus tour—in any case a designated driver.

Let’s say that you’re either setting out from Paris or heading to the Champagne region directly after arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport. A driving tour can start with the Marne Valley producers around Chateau-Thierry, a zone where pinot meunier vines dominate or by going directly to the heart of the region that lies between and within the two capitals of Champagne: Reims, the historic regional capital, and Epernay, the capital of bubbly itself. Beyond Epernay there’s the Côte des Blancs, especially known for the prestigious chardonnay grapes that grow in its chalky soil. Then there’s the lesser traveled southern portion of the growing area in the department of Aube, specifically the Côte des Bar, with its much-desired pinot noir vineyards.

Each of those areas has its particularities and benefits as destinations to enjoy and learn about Champagne. But how to obtain a good Champagne education without a car or driver? Château-Thierry and Reims are reached easily enough by train, but for the former you then need to hit the road to get credits for your survey course, and for the latter you’d be one weary (though probably happy) foot traveler if you didn’t call for some kind of transportation during the day.

Epernay is the DIY Champagne destination with the best car-free outlook, whether on a daytrip or an overnight.

Not only can a sparkling excursion to Epernay be car-free but carefree as well since little logistical planning is necessary. Most days you can even purchase your train ticket at the last minute at Paris’s East Station, Gare de l’Est, for the one hour and twenty- or thirty-minute ride to Epernay. Greater planning is necessary to climb the Eiffel Tower or visit the Louvre than to explore Epernay on a daytrip.

From the Epernay station, your entire learning campus can easily be covered on foot. Within one mile of the station, you can visit any of a dozen Champagne producers, examine a terrific museum that’s dedicated to regional archeology and the wines of Champagne, see the former mansions of Champagne merchants, and have a choice of restaurants, Champagne bars, pastry shops, and cafés. You can even rise 492 feet in a tethered balloon or climb a 217-foot tower for a view over the valley and out to the vineyards. All within one mile of the train station.

The agro-industrial business of Champagne production dominates in Epernay (pop. 23,000), so if you’re a single-minded traveler looking for an intensive introduction, continuing education or master class in Champagne—without recourse to a car—read on.

Avenue de Champagne

The essential strolling grounds for a visit to Epernay is Avenue de Champagne, Champagne Avenue. Sparnaciens, as local citizens are called, like to tell visitors from the capital that Avenue de Champagne is the Champs-Elysées of Epernay. Indeed, there’s just as much branding going on. But there’s also deep know-how along, around and beneath Avenue de Champagne. Epernay has nearly 70 miles of cellars underfoot, holding about 200 million bottles of bubbly. The avenue is bordered by the former mansions of Champagne merchants, many of them dating from the 19th century. They’re mostly on the left side as you rise the avenue, while on the right side are production facilities, with plenty of Champagne know-how and marketing expertise on both sides of the street. All of that allows Avenue de Champagne to be among the elements that entered UNESCO’s World Heritage List under the title “Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars.”

You can easily spend half a day or more along the first half-mile of the avenue. Thanks to its many opportunities to learn, see and taste, Champagne Avenue could be your sole destination on a train excursion from Paris. Yet you’ll undoubtedly also enjoy a walkabout in the compact heart of the town with its bakeries, pastry shops, restaurants, cafés and tasting rooms.

The Epernay Tourist Office, at 7 avenue de Champagne, is conveniently located near the bottom of the avenue, so it can be your first stop on arrival. Reservations are recommended to visit a production facility and cellars, especially on busy weekends and in summer, but it’s also possible decide on an Epernay daytrip on a whim, in which case the tourist office can help direct you to an available cellar tour. Your Champagne curriculum calls for at least one such tour, particularly if you aren’t aware of the grapes, their classification and the Champagne method. Other than a formal tour, tasting opportunities are easy to come by, both on the avenue and in the heart of town.

Beyond the tourist office, the first major former mansion you’ll come upon was built for the Auban-Moët family in the second half of the 19th century. You may not know the Aubans but you’ve certainly heard of the Moëts, as in Moët & Chandon, whose installations can be visited right across the street. The mansion has served as City Hall since right after the First World War, which explains the monument to war dead that greets visitors entering on its avenue side. The estate’s park (feel free to enter) has a near replica of the Temple of Love that stands in the Trianon park at Versailles. (When arriving by train, you can actually cut through the park to reach Avenue de Champagne.)

Château Perrier: The Museum of Champagne Wine and Regional Archeology

A 3-minute walk further up the avenue you’ll come to the Château Perrier, an eclectic and ostentatious 96-room mansion built in the 1850s by local architect Pierre-Eugène Cordier for Charles Perrier, heir to the Perrier-Jouët Champagne House. The Perrier-Jouët cellars are partly beneath the mansion. They were dug to connect directly with the railway line that had been inaugurated in 1849. The estate was purchased by the Town of Epernay in 1943 to house its museum collections and library. Closed in 1998 for massive rethinking, reorganization and eventually restoration, it reopened in 2021 as the Museum of Champagne Wine and Regional Archeology.

If arriving by train in the morning, consider the museum as your first stop before lunch or a visit one of the Champagne Houses.

I know, I know, you’ve come for cool bubbles not for a dry museum. But let your curiosity draw you inside. First, to admire the grand staircase and the gold-leaf décor of the ground-floor reception rooms and to take in the view out to the park of Château Perrier and beyond the Marne River to the vine-planted slopes of the Mountain of Reims. Then it’s on to the geology section. Geology? What’s that got to do with my Champagne education? As with all prestigious wine regions, an awful lot! Just ask the roots of the vines and the minerality in your glass. An awareness of the formation of the region’s chalky sub-soil here is an integral part of your Champagne education as is, naturally, the section on winemaking that comes later. Yet the most fascinating part of the museum is the archeology collection (choice Neolithic, Celtic and Roman finds), one of the largest in France. The informative audio-guide, available in English, is especially useful in viewing that section.

Musée du vin de Champagne et d’Archéologie régionale, 13 avenue de Champagne, Epernay. Entrance (includes audio-guide): 9€, 6€ for ages 13 to 25, free for under 13. Closed Tues.

Continuing along the avenue and nearby

Among the most accessible producers for tours and tastings are Moët & Chandon, de Venoge and Boizel on the primary strolling portion of Avenue de Champagne; Alfred Gratien, Jacquinot & Fils and de Castellane on nearby streets, and Mercier and Comtesse Lafond beyond the first half mile of the avenue. Others are further afield but also reachable on foot (e.g. Charles Mignon on the opposite side of town). Still others allow you to pursue your education in their tasting room or bar, e.g. A. Bergère, Leclerc Briant, Elodie D., Les 3 Domaines (which presents the wines of three winemakers).

Whichever you visit, enjoy a stroll along the mannerly first half-mile of Avenue de Champagne to view the mansions and villas along the way. Don’t hesitate to enter an open gate and to inquiry about the bubbly of a producer you may never have heard of.

One of those that I visited on my recent overnight to Epernay was Champagne Boizel. I asked Lionel Boizel, who oversees the Champagne house with his brother Florent, to give readers a virtual tasting. His presentation of three Boizel Champagnes follows my introduction in this video.

Eventually, at a round-about, you’ll come to the turn-off toward the de Castellane Champagne House on the left and the Mercier facility built in the 1980s on the right. Mercier is a major producer with a family-friendly cellar tour. De Castellane, along with its own cellar tour, welcomes visitors of all ages able to climb the tower’s 237 steps for a view over the town and along the River Marne and out to the vineyards along the slopes of the southern side of the hill known as the Mountain of Reims. For an alternative or additional overview, you can lift off (weather permitting) in a tethered balloon (you’ll see it near the start of the avenue) while sipping a glass of bubbly at just under 500 feet.

Develop your Champagne curriculum freestyle

Obtaining a proper Champagne education when in Epernay or anywhere in the winegrowing region requires getting beyond the branding and the marketing in order to truly taste and understand the variety of sparkling wines called Champagne.

Major brands do dominate the avenue, including major assets within the LVMH wine portfolio, while smaller family-operated and independent producers also have a presence. All can be enjoyable and instructive. If you do opt to visit a big-brand producer, also visit one that’s lesser known or unknown to you. There are thousands of different Champagnes available, so try to discover what defines your taste and style.

Did you say thousands? Yes, I did.

There are nearly 370 producers known as Champagne “houses,” those that control the resources requires for their own production and market internationally. (See here for more detailed definition of a Champagne house.) These houses represent more than two-thirds of Champagne sales and more than 85% of exports. Each has its own style or styles and produces a range of sparkling wines. Many are referred to as grandes marques (big-brand) producers but of the 370 you may have only heard of how many? Six? Maybe a dozen tops? Some are small, even tiny. Most of the world knows Champagne through the marketing and availability of just a few dozen of the houses.

Here in France, however, we naturally have more access to the varied world of Champagne. Beyond those few dozen and beyond producers designated as “houses,” there are dozens of cooperatives marketing Champagne and hundreds of independent producers, and grapes are grown by more than 16,000 growers. Some producers without a presence on Avenue de Champagne have shops in town where you can get acquainted with their winemaking craftsmanship. (In Epernay you won’t necessarily come across all of the major brands that you’d find at home. Reims is the other major hub for international brands.) If you only focus on brand—even if your choices are limited at home—without tasting a great many, you risk being a sparkling wine snob, proclaiming admiration for a favorite brand without being able to explain why. Better to be a sparkling wine snob with the knowledge to back it up, whether you’ve got a favorite brand or not.

Just think how impressed your friends will be when you say, “I tend to like a Champagne that’s 50% pinot noir and 50% chardonnay, with no more than 5 grams of sugar. At least with certain hors d’oeuvres. As a straight aperitif I prefer a blanc de blancs. But I did once encounter a charming pinot meunier rosé that I’ve been looking for ever since. Of course, I’ll be happy with whatever you’re serving—I do like a good Champagne.”

Well, maybe your friends won’t be impressed, but I will.

In the town center, a few blocks from the start of Avenue de Champagne, the wine bar and shop Les Grands Vins de France can serve as a beyond-the-brand Champagne education in and of itself or a good place for your final exam. Ask for a tasting according to grape variety and/or sugar content to find your preference, then ask for the brands that correspond with that preference.

Use your time in Epernay to visits several producers, whether glitzy and earthy, mineral or fruity, from different areas of the region, for blanc de blancs, blanc de noirs, blended (and in various percentages), rosé, with varying amounts of added sugar, from this part of the vine-growing region or another, with some oak-barrel ageing or (more likely) not, organic, biodynamic or whatever, vintage or not.

Do I have to drink all of those for coursework? Certainly not. Drink with moderation, of course, and pace yourself. You don’t have to finish every glass. But isn’t it reassuring to know that you won’t be driving today and are unlikely to get lost in a town this size?

Which reminds me of something my friend Guillaume once said when we were leaving a wine fair in Paris: “How much wine can you really drink without just wanting a beer?” A lot, was my answer. But if a member of your travel group is anything like Guillaume, note that Epernay has a craft brewery, Tête de Chou, 1 bis avenue Foch, a 10-minute walk from the center. It may sound sinful to mention beverages with bubbles other than those in Champagne if you’ve come this far, but there you have it, craft beer served in the brewer’s taproom Thurs.-Sat. 5:30PM to midnight.

A pink pastry break: le moelleux champenois

Personally, I’d seek out pastry in Epernay before looking for beer. As a break from Champagne tasting (or to accompany it), Epernay and the surrounding region offer the opportunity to enjoy a pastry or cake that you won’t find elsewhere. It’s called the moelleux champenois. Moelleux means soft and champenois means from Champagne. The soft pastry from Champagne is therefore a nod the dry harder pink biscuits (aka Champagne biscuits or pink biscuits of Reims) that are traditionally associated with high tea Champagne and after-dinner delicacy.

In 2019 by a group of six boulangers-pâtissiers belonging to the Bakery Federation of the Marne came together in an effort to create a pastry that would be distinctly regional. The result is the moelleux champenois, made of eggs, sugar, almond, butter, flour, marc de Champagne (a brandy made from the residue of Champagne wine grapes after pressing), baking powder, with crumbled pink biscuit on top (egg whites, sugar, flour, baking powder, coloring). Only members of the Bakery Federation are authorized to use the recipe to make moelleux champenois under that name. Currently, about 40 do. On our trip, it made for a nice pairing with de Castellane rosé both for taste and for color, but it also goes well with coffee or tea.

Ours was actually a triple pairing of moelleux champenois, De Castellane rosé and an encounter with Loïc Maingre, who was among the original development team for the pastry. He and his wife Céline operate the pastry shop Au Bonheur des Papilles. 31 Rue de la Porte Lucas, on the western edge of the inner town. Closed Wed. and Thurs.

Maingre explained that since pink (Champagne) biscuits have long shelf-life, the Bakery Federation wanted to create something that did as well. The moelleux champenois, he said, has a shelf-life of 11 days, but I can’t imagine anyone holding onto one for very long. Immediate consumption is more like it, especially if you purchase an individual portion (3.50€) but even a full cake (13€) if traveling with friends. (Admittedly, I did hold on to one individual portion to enjoy with breakfast two days later when back home in Paris.)

As to the recipe for pink biscuits, Vincent Dallet, a well-known pastry chef and chocolatier in Epernay (who is not among the group making moelleux champenois), shared it with me for this article a while back.

Restaurants and Eateries

La Banque, 40 rue du Général Leclerc. In a former bank building, a polished and classy brasserie, well situated for either lunch or dinner. Open daily.

La Cave de l’Avenue, 5 avenue de Champagne. An easy-going restaurant at lunchtime and a wine bar after 6PM, La Cave belongs to the Bergère family, owners of Champagne A. Bergère. Closed Sun. and Mon. While the restaurant and wine bar naturally serve the family Champagne, a cellar tour and formal tasting can be had further up the avenue at #40.

La Cave à Champagne, 16 rue Gambetta. An Epernay institution for hearty traditional fare. Closed Tues. and Wed.

Le Théâtre, 8 place Mendès France. Traditional gastronomy by the theater at the circle near the train station. Closed Wed. as well as evenings Tues. and Sun.

There are numerous easy-going options for a meal or a snack in the compact town center, including bakeries, cafés and pizzerias.

Accommodations

There are three reasons that Epernay makes for a nice overnight for slow travelers: 1. To take a pre-dinner nap in your hotel or B&B after an afternoon of touring and tasting. 2. To enjoy a leisurely dinner (with more Champagne tasting) in town. 3. To take a genteel stroll along the avenue after nightfall.

Since this article concerns Epernay as a carless Champagne excursion, I’ve only selected accommodations that are within walking distance of the train station. Luxury accommodations and other worthy options are also found in the surrounding villages and by the vineyards.

Hotels

La Villa Eugène, 84 avenue de Champagne. Epernay’s only 5-star hotel, is located several hundred yards beyond the main stroll way of Avenue de Champagne, just past Mercier. It occupies a 19th-century mansion that once belonged to Eugène Mercier himself. Traditional rooms with a touch of elegance. Bar. Small outdoor heated pool. A wooded park behind the house. The hotel is a mile from the heart of the town and the train station, so while it isn’t far from the action, travelers on a car-free overnight may feel that they’re slightly off-center. Without discouraging a stay for Epernay-only foot travelers, I see this more as a place for settle in for two or more nights while also visiting the villages and vineyards in the vicinity with your own car or with a car service, taxi or organized tour.

Hotel Jean Moët, 7 rue Jean Moët, a well-situated 4-star in heart of town, a 4-minute walk from the train station, with a Champagne bar next door.

Hôtel de Champagne, 30 rue Eugène Mercier. A nice and simple inexpensive 3-star near the center of town, a 7-minute walk from the station.

Le Clos Raymi, 3 rue Joseph de Venoge. A 15-minute walk from the station, behind Avenue de Champagne, this pricier 3-star is a 7-room hotel of character in a 19-century mansion that once belonged to the Chandon family.

B&Bs

Epernay is actually more of a B&B destination for now, though not all will allow guests for only one night.

Le 25 Bis by Leclerc Briant, 25 bis avenue de Champagne, situated 500 yards up the avenue, about mid-way along the strolling zone. The Leclerc Briant Champagne house (200,000 bottles/year) has since 2012 been owned by the American couple Mark Nunnelly (from the world of finance) and Denise Dupré (from the world of hospitality management). They’re associated with Frédéric Zeimett, a French partner native to the region, for the production of their wines. The couple also owns the 5-star Royal Champagne hotel that overlooks the southern portion of the Mountain of Reims. Their chic B&B in Epernay has five large, formally elegant rooms and more service possibilities than a typical B&B. Priced accordingly. Options include taking over the entire house with a group of friends and, in that case, hiring a private chef, and, of course, a tour of the Leclerc Briant production headquarters which are situated on the western edge of Epernay where the vineyards begin.

Le Bubble 8, 8 rue des Berceaux, an excellent location on a calm street near restaurants, bars, bakeries and other shops, just a 3-minute walk from the start of Avenue de Champagne. Owner Pascale Lelong-Macra had a career in finance before purchasing the honorable solicitors’ Maison des Notaires and transforming it into five apartment B&Bs. The spacious, well-appointed studios and apartments with clean lines and character have kitchens or kitchenettes and so are especially adapted to a stay of several days or more. It’s nevertheless also a welcoming place for a short stay (there’s a 2-night minimum). Without the pretentions of a full-service B&B such as Le 25 Bis, Lelong-Macra’s son Clement is quite capable, with advance organization, of driving guests out to the villages and vineyards in the surrounding area for Champagne visits according to his itinerary or your own. (His is not a taxi service but a touring service for those staying at Le Bubble 8 and other apartments rentals managed by the family.)

Parva Domus, 27 avenue de Champagne. Parva domus magna quies is Latin for “small house, big rest,” which is what I enjoyed in the attic bedroom at Madame Rimaire’s plain, old-fashion, friendly B&B quietly located midway along the prestigious avenue, a 10-minute walk from the station. Magna Quies is the name of a sister B&B up the avenue at #49.

La Cave de l’Avenue, 5 avenue de Champagne, noted above as a lunchtime restaurant and evening wine bar belonging to the Bergère family (Champagne A. Bergère), is also a B&B with an excellent location for strolls day or night along Champagne Avenue and in the heart of Epernay.

Further logistical considerations

As I’ve said, a day trip to Epernay requires little advance planning, perhaps just a reservation for a cellar tour or two if you want and a hotel or B&B reservation if you intend to spend the night.

While this article is especially intended to describe an easy-walking, car-free Champagne excursion from Paris, whether as a day trip or an overnight, before returning to Paris, you can see on the map above its proximity to Reims, the historic capital of the Champagne region.

Nearly hourly trains link Epernay and Reims, a 35-minute ride to the opposite side of the Mountain of Reims. So after a day or overnight in Epernay it’s possible to continue car-free to visit the sights of Reims (cathedral, basilica, Roman arch, a great food market, and more) as well as tour other big-name Champagne houses (Taittinger, Ruinart, Pommery, Veuve Clicquot) with their impressive cellars occupying Gallo-Roman and medieval limestone quarries. As mentioned earlier, fully visiting Reims requires far more walking than in Epernay, but they are world-renown sights. From Reims you can catch a train back to Paris or continue eastward on a rail-based tour. It’s also possible to begin with a train to Reims (from either Paris or Charles de Gaulle Airport) before continuing on to Epernay then returning to Paris.

© 2022, Gary Lee Kraut

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Harvest Festival? Yes, there’s a vineyard here. It’s a nod to the centuries when the village of Montmartre overlooked fields and vineyards to the north of the capital. Yet the festival, held over five days leading up to and including the second weekend in October, celebrates far more than grapes and even more that Montmartre itself. It’s a colorful, get silly, raise a glass, fun for the whole family, express your individuality, honor community, share in the joie de vivre district-wide celebration of the 18th arrondissement.

Ava Kabouchy, an American photographer and travel writer living in Perpignan, “rose” to the capital to drink in the pleasures of this year’s festival and capture its colors for this photo reportage for France Revisited.

Photo above and at top of page. One week prior to the festival, children in schools of the 18th arrondissement, supervised by their art teachers, along with the French artist known as OJAN, painted stairs to the top of Montmartre to announce the year’s theme: egalité (equality).

Having climbed the stairs with an upward view to Sacré Coeur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, which looms over Montmartre like the top of a wedding cake, visitors crowd along the steps to take in the view of the city below.

Entrance to Clos Montmartre, the vineyard at the origin of the celebration. The Clos Montmartre (a clos is a walled vineyard) was created in 1933 on the steep northern slope of Montmartre to stem the disappearance of green space in the area. The fields and vineyards that once dominated the landscape had all but disappeared since the city’s annexation of the village of Montmartre in 1860 and the urban developments that followed. To preserve the space from building, this parcel at the corners of Rue Saint-Vincent and Rue des Saules was planted with vines.

The annual harvest festivities began one year later, in 1934. This photo is from the festival of 1939 (Wikipedia Commons). France was at war at the time, a “drôle de guerre” (phony war) indeed, but for just a few more months.

Clos Montmartre now contains about 1700 vines, with 30 different grape varieties present. The wines are blended in the basement of the District Hall of the 18th arrondissement. The vineyard belongs to the City of Paris and is managed by the local non-profit Comité des Fêtes et d’Actions Sociales de Montmartre (or du 18ième arrondissement de Paris). All proceeds are donated to local charities providing assistance to children and the elderly.

Clos Montmartre produces red and rosé wines. During the festival they can be bought by the glass (7.50€). Bottles—the current vintage is sold in 50 cl bottles at €30 for the rosé and €35 for the red—are available at the Musée de Montmartre, which overlooks the vineyard at 12 rue Cortot, and online here for delivery in France. But when first released, the price is limited only by participants’ generosity at the invitation-only auction that’s organized by the Comité des Fêtes in October. Jean-Manuel Gabert, left, historian and lecturer, recounts the history of Montmartre and its vineyard.

Dozens of musical, artistic, theatrical, culinary, wine and costume events, large and small, take place over the course of the 5-day Harvest Festival. There are concerts, street theater, a tasting trail of food and drink, a ceremony where couples come together to say “non” to marriage, brass bands, a Freddie Mercury look-alike concert, and much more more. One of the major events is the Grande Défilé, the Grand Parade, when more than fifty groups show off their finest attire. Among them is the La Confrérie des Chapeaux Fous, The Brotherhood of Crazy Hats.

Sisterhood, too, of course. As well as childhood.

Samantha Quentin, left, the Ambassador of Paris 2022, and her glamorous companions. Samantha was also chosen as Miss Cinema for the Cannes Film Festival this year. Celya Vlieghe, fourth on line, is this year’s Miss Songeons (Songeons is a village in the department of Oise). On the right is Ava Wlady, Miss Montmartre 2022.

Members of the Jardins Familiaux de Stains, the Family Gardens of Stains display communally grown produce and flowers. Stains is a northern suburb of Paris.

During the 1920s, as the uncontrolled development of the industrial revolution was taking place along with the loss of farmland and rural life, two architects, Eugène Gonnot and Georges Albenque, set about designing affordable housing and space for “workers’” gardens in the Paris Region. In Stains, 600 such gardens continue to thrive. They serve as cultivated spaces in a dense suburb as well as a gathering place for the community.

Parody, silliness and humor guide the Commune Libre de Montmartre, a non-profit association founded in 1920 by artists of Montmartre to maintain a festive, village spirit in the district. Their slogan: Pour ce qui est contre… contre ce qui est pour, For what is against… against what is for.

The Republic of Montmartre was founded in 1921 by a group of artists with less silliness in mind since its goals were and remain both cultural and charitable. Cultural in its desire to maintain and promote Montmartre traditions while keeping a wary eye toward modernism. Charitable in its support of causes benefiting disadvantaged children and others in need. Together, through culture and charity, along with a good dose of festivity, the members/citizens of the Republic of Montmartre foster a sense of community centered around solidarity, friendship and mutual assistance. The Republic’s motto: Faire le bien dans la joie! Do good in joy! The members dress in the style of Aristide Bruant, a singer at the Chat Noir, a cabaret in Montmartre frequented by Toulouse-Lautrec, who created the famous poster featuring Bruant sporting a red scarf and a black cape.

Within the festival’s theme of equality and its salute to individuality, there’s certainly place in the parade for a zebra. Meanwhile, this accordionist entertains passerby with his music and his cat.

While the Montmartre Harvest Festival naturally celebrates the wine from Clos Montmartre, the abundant wines of Beaujolais are also often associated with festivities in Montmartre. Brouilly (gamay), the largest and best-known of the 10 Beaujolais crus, is one of the wines most at home in Paris bistros and brasseries, so it’s not out of place here, as these cask-carrying fellows can attest.

Just up the street from the vineyard, La Bonne Franquette is one of Montmartre’s most noteworthy hilltop restaurants. It maintains a tradition of cheerfulness, conviviality, good bistro fare and an easy-going tour de France of wines, staying faithful to its motto Aimer, Manger, Boire & Chanter (Love, Eat, Drink and Sing), as this group of celebrants was doing during the festival. The restaurant, a gathering place for the Montmartre elite and local non-profits as well as for tourists, has belonged to the Fracheboud family since 1971. A book about the La Bonne Franquette‘s place in the history of Montmartre by Gérard Letailleur, a specialist on the history of eating and drinking establishments in Paris, has just been published in French.  A la bonne franquette, by the way, is an expression used to apply to meals that are informal, unceremonious and without any fuss or pretension.

The weather may cool at night but the atmosphere heats up in one of Montmartre’s most famous cabarets, Au Lapin Agile, a hovel of a hotspot located across the street from Clos Montmartre. Presenting talent old and new, through song, literature and poetry, Au Lapin Agile keeps alive the Montmartre cabaret spirit of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Well after night falls, while inside Sacré Coeur the Benedictine nuns who live in the priory next door help maintain the basilica’s mission of continuous adoration of the Eucharist, the crowd outside enjoys earthly delights as they continue to gather on the steps overlooking the city of Paris.

Photos © 2022 (Ava Kabouchy with the exception of the photo from 1939). Captions by Ava Kabouchy and Gary Lee Kraut.

The post The Montmartre Harvest Festival, a Photo Reportage appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

For several years now the Burgundy Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB) has been pleading with requesting those in the wine trade and journalists to refer to the wines produced in the Burgundy region as Bourgogne wines.

Personally, when writing and speaking in English, I have trouble thinking of the wines made in the 74,000-acre patchwork of the Burgundy winegrowing region as anything but Burgundies, unless I’m drinking Chablis, which I think of as Chablis even though its vines are firmly rooted in Burgundy, or Beaujolais, which is the wine equivalent of a dog that wants to be both inside and out.

Nevertheless, I share with you the latest plea from Burgundy, dated March 16, 2021, before commenting further below:

In 2012, on the request of its elected representatives, the Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB) decided to stop translating the word “Bourgogne”, whatever the country. The aim is to help consumers find their way by ensuring coherence between our wine labels and the name of the region where the wines were created.

Bourgogne wines enjoy a strong global reputation with half of all Bourgogne wines produced being sold at export to around 170 territories. However, the farther the consumer lives from France, the more they struggle to understand our appellation system. They can get their bearings thanks to the wine’s origins, which is the name of this winegrowing region. It is therefore essential to use only one powerful name, a synonym for excellence and the respect for origins: Bourgogne.

Historically, Bourgogne is the only wine-producing region in France whose name is translated into different languages: “Burgundy” for English speakers, “Burgund” for Germans, “Borgogna” in Italian, to name but a few. This dates back to ancient times when the region was established as a crossroads for trade between the north and south and the east and west of Europe, as it still is today.

As such, Bourgogne wine producers and fans find themselves caught up in something of a paradox. The 200 million bottles of Bourgogne wine sold every year have the word “Bourgogne” on their label, either due to their appellation, which might be Bourgogne, Crémant de Bourgogne, Bourgogne Aligoté, and so on, or because they are a “Vin de Bourgogne” or a “Grand Vin de Bourgogne.” But consumers can find them amongst a range referred to Burgundy, Burgund, or Borgogna…

Confusing, to say the least.

“We felt it necessary to return to our original name, Bourgogne, in order to affirm our true identity, in a unified and collective way,” explains François Labet, President of the BIVB. “I’d say that our appellations are like our forenames, which makes Bourgogne our family name. A name that unites us all with our shared values embracing all the diversity of our wines. You don’t translate a family name!”

As they say in Beaujolais: Yes and no.

Yes, the historic region and former administrative region of Burgundy is called Bourgogne in French, as is the winegrowing portion of that region. But with all due to respect to this beautiful territory and the complexities of its mono-varietal wines and its terroirs and climats, it’s disingenuous to say that the wines made in the region that English-speakers call Burgundy should be called Bourgognes just as, say, the wines made in Champagne are called Champagnes. While Champagne the region and Champagne the wine are spelled the same way in English, Champagne’s pronunciations in English and French are as different from each other as Burgundy is from Bourgogne.

Would the BIVB also now have all non-French-speakers refer to the region itself as Bourgogne so as to complete the linguistic-territorial wine-pairing? If so, I look forward to their fight with tourist and government officials who are still keen on inviting English-speaking visitors to “Love France, Adore Burgundy,” to quote a slogan of the regional tourist board. Perhaps one day Burgundians will unify in imploring the world to call the region Bourgogne, but in a sense the region itself has somewhat faded on the map; Burgundy/Bourgogne no longer exists in the administrative way that it did when the BIVB first stopped translating Bourgogne. France’s territorial reform law of 2014 forced Burgundy/Bourgogne to marry its lesser-known (and also largely pinot-noir- and chardonnay-producing) neighbor to the east, creating Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.

Of course, it isn’t for historic or administrative reasons that the BIVB requests that we refer to their wines as Bourgognes but for the very contemporary, exported-minded reason of distinguishing their wines on the international wine market. The effect of decades of abuse of the term burgundy to refer to Burgundy-style New-World wines still lingers in major export markets, so insisting on Bourgogne is a way of appearing inimitable as well as uniquely French. Champagne producers fought long, hard and for the most part successfully to uphold the proprietary distinctiveness of their evocative name. Bourgogne producers are now looking to assert their particularity by gently pushing professionals and consumers to adopt the singularity of their geographical indicator as written in French.

For now, calling the wines produced in Burgundy’s winegrowing region “Bourgognes” sounds a bit pretentious in English. Admittedly, positioning the wines of Burgundy as products of quality on the world market could well call for an affected pronunciation. The “bourgignon” in beef bourgignon (aka beef burgundy or boeuf bourgignon) gives beef stew braised in red wine added value to a rustic dish. (The true snob would feel the need to prove to guests that the red wine in the dish was a Burgundy/Bourgogne.) With time, “I’d like a good red (or white) Bourgogne, please” may sound less affected, just as we eventually cozied up to Beijing as a closer approximation in speech and spelling to the name of the Chinese capital than Peking, though we still call the imperial fowl with the crispy skin “Peking duck.” But I digress.

If producers in Burgundy want us to call their wines Bourgognes then I’m willing to make an effort—it’s no skin off my grape—but without promising anything. I won’t try to sway you one way or another, though. But here’s some wine advice: If you’re going to order a “Bourgogne,” it better be good one—otherwise an ordinary Burgundy will do.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Bourgogne: A Burgundy by Any Other Name Would Be Just as Terroir appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

STOPPING BY VINES ON A SUNNY MORNING

Whose vines these are I think I know.
His cellar’s in the village though;
He will not mind this makeshift bar
To share with Claire an apéro*.

Our Giant bikes could take us far
Yet stop beside this great terroir
Between high woods and valley ring
Where ripen grapes pinot noir.

Our glasses make a little ping
To toast this Burgundy cycling.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and her laughing.

The vines are lovely, green and deep,
But we’ve got a schedule to keep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep.

*Apéro is an informal way of saying apéritif in French.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Biking in Burgundy: Stopping by Vines on a Sunny Morning (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

So I’m pleased, upon my return from a masked excursion to the bakery and the cheese shop this afternoon, to find that the two agree to sit together to work on a new travel article. At my desk I hop onto the first train out of Paris, and I write:

Thirty minutes after setting out southeast from Paris by train, you’ll notice the flat landscape begin to flutter. Then swells form. And when those swells rise to hills—hills covered with colza, wheat and barley and crowned with woods, cattle grazing down below—that’s when you know that you’ve entered Burgundy.

But what’s my destination? Why head toward hills in the first place?

Before sitting at my desk I opened the refrigerator for some butter to spread on the warm baguette I’d just bought. Among the old photographs magneted to the refrigerator door is one taken in the backyard of the home where I grew up. It shows the hill that my siblings and I would roll down in summer and sled down in winter. Maybe that’s why I like rolling hills—they make me want to explore, yet their tranquil flow across the landscapes reassures me that I can find my way home. “Hill” is what we called the slight gradient in our backyard as children, though anyone over the age of seven would see instead a small slope to a row of trees on the edge of the property. On the opposite side of the trees lived a girl who was in my class. She was a volatile girl. Her name was…

Stop! The traveling mind, the one that resists confinement, won’t cooperate. That mind is quick to switch tracks to examine an old photograph or to look out the window or to give me a sudden urge to go running. That’s the mind that rattles around looking for exits. While my inward traveling mind tries to focus on the task at hand, my outward traveling mind is looking for the name of the girl next door from second grade. It’s telling me to call my sister to see if she remembers. It’s suggesting that I ask another neighbor from my childhood with whom I recently connected on Facebook.

No! Facebook is the death of cordial understanding. Don’t do it! Focus, demands the other mind, the one that’s satisfied sitting at the desk, riding a train to Burgundy. I reread my opening line hoping that its momentum will project me onward.

Thirty minutes after setting out southeast from Paris by train, you’ll notice the flat landscape begin to flutter. Then swells form. And when those swells rise to hills—hills covered with colza, wheat and barley and crowned with woods, cattle grazing down below—that’s when you know that you’ve entered Burgundy.

I unfold a map of Burgundy. On the train to where exactly?

But the outward traveling mind, averse to being bridled by lockdown, won’t let me study the map. I sense it rummaging around in nearly forgotten corners of my brain, unwilling to stay on the tracks to Burgundy, looking to latch onto anything that will pull me away from my text. Forget the girl then, let’s look for something else, it seems to say. And then it stumbles upon something, an open door. It elbows the mind that’s examining the map to let it know that it has found an exit.

It has found, or remembered, the existence of my storage space in the basement, my cave. Simultaneously both minds, the one that accepts confinement and the one that resists, come to the new cordial understanding that my sense of personal space can now be extended by a few square meters if I were to go down to the basement. I feel a shiver of liberation at the thought of visiting my cave in the cellar without having to justify myself to anyone. I haven’t been down there in several years. The train to Burgundy grounds to a halt, in the middle of nowhere.

The last time I went down to my storage space in the cellar was right after a team of thieves broke into it three or four years ago. They busted the padlocks on many of the storage spaces and stole all the wine. Well, they stole my wine, about three cases of it. I don’t know what they took from others because there are few direct exchanges between neighbors in this building other than to say “bonjour” or some expression of embarrassment when we cross paths at the entrance or in the winding staircase. My neighbors were social distancing before it became a health necessity. And when it did, many distanced themselves even further by fleeing Paris for the countryside or the coast in the illusion that, far from our building, far from Paris, lay true freedom, and by their exodus they could deny their confinement and negate their fears, as though, given a deadline to hole up, they’d suddenly realized that they’d been prisoners in Paris for so very long and needed to run while the guards weren’t looking, only to make themselves prisoners elsewhere.

I should thank them their intended escape. Now we don’t have to apologize for checking the mail or throwing out the garbage at the same time. Pardon, pardon, excusez-moi. Après vous, monsieur, madame. Fewer hands on the railings, the light switches and the door handles. No overflow of the trash bins by the end of the weekend. And the greatest gift of their absence: the silence. No footsteps from above, no crying baby from below, no barking dog, no arguing couple, no Airbnbers dragging their luggage up the stairs. No one to judge. Freedom. I wonder if this is what it would feel like to be the only person left alive.

No, there’s my 82-year-old neighbor, she’s still here. She’s the only neighbor with whom I have an actual conversation about anything other than a problem in the building. When they first announced corona confinement, I asked if she planned on going anywhere to ride it out. Her reply: “The last time I went away to ride something out was when I was 6 years old, after they rounded up my father, and my mother sent me to live in the Alps with a family I didn’t know—that’s enough for me.” I told her that if she ever needed anything and didn’t want to go out, I could get groceries for her. “Oh, I’m going out,” she said. “They stole my childhood, no one’s going to steal my old age.”

So I’m not going to complain that someone stole a few dozen bottles of wine that I had in my storage space, my cave. It wasn’t exceptional wine anyway. The temperature and the humidity level in the basement are ideal for wine, but I’m not one to buy bottles with the intention of letting tannins or acidity age gracefully in the dark. I’m not a collector.

I buy a few bottles here and there when I travel to wine regions in France, and winegrowers and tourist officials sometimes give me a bottle or two. Other than a bottle of champagne awaiting an occasion in the refrigerator, I keep bottles on a shelf in the kitchen. I’ll open one or two when I have guests over or take one to someone’s home when I’m invited. But I tend to receive and buy more than I use, so when two kitchen shelves were full I began putting the overflow into the basement.

After the theft I stopped taking bottles down there. I bought two wine stands that hold a dozen bottles each and placed them in the corner of the kitchen.

When not quarantined, I drink wine often, socially. But I don’t drink wine when I’m at home alone. I like sharing wine and the effects of wine. Drinking by myself does nothing for me other than make me want to have someone with whom to share the drink. So I haven’t been drinking wine during lockdown, just the occasional whiskey, calvados, cognac or rum late at night. “A little schnaaps,” as my Great-Aunt Helen would call her nightcap. She lived with us toward the end. “Don’t be stingy,” she’d say when she’d ask us to pour her a tumbler before going to bed. I told that to my friend Guillaume and he now repeats it when he comes over for a drink—he did before lockdown. For religious reasons my friend Achmed says that he doesn’t drink. However, since he isn’t religious, he sometimes will. But it’s Ramadan now, so he won’t.

As I’m thinking about my friends, I sense my resisting, exit-seeking mind standing there with its arms cross waiting for me to remember that it had found me a novel excursion: The cellar, it says, let’s go see what’s down there.

I put on my shoes and grab a flashlight. Work began in the stairwell shortly before lockdown, and with it paused the building feels like an abandoned construction site. Half the lights don’t work. The courtyard door doesn’t shut. Common pigeons are gathering near the garbage bins, as though plotting to take over. On the way to the bakery and the cheese shop earlier today I observed on the cobblestones the courting rituals of pigeons, which reminded me that I’ve forgotten my own. I watched wood pigeons feeding on the budding plane trees, beneath which their beige droppings are distinguishable from the white of their pedestrian cousins. Last night, when I went out for a walk, I saw a couple of ducks waddling across the street without looking either way. And I watched a group of rats playing 3-on-3 basketball around a trash bin. Couldn’t tell which side was winning. I guess they don’t keep score like we do. But living rats is a good sign, because dying rats means that the bubonic plague is here. So vive les rats! Just not so many.

As I suspected, the overhead light isn’t working in the basement. I turn on my flashlight. My storage space is at the end of the corridor—to the left, I remember, number 7. My broken padlock still lies on the ground. I never replaced it. Why bother? I don’t even remember what I ever used this storage space for.

I pull open the door and am reminded: There’s a bicycle in need of repair that I bought during the transportation strike of 1995; wobbly chairs from my previous apartment; a mattress wrapped in a tarp; a broken suitcase that I kept, thinking that I might use it if ever I moved again; the computer box from about 3 laptops ago—the one on which I was going to write a new guidebook. There they were: memories. There it was: junk. Memorable junk… Junk memories. My cave. My additional space. Could my outward traveling, resisting, exit-seeking mind do no better than to send me here? Instead of opening wings, all this journey to the basement has brought me is the promise of things long gone. But there’s no courage in nostalgia, only in throwing things away.

Then I see it: Near the ground there’s a bottle of wine that the thieves missed, or didn’t want. I dust it off and shine the light on it. Chablis premier cru, Vaillons, 2011, Domaine Jean-Marc Brocard.

Just then I hear a sound that seems to say, “Do it now… Do it now.”

I call out, “Hello?”

“Do it now. Do it now.”

“Is someone there? Il y a quelqu’un?”

“Do it now. Do it now.”

Bottle in hand, I run, stumbling against the wall as I rush up to the ground floor, and I keep running for the next two flights in the dusk of the stairwell. Then I slow down. I must have been frightened by the shadow of my own flashlight and the sounds of rats or pigeons. I laugh to myself—at myself. We all need a good, healthy scare every now and then. Several pigeons look drearily at me from outside the stairwell window, biding their time. I knock at the window but they merely step over a few inches as though they’ve just heard a cough.

As if by magic, the light in the stairwell goes on. Approaching the fourth floor I see that my neighbor has come out of her apartment. She must have turned on the light. She has a shopping bag in her hand. Each of us takes a respectful step back.

“Bonjour Madame,” I say.

“Bonjour Monsieur,” she says. “There aren’t many of us left.”

I don’t know which “us” she’s referring to.

I feel a need to justify being out. I hold up the bottle of wine and say, “I’m returning from the cellar, my cave.”

“To your health, then,” she says.

“To the health of us all,” I says, and doing so gives me idea. “Listen,” I say, “I don’t drink alone so maybe you… I can open the bottle and pour you a glass. You don’t have to drink it right here or with me. We have to keep a social distance, so you close your door and drink your glass whenever you want, but this way we’ll share it, in a sense, that is if you drink wine, I don’t know if you do.”

“That’s kind of you,” she says, without indicating her answer.

“Seriously. Chablis 2011, chardonnay.”

She says, “There’s no rush. It can wait.”

Then she wishes me a good end of the day, goes back inside her apartment, and closes the door as if she only came out to turn the light on for me.

I unlock my own door and go inside. I stand against the door. After a few seconds I hear my neighbor go out. I slip off my shoes. I wash my hands. I rinse off the bottle of wine, dry it and place it in the refrigerator. As I return to my living room / office I’m amused by the coincidence that Chablis is in the northwest corner of Burgundy. The train was somewhere near there before my excursion into the cellar. That’s just the momentum I need to get back on track. I reread my opening lines:

Thirty minutes after setting out southeast from Paris by train, you’ll notice the flat landscape begin to flutter. Then swells form. And when those swells rise to hills—hills covered with colza, wheat and barley and crowned with woods, cattle grazing down below—that’s when you know that you’ve entered Burgundy.

I look at my couch. To write or not to write, that is barely the question, for the answer is clear.

I lie down as though I’ve just unpacked my bags from a journey. I think about where I’ve been: I went down to the cellar because the resisting, exit-seeking mind had leaned against the unlocked door of my storage space; downstairs I heard a voice telling me to “do it now”; on the way back up an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor told me that there was no rush, it could wait.

What “it” could wait? What “it” should be done now?

My outward traveling mind and my inward traveling mind start to volley the question back and forth. Their game lulls me to sleep.

When I awaken the sun has dipped behind the buildings across the street. Early evening. How long was I asleep? Where was the sun before my nap? I fade in and out of consciousness. As a child I dreamed of leaping off the hill beside the house and flying, a silent figure over the neighborhood, defying gravity, a solitary victory over the world. But what now could be sweeter than submitting to gravity? It molds me to the couch. I abandon myself to the snug sensation that nothing matters but the comfort of being embraced by gravity. To nap: the great compromise of prisoners. To rest. Not to stand by the window to subjugate myself to alienation but to lie with myself, fading in and out of consciousness. Conscious just enough to feel this delicious gravity-induced satisfaction before sinking back out. Desiring nothing but this warm peace as the sun fades behind the opposite roof. Newtonian satisfaction: the nap: a timeless moment of gravity and of peace. Nothing else matters.

Nothing—but the stomach doesn’t know that. I’m hungry. I sit up. A wide yawn clears my head.

I go to the refrigerator. As I open it, I hear again what I heard in the basement: “Do it now. Do it now.” Immediately, I close it the refrigerator. I see the hill of my childhood home on the door. On the window railing a pigeon with his feather’s puffed is trying to seduce a female: who-rrou, who-rou. Slowly, I open the door again. “Do it now. Do it now.” I know that it’s the sound of the pigeon that I hear, still, the bottle of Chablis seems to be speaking to me. I take it out. “I need to be drunk, now,” it seems to say.

The bottle is telling me that, not me. I do not need to be drunk, and I do not want to be drunk. I want to be lucid as I follow this bottle wherever it will now lead me.

I set on the table the baguette and the cheese that I bought earlier. Two cheeses: a hard goat cheese from Maconnais, on the southern edge of Burgundy, and a soft goat cheese from Tarn, in southwest France.

I open the bottle of wine. I pour myself a glass. Unaccustomed to doing so alone, I imagine that I’m at a wine tasting, better yet a wine pairing.

I hold the glass up to the light, and to my surprise I now see myself driving from Paris to Chablis, in the northwest corner of Burgundy.

I swirl the wine. And I see a chapel surrounded by vineyard.

I inhale the wine. And I see ripe chardonnay grapes on the vines.

I take a mouthful, aerate it and swallow. I see a harvest underway.

Now I remember: I bought this bottle at the Jean-Marc Brocard vineyard during harvest time one September day several years ago. I was with a friend, though I can’t see his face. How strange. You’d think that, confined, you’d remember people, but for the most part you don’t. Your memory is vaguely peopled with people, but they’re ghosts with no distinguishing features, as least as far as the non-essential people are concerned. But who are the essential people? Maybe there are none—all ghosts? What more do I need or want than what I have right here? A nap, a baguette, cheese, a bottle of wine.

The streetlights have come on. The sky is twilight blue, the half-moon waxing or waning, I don’t know which.

I examine the bottle’s label: 2011. I remember visiting Burgundy that year. After the harvest, early autumn, when the grapes in this bottle were little more than juice. I wasn’t in Chablis that time, but further south, in the heart of the Burgundy winegrowing region, the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits growing area.

I pour myself another glass. I try it with the bread and cheese. A fine pairing, especially with the softer goat.

Burgundy. 2011. October. I’d taken the train to Beaune. I was picked up by a Jaguar, a Jag-u-ar, as the driver called it, a deep green Jag-u-ar. Yes, there was a driver, a woman, from company that gives tours in vintage cars. There were two passengers in the back, unknown to me now.

I get the Burgundy map from my desk and spread it on the table. The names of some villages on the map are highlighted in several colors, indicating different trips that I’d taken to the region: Pernard-Vergelesse, Chassagne-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet, Gevrey-Chambertin, Aloxe-Corton, Meursault, Marsannay, Orches, Nuit-Saint-Georges.

Bread, cheese, wine, and I now see myself standing by the entrance of Clos de Vougeot, the former abbey that’s now headquarters of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, the international wine order whose members vow to honor and spread the wine gospel of Burgundy. I stand looking at the abbey-chateau surrounded by vineyards, as though it were a promise land, and dreaming of one day being ritually inducted into the order by men in red and gold robes. Maybe that was from yet another trip, or another dream. It’s not easy to recall things past when your main struggle is projecting yourself into the future.

Wine, bread, cheese, wine.

In October 2011 I was in Burgundy. There was a driver, a woman, and two spectral passengers in the backseat of the Jag-u-ar. We drove into the vineyards. We tasted wines. In the evening I attended my first paulée. P-A-U-L-E accent aigu-E. Paulée, pronounced with a sharp “ay” at the end. But at times like this we revert back to our mother tongue, so I relax my throat, unsharpen the é, and dictate into my phone:

In 2011, in October, in Burgundy, I went to a paulee. A paulee is the opposite of social distancing. It’s bacchanalian, as in Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Traditionally, it was a celebration in Burgundy when a winegrower would honor the back-breaking work of his grape pickers by bringing out and sharing his wine with them to celebrate the end of the grape harvest. The tradition fell by the wayside with the decimation of the vineyards toward the end of the 19th century and was revived in the 1920s, after the First World War and the Influenza Pandemic known as the Spanish Flu had killed countless millions of people around the world. The best known paulee soon became and still is the Paulée de Meursault, the Meursault Paulee—Meursault is a famous winegrowing village in Burgundy (as well as the name of the narrator in Camus’ The Stranger, L’Etranger). Maybe cut that line. Or keep it in—Aujourd’hui, mama est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas—for the French majors among my readership. Where was I?

I stop dictating and pour myself more wine. I eat some bread and cheese. I continue:

The Meursault Paulee is a wine gala with great food that closes the annual Hospices de Beaune wine auction which takes place on the third weekend in November. There are a number of other major paulees in Burgundy in the fall. Internationally there are paulees, often with respect to Burgundy wines. (Or Bourgogne wines, as the regional wine board wants them to be called.) Places in the Loire Valley also now have paulees with their own wines, though a paulee is traditionally associated with Burgundy (Bourgogne).

I stop again. I’m pleased with the balance of my coincidental wine pairing: soft goat cheese and Chablis premier cru Vaillons. Or is any of this coincidental?

2011, Burgundy, October, the night of the Jag-u-ar, I attended a paulee, somewhere near Beaune. In a chateau? There were hundreds of people in the vast banquet hall. I dictate:

A paulee is the Burgundy version of a communal pot-luck dinner where most people bring wine instead of casseroles and pies and where the chefs, at least at the paulee that I attended, have Michelin stars associated with their names and are accompanied by enough sous-chefs to feed a battalion. Great food. But the wine’s the thing. When Burgundy wine producers, wine merchants and wine touring professionals invite you to a BYOB where they’re doing the BYOing, you know that you’re in for a treat. There was no tasting protocol to follow, as I recall. No spittoons. This was purely a sip-and-swallow event. We sat at round banquet tables for 8 or 10 people. Producers, distributors, sellers, friends of producers, distributors, sellers, hotel owners, tour organizers. They’d brought wine with which they had an intimate relationship. That’s what I remember most, the spirit of sharing and generosity by guests bringing a part of themselves; everyone was somehow related to the wine and the terroir, or the climats as they call their vineyard parcels in Burgundy. Six to eight bottles on each table. At least 30 different wines available in the room. And if you listened carefully you could hear each of those bottles saying, “Now. Do it now. I have to be drunk now.”

I laugh at that thought as I pour myself another glass.

Once we tasted the bottles on our own table at the paulee, we set out on collective or individual missions for bottles at other tables. We then exchanged or begged or stole a pour or a bottle from a neighbor, then from their neighbors, then from the neighbors’ neighbors’ neighbors, spreading good cheer along the way like a harmless coronavirus party.

I stop recording and try to remember who was at my table. No one particular comes to mind. Who invited me to that paulee?

From that sharing of things with which one has a personal connection, there develops a joyful, communal atmosphere. As reserved and uptight as the French can be in social settings, it didn’t take long at the paulee for everyone to stand up and do a Burgundy version of the macarena. They waved around white napkins while singing “Je suis fier d’être Bourgignon.” (I’m proud to be a Burgundian.) I stood up with them and sang that I was proud to know a Burgundian.

Yet for the life of me I can’t remember who the Burgundian was that invited me, or sat at my table, or drove me back to the hotel.

I carry my glass to the bookshelf in the living room / office and take down my Burgundy file box. I find nothing in it about the people I was with that weekend. But here’s the tasting list from the paulee of October 2011! On it I noted at the time what wines I’d liked. Apparently, I had a taste for the Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru 2006 Domaine Michel Picard among the whites. And among the reds the Corton Grand Cru 2007 Domaine Rapet struck my fancy, as did the Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2006 Domaine Bertagna.

I won’t say that everyone was wasted, because wine folk don’t like the term wasted. Let’s just say that if the two words “social distancing” are saving us now, the two words that saved us then were “designated driver.”

I remember that fraternal feeling of the paulee, that sense that, good harvest or bad harvest, we were in this together. We were sharing something that we all felt concerned by and connected to. We had all brought something to the table.

But what had I brought to the paulee? How was I connected? Did I know anyone there? Did I speak with anyone? What was I doing there? Who invited me?

I look outside. The street is silent. A man walks a dog. No neighbors can be heard. A few birds call.

I sit at my desk with my glass of wine. It feels like I’m at the end of my article yet I’ve only written three lines: Thirty minutes after setting out southeast from Paris by train, you’ll notice the flat landscape begin to flutter. Then swells form. And when those swells rise to hills—hills covered with colza, wheat and barley and crowned with woods, cattle grazing down below—that’s when you know that you’ve entered Burgundy.

Again, I sense the outward traveling, resisting, exit-seeking mind calling for attention, turning me away from the text. This time it’s drawing me back into the kitchen, to the corner, where bottles of wine accumulate while awaiting an occasion.

Behind the cereal, the rice, the pasta, the onions, the aluminum foil, the plastic wrap and the paper towels, beneath a black table cloth, there are two wine racks with a dozen slots each, nearly full of bottles. I pick them up one by one and read the labels. Each one speaks of a trip I’ve taken or of someone I know or have known: a Bordeaux Clarendelle that was a gift from the producer the day after the fire at Notre-Dame; a Côtes-de-Meuse from Domaine de Muzy, where I stopped at between WWI sites in northeast France; a Cour-Cheverny, bought after a picnic at Domaine des Huards in the Loire Valley with Achmed and Guillaume; a Vin de Merde (it’s real name) that Pierre-Yves brought to dinner one evening having received it himself second hand; a Champagne G. Tribaut from a trip last fall to Hautvillers with Stephanie, which I now remember was also the name of the girl next door from second grade.

Hidden behind the wine racks, I discover other bottles that pre-dated the robbery, bottles that I must have intended to take into the basement but never did: a Châteauneuf-du-Pape Beaurenard 2011, a remnant of several days in Provence in 2013; two Saint Emilion Grands Crus, Château Gaudet 2011 and Château Soutard 2011, from a day in Saint Emilion on my way to Rauzan to visit Sophie and Jean-Stéphane; a forgotten Champagne Krug 2000 that Jean-Pierre brought for my birthday dinner some years ago. Each has a story to tell.

No—my two minds shout in unison—each has a story to share. Together they’ve come up with a plan: When friends feel comfortable gathering again, I’m going to have a paulee.

That’s it! Everyone is going to bring a bottle with which they have a personal connection, a story to share. I’ll invite Madame my neighbor. And Guillaume will come, he’s a great storyteller. And Achmed will be here, he’ll share. I’ll invite Scott, with whom I visited Chablis. And Véronique—that’s who invited me to the paulee in Burgundy! And the baker, who told me today that he’s just became a father. And the cheesemonger who sold me that delicious creamy goat cheese.

And you? Will you come? Get your bottle ready because you’re invited to a paulee. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to have a paulee. I would do it now, but it can wait. For now.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

Share your own bottle story in the comments section below in 300 words or less.

The post Burgundy Memories: The Bottle in the Basement appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

I got to rereading Charles Baudelaire’s poem Enivrez-vous (Get Drunk) recently while preparing a forthcoming text for France Revisited about lockdown and wine. Others have also rediscovered Enivrez-vous during lockdown.

While confined to Château Labastide Orliac, the vineyard that sisters Isabelle and Catherine Orliac own in southwest France, Isabelle was also drawn to the poem. The sisters’ May 2020 newsletter includes the video below (video 1) of Isabelle reciting Enivrez-vous while standing with a glass of red wine among the oak barrels in the château’s cellar. (I interviewed Isabelle Orliac for an article in 2011.)

There are many ways to read the poem. Among them, the jazz-piano-accompanied version (video 2) by Serge Reggiani and a Hollywood reading in English by Dustin Hoffman (video 3).

Each of these is recited in a different context and to a different rhythm.

Further below, you’ll find the text in English (my translation) and in French so that you can read the poem aloud in your own context and to your own rhythm.

Enivrez-vous was first published in book form in a posthumous collection of 1869 entitled Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen) or Petits poèmes en prose (Little Prose Poems). Charles Baudelaire died in 1867.

Legal notice: Drink with moderation. Listen and read to the fullest.

Recitation by Isabelle Orliace in the cellar at Château Labastide Orliac, 2020.

Polydor record version by Serge Reggiani, 1980

Hollywood reading by Dustin Hoffman of a version entitled Be Drunken, addressed to Jack Nicholson, 1994.

Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire (translation by GLKraut)

Always be drunk. That’s it: it’s the only point. So as not to feel the horrible burden of Time that breaks your shoulders and bends you to the earth, get unabatedly drunk.

But with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk.

And if at times, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your bedroom, you awaken, drunkenness already diminished or vanished, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of everything that slips away, of everything that groans, of everything that rolls on, of everything that sings, of everything that speaks, ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will answer you: “It is time to get drunk! So as not to be a martyred slave to Time, get incessantly drunk! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.”

Enivrez-vous
by Charles Baudelaire

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.

Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge, vous répondront: “Il est l’heure de s’enivrer ! Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous sans cesse ! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”

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I don’t thumb text easy enough to answer at length on my phone, so I’ll respond here.

I liked the food. I liked the presentation on the plate. I appreciated the mix of savors. There’s some serious cheffing going on in that kitchen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So back to the beginning.

I walked into the restaurant at 7:45pm, several minutes before my dinner date would arrive, and was given a choice of two tables. I selected the one by the window. Before I sat down I asked the servers, a man and a woman, if the restaurant had a cat. The man said, No. Since he didn’t ask why the question, I told him: Because it smells like a cat lives here. No cat, he said. His negation was no reassurance. I smelled something, something that reminded me of a home with a cat or something furry or litterboxy—not in a long-left-untended sense, but in a musky sense. Since I was one of the first clients in the restaurant it wasn’t someone’s perfume. I would hope not.

I wondered if it was more like hay, thinking that hay has a pleasant smell. Maybe they used hay as a bed for some creative dish, I thought, since I knew in reserving that creativity was on the menu. But no, something was off. Damp hay? I don’t know. My senses kept wanting to call it cat.

I like cats. I used to have one. For a time I was lucky enough to call one my significant other. I took my niece and her friend to the cat café when they visited last year. Cats are fine by me. But I thought it odd that a restaurant with a high ceiling and large panes of window giving out to the square and one wall full of wine bottles should smell like a cat, as it did in this corner.

My friend, a French lawyer, arrived a minute later. I’d texted her the previous day to say that in the time of the coronavirus we should support restaurants and, besides, we hadn’t seen each other for six weeks. She agreed, though in the time of the coronavirus she wouldn’t kiss me when she arrived.

I asked if she smelled a cat. She said, No, maybe, well there’s something, maybe it’s the plant—for our table was near a plant. That might be it, I said, something in the soil, so we moved one table away along the window. (Empty tables abound in the time of coronavirus.)

Moving two yards away didn’t completely eliminate the odor, but my friend and I hadn’t seen each other for some time so we quickly fell into lively catch-up talk, and I forget the cat smell, as I did back in the day when I shared an apartment with the world’s most beautiful, intelligent cat.

I thought of the cat again when the waitress placed some pâté before us, but her gratuitous act was much appreciated and we were hungry. We thanked her. We were in for a modern meal and it began with a welcome slab of tradition.

Twice the waitress returned to ask if we were ready to order the meal or something to drink, and the third time she came over we were. We selected from the 3-course fixed-price menu (49€) and a bottle of Gigondas (48€).

We chatted away, as friends of 30 years do, and the wine arrived. I reached for my glasses in my coat pocket to examine the label, as one pretends one does, and by the time I put them on the waitress had already removed the foil from the top of the bottle and was about to poke the cork with a screw. Now that I could see it, I remarked that the label read 2015 whereas the wine list indicated 2013. I don’t think so, she said, this is all there is. Can you check? I asked. She checked. The menu did indeed indicate 2013, and 2015 was indeed all she had. She claimed not to have noticed before. She asked if I still wanted the bottle.

Now what do I know from 2013 or 2015? What do I know from Gigondas or Domaine du Terme other than that I was planning on visiting wine villages in the southern Rhone Valley next month? But I do know that the staff of a restaurant with a substantial wine list should have something more informative to say than Do you still want the bottle?

I said, If it’s discounted.

She abruptly went to consult with the other server who was behind the bar. He was apparently her higher-up. Together they examined the menu. As they did, my friend asked if I knew the different between 2013 and 2015 in Gigondas. I said that for all I know 2015 was a better year, but given the way the bottle had (not) been presented to us and the way I was asked Do you still want it?, it was the principle of the thing. A restaurant that notes “cuisine & vins gourmands” on its awning and presents a wall full of bottles should have someone who knows how to talk about wine, someone who will show you the label and will be willing to engage, if only to say, I don’t know much about wine but let me ask my colleague if he can help. I don’t use one of those wine label apps, so it was indeed a matter of principle. My friend agreed. She said, Sometimes principle is all we have to go on. That’s a rare thing for a lawyer to acknowledge.

The waitress returned. Apparently Pirouette has principles, too. She said, No, same price, do you want it? (I’m translating; these exchanges were in French but no more extensive than that.)

Maybe I would have a liked a warmer tone; maybe I would have liked to hear that I was being offered a 5€ discount; maybe I would have liked to have the server explain that 2015 was even better than 2013 or how they were different; maybe I expect a restaurant with a substantial wine list to…. I said, No, I’ll take another look at the wine list.

This time I selected a Vacqueyras, a 20-minute bike-ride north of Gigondas, 2016, also Domaine du Terme. At 33€ it happened to be the list’s least expensive red wine from the southern Rhone Valley. I shouldn’t say “happened to be” since I wasn’t now going to select anything priced higher than the 2013/2015 bottle. I may have been shooting myself in the gut with my principle, but there you have it.

This time the male server brought over the bottle. It’s Vacqueyras, he said, but it’s 2017, not 2016. I thought there might be a punchline but none was forthcoming. In the silence that followed he missed his chance to remark, before my dinner date did, that they needed to update their wine list. We’re in the process of changing it, he responded, humorlessly. Is 2017 alright? It’s 80% syrah. And he followed that by looking at the bottle and saying something about body or structure.

I accepted the 2017. What do I know from Vacqueyras? What do I know from 2016/2017? The waiter poured us a sip. It was relatively direct (80% syrah) and relatively adequate. I nodded. He poured more. This wasn’t the coolness of French service as I’ve come to accept and even appreciate it; this was the coldness of appearing to not give a damn. Sheesh! If this had all been done a bit more engagement on the part of the staff, I wouldn’t have suddenly remembered what health officials keep telling us about the coronavirus: “Maintain a social distance.” The staff at Pirouette must think that referred to something other than distance in space.

The waiter then parted, stirring the air, and I was reminded of the cat smell that wasn’t coming from a cat.

Then the food arrived, beginning with “cruncheese” rice balls topped with marinated sea bream and an orange vinaigrette, for one of us, and green asparagus dressed with herb breadcrumbs and accompanied by citrus butter, for the other. Quite good. We liked it from the start. Then came our main courses of crispy pork, butternut puree with aniseed and a coffee mousse, for one of us, and cod covered with buckwheat accompanied by a crepe-size carrot and ginger ravioli, for the other. A pleasure. Chef François-Xavier Ferrol’s studied mix of savors may not be subtle (perhaps subtlety isn’t the aim) but they form an appealing kind of comfort bistronomy, handsomely presented on the plate. Filling portions. Not stellar, but 49€ fine. The wine was so-so, but who cares? We were two friends enjoying each other’s company over dinner in the time of the coronavirus.

My friend and I had agreed that we could dig into each other’s dish with the clean set of silverware that arrived with each course. Yet dessert has a way of making people forget their coronavirus principles. Having licked the last of her pleasing rice pudding with salted butter caramel from her spoon, she forgot that she’d asked for a second spoon (see photo of third course) and promptly stuck the same one into my chocolate ganache, peanut streusel and cocoa sorbet. I pointed out what she’d just done by saying, And to think you wouldn’t kiss me when you came in, to which she blushed as though she’d just impulsively stuck her tongue into my mouth. Take it all, I said—not because I distrusted her germs but because it was my least favorite dish.

My friend went to the rest room while I paid the bill. Then I went to the rest room while she looked at her phone. The rest room was clean enough. The sink is awkwardly placed. I washed my hands thoroughly.

I’d been away from the table for several minutes and as I returned I again picked up the scent of something cat-like or otherwise furry or litterboxy. It was like when I lived with a cat and would go down to get the mail then return to the apartment. Hmm, I’d think, a cat lives here. Whatever the odor was by the window at Pirouette, and however subjectively I’ve interpreted the smell, there it was. We then left the restaurant.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 would I recommend Pirouette?

Well, everyone deserves a break. Especially these days. There’s too much distrust, too much aggression, too many insistent points of view, too much judging going on—even too many principles. Shouldn’t the main principle be to help keep ourselves and each other healthy and to simply enjoy each other’s company while we’re together because you never know whom you’ll be stuck with in quarantine? So why not recommend François-Xavier Ferrol’s cuisine and forget about the staff’s “social distance,” their cold-shoulder wine oops, and that odor? Why not an 8 then, or a 7?

Because at this price I’d like a more graceful Pirouette, and because mutual support is a two-way street, and because there are (correction: will be) many other worthwhile options in Paris, and because you asked: 5.

Pirouette
5 rue Mondétour, 1st arr. Metro Les Halles. 01 40 26 47 81.
Open Monday-Saturday, noon-2pm and 7:30-10pm.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Pirouette in the Time of the Coronavirus appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Meanwhile, here in France, Americans celebrating Thanksgiving typically, even traditionally, enjoy their fresh French turkey with some fine French terroir in their selection of wine—make that wines, plural, since a long meal calls for more than one. So while the information below will especially serve Americans celebrating in France, don’t be afraid to try this back in the homeland or elsewhere abroad on this or any turkey day.

There are a multitude of approaches to turkey, from roasting to smoking to frying, and plenty of stuffing recipes that, when combined, can influence your wine pairing. But on average the range of French pinot noirs, with its great and subtle variety from light to medium to full body, lends itself to roast turkey pairing. Thoughts of pinot noir then leads us primarily to the wines of Burgundy and Champagne (with all due respect to Alsace and to the Loire Valley’s Sancerre and Manetou-Salon).

So I asked the pros promoting the wines of Champagne and Burgundy what they recommended to accompany our traditional American meal.

The Champagne Bureau USA was well-prepared for the question and supplied the following chart:

The Burgundy Wine Bureau (BIVB) put some thought to the question and sent the following suggestions:

As an aperitif, Burgundy’s bubbly, Crémant de Bourgogne, either a blanc de blancs for its lightness and fitness or a blanc de noirs for a more complex opening to your thankful gathering.

For your stuffed turkey with cranberry sauce, something in the order of a Morey-Saint-Denis, a Mercurey, a Savigny-les-Beaune Premier Cru or a Ladoix.

Then, come dessert, to accompany your pumpkin pie or your pecan pie (as long as they aren’t overwhelmingly sweet), a white (chardonnay) Meurault or Marsannay.

So many ways to give thanks.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

The post French Wines for an American Thanksgiving appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

You’re sitting at your desk 24 hours after the outset of the fire at Notre-Dame after being up much of the previous night, first having dinner with a friend, then standing in silence on Ile Saint Louis watching the blaze peter out, then speaking and texting with family and friends six time zones away, then having a Skype interview with NBC 10 Philadelphia during which you’re asked to describe how you feel, and you’re thinking you should stay in for the evening to work up a text on the subject of the monumental blaze for your website when you remember that you have an invitation stating that Prince Robert of Luxembourg, owner of Château Haut-Brion, would be pleased to have you attend that evening at a secret location in Paris the celebration of the new vintage and branding of Clarendelle wines, and you think WTF, you’re in Paris, you have the rest of your life to describe your relation to a monument that you’ve been inside a thousand times and seen 10,000 times from a distance, where you’ve taken hundreds of visitors of all ages and where twice you lit a candle, furthermore you’ve already posted a picture on Facebook and gotten dozens of likes, loves and teary-faces, and Notre-Dame is going to be alright.

So you take a shower and get dressed and put on your father’s old cap and take the metro a few stations then walk toward the secret location that was announced on the second invitation (the first invitation having said that Prince Robert de Luxembourg’s people will give you the address of the secret location if you accept that first invitation to receive the second), 13 rue de Sévigné, in the Marais.

Inspired by Belmondo

Passing the National Archives along Rue des Francs Bourgeois you sense that someone is walking beside but you but don’t pay attention because an important thought whips through your head about Notre-Dame and you stop to set it down in your notebook. Walking again you’re aware that a man is moving alongside you at the same pace and he may or may not be the person who was walking beside you before but you don’t look over because another brilliant thought about Notre-Dame is now whispering in your ear, so you stop to write it down.

Walking again you glance over to see the man, a young man, is now alongside you again and you turn a second time to look at him curiously in the eye and he looks at you boldly in the eye and says that he likes your look, a lot, and that it reminds him of Belmondo in some Belmondo movie that you’ve never seen, and his smile invites you to slow down to absorb this as an enormous compliment, and since you’re 60 and he’s, what?, 25?, and really just looks like a sturdy good-looking kid, perhaps with some Asian blood, who happens to be a fan of Belmondo in that Belmondo movie, you say, both of your still walking, Thank you, I’ve never heard that before, it must be the cap. Really, I mean it, sincerely, that’s a great look, he says, so relaxed in his offering complimentary gift, so pleasantly, naturally, confidently, flatteringly present there alongside you that you can only think to thank him again as you walk abreast.

He now asks if you’re a journalist, which is such a surprisingly specific question that you stop and tell him the truth: Sort of, you say, sometimes. How did you know? Because you kept stopping to write something down, he says with clarity and ease and you ask if he’s a journalist too and he replies No, I’m a poor student. You pretend to not pick up on the word “poor” and ask if he’s studying journalism, to which he replies No, applied mathematics and social sciences, and you’re incredulous that neither the gods, nor the prophets nor the saints speak with such bright-brown-eyed, round-shouldered assurance as this young man with dense jet black hair who now says, again, that he really likes your look with that cap. You reply that you need it so that your bald head won’t get cold whereas he certainly doesn’t have to wear anything to get by, and in saying so you resist reaching out to touch his perfectly healthy, vibrant black hair because this isn’t just any student, this is a poor student, and the secret location that you’re going to is in the Marais.

You continue to walk together, you asking about applied mathematics (Is that as difficult as it sounds? In fact I’m not starting until September. Easy then.), he asking about journalism (What are you writing about? Notre-Dame. I could have guessed.), until he says he’s turning right on Rue Vieille du Temple and, slowing down, you bid each other a good evening, after which you’re nearly disappointed that he didn’t actually show you his gigolo card so that you don’t have to wonder as you walk on, resisting the urge to look back, if you’ve just missed out on the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Inspired by Terror

Nevertheless, you feel flattered, and happy – how often does someone compliment you out of the Paris sunset blue like that – and spring is definitely in the air – and Notre-Dame, Notre-fucking-Dame, well, it’s not like after the November 2015 terrorist attack where 24 hours later you could still hear the echo of gunshot at the end of your street and had to deal with fear. Everything’s going to be alright here – everything is alright. Not only that, but the fire will be a blessing for tourism, money is already being promised by obscene millions, the French Catholic Church is bathing in a new identity as a survivor, French firemen are being praised in terms normally reserved for describing their pectorals and buttocks when their annual semi-nude calendar comes out, and everyone knows that Notre-Dame was in need of a structural makeover anyway.

You remember when in the wake of the terrorist attack NBC then MSNBC called for an interview, but you didn’t get much airtime because you didn’t respond on cue with the sought-after soundbites of tears, despair, defiance and hope. You were simply there, nearby, thinking, looking forward to dinner with friends. And the Catholic publication that called some time later because they wanted to know how someone like you, living in a martyred neighborhood, felt about the neighborhood after the attack, and what you felt by then was that everything was going to be alright, really, now that same publication has called again this afternoon to ask how you felt when you heard that Notre-Dame wouldn’t collapse from the fire and you may have again missed the mark because you told the journalist that you never believed that it was going to fall, that yes you were concerned that the rose windows might come crashing, which would have been the sad indeed, but that you never doubted that the structure would stand because there it stood, growing in international stature as you watched its crown of fire diminish in the night.

Inspired by Rejection

And here you are walking with your pseudo Belmondo look along Rue des Francs Bourgeois without imagining terrorists with semi-automatics rounding the corner, and what a lovely evening it is, the light of the setting sky playing with the stone of the Carnavalet Museum to the left and the Paris Historical Library to the right, Place des Vosges in the distance, with the promise of a wine launch party at a no-longer secret location on Rue de Sévigné, where you’ve arranged to meet an acquaintance who asked you last week to be her plus one – though you told her that you couldn’t be her plus one because you received your own invitation (which specifically denied the possibility of you bringing a plus one) and will have your own name on the guest list.

Except that once you’ve nodded your way past the bouncer with a nonchalant “I was invited,” the model-tall young woman at the guest-list desk asks for your first name and you mistakenly give her your last name because the last time you were at a party with a list alphabetized by first names was in the third grade, but your last name isn’t there so you redirect her finger by giving her your first name (realizing that it’s only natural that a Prince Robert of Luxembourg event would alphabetize by first names since he probably shuns any soirée where his name might be listed under L) and you find that neither your first name nor your last name, nor, just to case, your middle name, is on the list, leading the stylish guardian of said list to ask Who invited you? The PR rep from New York, you reply, after which she raises the bar and asks for his name, which you don’t remember because you’d never heard of him until he sent you the first invitation to suss out your interest in attending the soirée at the secret location that was then revealed in the second invitation accompanied by the joyful note That’s wonderful news that you will be able to join.

You now understand why there was no “us” at the end of that phrase, because when you ask to speak with the PR rep from New York you discover that he’s not there express directly how he feels about your not yet being able to join anyone. You look on your phone to retrieve his name from one of his messages but can’t find any, so you tell the tall guardian of the list that you’re here for Prince Robert of Luxembourg’s wine launch party, to which she replies from a height undoubtedly accentuated by heels that you’ll understand that this is an exclusive, private party and she can only let in those who are on the list.

Actually, you’re inside the party already and can see nearly the full scope of the place, and while she’s checking the name of someone who’s arrived behind you, you examine the loose group of about 50 people standing in pairs or threesomes, wine glasses in hand, talking and drinking with no apparent interest, and you sense that whatever list these people are on it is neither an A nor even a B list, but how could they be since you were invited?, that with the exception of a 4- or 5-piece band playing a worldwide hit from the 80s, meaning some effort was put into planning this event, the soirée doesn’t feel the least bit exclusive, and that the location isn’t so much secret as rented, meaning that all that’s left of the point guard’s original description is “private,” which isn’t a very enticing adjective in and of itself since it could just as easily be attached to “toilette” or “Idaho” as it could “soirée.” So you politely wait until she looks down at you again then say that you were invited as an American journalist by the PR rep in New York whose name you don’t remember but it’s really not that important so if she’d like you to leave you will, at which point she says Just a moment and goes to get someone from the sparse crowd because she knows as well as you do that the only person who would want to crash this party is an alcoholic and she really just wants you to produce a name and get on with it.

Inspired by Acceptance

The woman who now approaches you is a midsize brunette with glasses and a non-smile, meaning that she can only be the Paris PR rep. You expect her to ask your name but instead she asks who invited you, to which you reply Prince Robert of Luxembourg through his NY PR rep whose name you can’t remember, which leads her to say that she can’t let you in without knowing that person’s name because you must understand that this is a private party. At least she’s dropped the pretense of it being “exclusive.”

You have three choices: you can pull an Oprah (listed under O?) after she’s been told that a Hermès handbag wouldn’t go with her skin color and let your (79) followers know that you’ve been judged by the way you look (apparently not enough like Belmondo in that Belmondo movie), which would likely lead to you losing several of your followers who would accuse you of being insensitive to racism or, worse, of comparing your feelings to Oprah’s; you can leave with your ego intact because you never bring your ego to such events and really don’t care whether or not you’re allowed in other than the fact that you came all this way, which would lead to several sub-choices as to what to do if you do leave—walk over to view of the carcass of Notre-Dame, go to a bar, seek out the math student?; or you can search through your email on your phone again to find the PR guy’s name, which you do because, what the hell, it’s in there somewhere and you’re just one name-drop away from a glass of wine and some canapés.

Eventually you find it, you show the guy’s email signature to the beautiful giant who goes to retrieve the Paris PR chick, who mildly apologizes in a mildly annoying way by saying You understand we just needed a name because this is a private party, which lets you know that she’s not the boss at the agency because any boss would at that point consider the matter closed and lead you graciously to the bar instead of immediately disappearing into the crowd – or trying to but the crowd is too thin to disappear into – and as she walks away you think you would have had an easier time getting admitted to a press conference about the stability of Notre-Dame.

Inspired by Haut-Brion

You see another sort-of journalist you sometime run into at events involving wine and food and go over to say hello, followed by a handshake and an exchange of ça-vas, and you tell him that you see from his recent articles that he’s all over the place, in a good way, which he accepts as a compliment without offering in return anything but a look that tells you either that you never really knew each other so no need getting too chummy now or that he’s been hitting on the girl standing next to him and you’re clouding his image, probably both, so you go to the bar and ask for a glass of one of the six Clarendelle wines “inspired by Haut-Brion” on tap that evening, the merlot.

Prince Robert of Luxembourg is nowhere to be seen, not that you’d recognize him, but if he were here you’d surely notice someone fawning over him, yet no one appears to be fawning over anyone, let alone the wine. Everyone has a glass in hand, but no one is explaining it or examining it or discussing it, as the band now plays something hummable from the 90s that sounds no different from their take on the 80s. You stand among the others like extras on the set waiting for the stars to arrive, but it’s clear that they won’t be arriving because this is the party. The event is a reflection of the merlot itself: well-groomed, pleasant enough, needing something more than flower-topped canapés, sans plus, but here you are, not disappointed just hoping to catch someone’s eye so as to share a moment.

You reach for a canapé on a table beside a women standing alone and ask which wine she’s tasting. She looks at her glass as though surprised that she has one, says The bordeaux, then gazes off into the distance though the room is too small to have much distance to gaze off at, and you realize that your Belmondo look from that Belmondo movie is not having the same effect on her as it did on the young man on the street. Or would Belmondo try harder? If you had the nerve you’d ask if she’s a journalist then tell her that you’re a poor student in applied mathematics and social sciences, and you laugh at your own spinelessly unspoken humor, which makes her walk away.

Inspired by Mourning

You carry your glass to a room that you couldn’t see earlier from the guest-list desk and a woman sitting on the couch in there waves at you. It’s the acquaintance who’d asked you to be her plus one, whom you’d forgotten about and whose name you should have dropped from the get-go. You didn’t see me when you came in a while ago, she says, as you faites la bise, and you tell her about the trouble you had getting into the exclusive private party at the secret location. You mean here? she says, that’s strange, but it’s good that they know you now, you’ll want to be on their good side. Contemplating that you reach toward the plate of flower-topped canapés that’s just been placed on the coffee table before you but a young woman stops you with a shark’s smile so that she can take a picture before you destroy the plate’s symmetry, leading you to conclude that you’ve either just taken your first steps into being initiated among the Illuminati or this is a primer event for influencers with under a thousand followers.

You and your non-plus-one talk a bit about Notre-Dame, and she tells you that she couldn’t bear to look at it burning and that she doesn’t want to drop a bombshell on you but her father died the other day, but it’s okay, I mean it’s not okay, but he died, I’m here, he was 87, it’s alright, I’m glad I came out. You sympathize and let her know that you know it’s tough and that it’s good she came out this evening, you’re glad to see her, to have a drink together. You’re engaging without being intimate, and she understands that her sadness is her sadness, not yours, and you’re cool with letting her talk about it if she wants or not talk about it if she doesn’t want, and when she says that she visited Notre-Dame just the other day after learning that her father had died because he was Catholic, you almost put your arm around her but instead say It’s good you did that. A pause follows, and after a moment you ask which wine she’s been drinking and she looks at her nearly empty glass and says the Saint Emilion, it’s quite good, and you say you’re going to try some and would she want anything while you’re at the bar and she says she’d like to try the rosé, would you mind getting her a glass.

Inspired by More Wine

In the short line at the bar you try to have two conversations about the wine but neither the man ahead of you nor the woman behind seems interested. You wonder who these people are but the answer is clear: they’re people just like you who showed up because they were invited, and you further wonder if maybe more beautiful people were due to show up but thought it inappropriate to go to a wine tasting while Notre-Dame smolders, but still, why is no one interested in communication even if they don’t pick up on your Belmondo look?

You return to the mourner and hand her the glass of rosé, for which she thanks you, and the two of you have an insightful conversation about the wine and food and journalism/influencer business—yours, hers, theirs. The two of you have a good laugh—well, you laugh, she’s not really in the mood—about the tagline “inspired by Haut-Brion” on each of the Clarendelle wines because it’s such a ballsy way of saying “the producer of this wine owns Haut-Brion, one of the world’s most prestigious wine châteaux, so consider yourself lucky to get this close to the real thing,” but what the hell, it’ll surely work in wine marketing among a certain set, and the Saint Emilion really is quite decent, nearly elegant, just trying too hard to be something it’s not – Haut-Brion, for example. But what do you know? The rosé is quite nice, she remarks, she who has had Haut-Brion before.

Eventually you both get up to go to the bar to try the sweet “amberwine,” grabbing canapés along the way, and, new glass in hand, your drinking companion is thoughtful enough to introduce you to a friendly member of the Paris PR team who says how pleased she is that you could come, asks for your card and, unaware that you’ve already met her less welcoming colleague, re-introduces you to the midsize brunette who still thinks that it’s a good idea to half-apologize for not letting you in immediately because it’s a private party. The amberwine is pleasingly sweet and smooth, something to enjoy with friends rather than the PR team, so you and your soirée companion return to the other room and take a seat. Dessert canapés are promptly set before you.

You talk some more about Notre-Dame, and you tell her about your interviews with NBC 10 Philadelphia and the Catholic publication and remark that if you’d only learn to express sadness, fear, anger, despair or hope on cue you might get more airtime and print space, and she says, Well, men aren’t very good with emotion, and you say, No, that’s not it, they all want you to say how you feel but never how you relate, who are you with respect to this?, what is this with respect to you?, isn’t that the question? Besides, we live in Paris, where everything’s going to be alright, and you both take a final sip of your smooth amberwine.

As you’re leaving, the friendly half of the PR team practically dances over to tell you both how glad she is that you could come—if there were more people here with her enthusiasm it might have felt more like a party—and gives you “a little gift” which is actually quite generous: a box of three bottles of Clarendelle wine inspired by Haut-Brion. It feels like a first key to a series of locks that will eventually lead you to drinking Haut-Brion (inspired by itself) from a holy grail saved from the fire at Notre-Dame.

Once outside you say good-bye to your acquaintance-cum-friend, adding a final word of sympathy and expressing hope to see each other again soon, with a bise.

Inspired by Nudity

Alone on Rue de Sévigné you consider the various paths home. If you weren’t carrying a box of wine you’d go over to see Notre-Dame, a 10-minute walk from there, but heavy gift in hand you elect to return the same way you came, along Rue des Francs Bourgeois toward the Rambuteau metro, and when you arrive at the corner of the Carnavalet Museum and the Paris Historical Library, one of the most expressive corners of the Marais, you notice coming in the opposite direction, an old acquaintance whom you haven’t seen in years.

Hey, it’s been a while, you tell each other, and you faites la bise and ask each other what you’ve been up to this evening, and you tell him that that you’ve just come from private party at a secret location nearby and he says that he’s just had dinner with one of his nude models, because it turns out that he no longer runs an art gallery but is a photographer particularly inspired by nudity and it turns out that you are too, just not as a photographer.

You were introduced a long time ago by a mutual friend because he’s American, you’re American, he runs an art gallery, you work in tourism, but you’ve probably only met four or five times, when he invited you to an opening at the gallery or, as here, by accident in the street, so you never really knew each other, yet you find yourselves chatting away like old friends catching up after many years. For 45 minutes you swap stories at the corner when he suddenly says, You look great in that light, can I take your picture?, don’t move, and you don’t move, except to follow his instructions to face that way, now turn your eyes to me, now hold it, hold it, I’m waiting for the rabbi to get closer, he looks like you, don’t turn to him, hold it, stay with me, hold it, great!

You ask him to send you the picture so that you can see if you look more like Belmondo in that Belmondo movie or like a rabbi in this Marais street, and you talk some more under the Paris light at the picture-perfect corner of Rue Pavée and Rue des Francs Bourgeois, eventually exchanging phone numbers and promises to get together soon, maybe do a photo shoot, ending with a bise.

Inspired by Home

As you reach Rue des Archives you see coming up the street the number 75 bus which can carry you home, so you hail it down at the stop and hop on, say bonsoir to the bus driver, ding your Navigo, slide into a seat by the window and reach for your phone to check the feed but don’t take it out because what more do you need from the world right now?, and WTF, you live in Paris, you’ve been told you look like Belmondo, you’ve been told you look like a rabbi, you’ve been given three bottles of Clarendelle wine, you might someday pose in the nude (again), you aren’t in mourning, Notre-Dame is going to be alright, you’re headed home, and if someone were to ask how you feel right now you’d say Inspired.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Still Life in Paris, Inspired by Notre-Dame appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

From time to time a winegrowing area will flex its viney muscle and, claiming distinctiveness, seek to untether itself from broader semi-generic wines in a region.

Vézelay, a Burgundy village otherwise known as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the latest to make a name for itself. In the fall of 2017 Vezelay was officially granted permission to call its dry chardonnays “Vézelay” rather than the broader “Bourgogne [Burgundy] Vézelay.” It’s a subtle but proud distinction that allows its producers to affirm and refine their wines’ particularity compared with other white burgundies.

In France, permission to bear a village label comes from the INAO, the National Institute of Appellations of Origin, which is responsible for the implementation of policy on official signs of identification of the origin and quality of agricultural and food products.

From now on, Vézelay, like Twiggy, Cher, Madonna, Beyoncé, Moby, Ice-T, Oprah and Voltaire, needs no other qualifier to its name to make a statement.

The last Burgundy village to rise to appellation (AOC) status was Irancy, in 1999, for its rough-edged pinot noir produced 22 miles north of Vézelay. Now it’s the turn for chardonnay, the other illustrious grape of Burgundy wines, to get honored as Vezelay comes of age and out from the long shadow of white Burgundy.

The first AOC Vezelay bottles will appear on wine shop shelves in the fall of 2018. That’s just in time for the best launch party that a Burgundy village can have, as Vézelay will host the region’s annual Saint Vincent Tournante wine festival over the weekend of January 26 and 27, 2019.

Each year the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, the venerable and folkloric wine fraternity of Burgundy wine enthusiasts (and of much else Burgundy), selects a different Burgundy wine village to host the event. That village then shares the fermented fruit of its labor in honor of Vincent, a patron saint of winegrowers. Vézelay was awarded the 2019 slot when Aloxe-Corton and Pernand-Vergelesses, which historically host the event together, backed out due to a series of small harvests that left them low on party stock. January may not be the most beautiful time for a stroll in the vineyards, but Saint Vincent Tournante is one of France’s premier wine parades. (The January 2020 event will likely be held in Gevrey-Chambertin, the Côte de Nuits village whose grand cru reputation needs no introduction to fans of French wines and to visitors to Burgundy.)

Vezelay Abbey

Its hosting of Saint Vincent Tournante makes 2019 a double reason for Vézelay pride since that also marks the 40th anniversary of the listing of its 12th-century basilica and its dramatic hilltop presence as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Benedictine abbey of Vézelay was founded in the 9th century and eventually acquired the supposed relics of Saint Mary Magdalene, leading to the church being rededicated in her name in the 11th century. Miracles were attributed to the relics, pilgrims flocked in increasing numbers, and the church became an important point of departure along Saint James’s Way. The church, rebuilt following a deadly fire in 1120, is “a masterpiece of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture,” to quote the UNESCO listing. The perfect setting, then, for Saint Bernard to preach the Second Crusade in 1146 and for Richard the Lion-Hearted and Philip II Augustus to set off in bromance for the Third Crusade in 1190.

With all that communion going on, as well as the thirst of the Court of Burgundy, there was much need for wine, and vineyards flourished around medieval Vézelay.

(The Vezelay Tourist Office provides information about visiting the abbey, the village and the surrounding villages and vineyards, including Vezelay wine tasting.)

The appellation and the terroir

But Vézelay’s long winemaking history, dating to Roman times, dried up with the phylloxera epidemic that hit the area in 1884 and soon decimated the vines. Several acres of vines were later replanted for local consumption, but it wasn’t until the 1970s, when a handful of producers, with support from some elected officials, made a concerted effort to relaunch local wine production with the pinot noir and especially chardonnay varietals that are so at home in Burgundy. Their efforts gradually bore fruit, and in 1988 the area’s chardonnay production was authorized to bear the Bougogne/Burgundy appellation. In 1997 that gave way to the appellation Bourgogne Vezelay. Consecration has now come with the AOC Vezelay designation, which recognizes the distinctiveness of these chardonnays compared with others in the region.

Twenty-five producers, including ten associated with a cooperative, currently work 70 hectares (173 acres) of chardonnay vines. That leaves plenty of room for growth since the new appellation delimits a zone covering 256 hectares (633 acres).

AOC Vézelay defines a dry white wine produced from the chardonnay B varietal. In granting it an appellation in its own right, INAO recognizes it as a well-defined and independent geographical entity within Burgundy. The outline of the Vézelay winegrowing zone lies in the Cure Valley within the municipalities of Asquins, Saint-Père, Tharoiseau and Vézelay in Burgundy’s Yonne department or subregion. Its clayey marly limestone soils are situated on southern and southeastern slopes on the edge Morvan National Regional Park and distinct from Burgundy’s Chabliens/Auxerrois vineyards, also in Yonne, to the north and its Côte d’Or vineyards to the southeast.

Having a village appellation does not mean that a wine is exceptional but rather that it is distinct from neighboring wines and follows certain specifications. Consequently, it presents a specificity in the marketplace that is up to its producers and distributors to exploit. In and of itself, it is not a gauge of quality with respect non-village wines, though a village appellation is presumably not plonk. Of course there is still room for varying tastes and qualities within the production area.

Vézelay, or at least the Bourgogne Vézelay currently on the market, might best be considered a fresh, unpretentious dry aperitif with floral, citrus and mineral notes. You can always keep pouring it beyond the aperitif to accompany a starter, if you like, or to finish with some soft cow’s milk cheese. See AOC Vézelay’s description by the Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB).

Bourgogne Vézelay can already be found in some U.S. and British wine markets, so AOC Vézelay will certainly follow suit and perhaps grow as the vineyards and their “brand” reputation do. In France, bottles of Bourgogne Vézelay sell in shops in the 10-15€ range for the most part. The new village appellation and accompanying marketing efforts may well lift prices. (Keep in mind, we are not in Chablis Grand Cru territory here.)

For a lesson in English of the geography of Burgundy appellations (pre-AOC Vezelay), south to north, see this video from the Bourgogne Wine Board.

Vezelay in Montmartre

A group of Vézelay winegrowers recently came to Paris to speak of the new appellation at an event at the La Bonne Franquette, a restaurant located just up the street the vineyard of Montmartre. La Bonne Franquette is also an institution of Montmartre folklore, hence the presence of President of the Republic of Montmartre in the photo below. He is seen holding a bottle of Montmartre wine, as is Patrick Frashboud, La Bonne Franquette’s owner. The other bottles held are among the last of the Bourgogne Vézelay chardonnay production.

Left to right, Patrick Fracheboud, owner of La Bonne Franquette; Matthieu Woillez, Domaine La Croix Montjoie; Valentin Montanet, Domaine La Cadette; Elise Villiers, Domaine Elise Villiers; Delphine Dupont, Domaine Dupont; Patrick Bringer, Domaine Les Faverelle; Alain Coquard, President of the Republic of Montmartre; Brigitte Guéret, Cave Henry de Vézelay, the Vezelay wine cooperative; Christine Ranunkel, whose father was an elected official instrumental in pushing for the replanting the vineyards around Vezelay in the 1960s and 70s; Isabelle Garnier, Cave Henry de Vézelay.

© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Vézelay: A Chardonnay Emerges from the Shadow of Broader Burgundy Wine appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.