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The leaves have mostly fallen from the vines. Here and there small bunches of grapes, unripe at harvest time, remain. Sweet now but abandoned, they are the remnants of the pinots—noirs and meuniers—fermenting in vats of Olivier Belin’s champagne installation outside Chateau-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris in the Marne Valley.

Further up the valley, the river flows into the heart of the champagne-growing area, past the town of Epernay and the Mountain of Reims. That’s the area that most travelers think of when considering a champagne wine excursion. Belin’s vineyards don’t lie within the border of the historic Champagne region, rather in historic Picardy, but the appellation for the world’s most evocative sparkling wine extends beyond the historic borders.

The western portion of the Marne Valley is primarily pinot meunier territory, the lesser known of the three major grapes of the overall champagne winegrowing zone. Meunier represents about one third of the wine that is assembled in various proportions into making champagne. It is often described as the workhorse grape, pulling the plow to add body for the more refined chardonnay (30% of the growing area) and the more noble and familiar pinot, noir (38% of the growing area). To hear some producers in the Reims-Epernay area speak of pinot meunier you’d think that they were embarrass to be pressing it at all, though press it they do. Given little respect as a grape on its own, meunier is the Rodney Dangerfield of champagne grapes.

Yet in this portion of the Marne Valley, within 10 miles east and southwest of the town of Chateau-Thierry, where 70% of the vines are pinot meunier, meunier holds its head high. Rather, its growers hold their heads high. Among them are the 40 grower-producers that form an association of Marne Valley winegrowers called the Association des Ambassadeurs du Terroir et du Tourisme en Vallée de la Marne, of which Belin is co-president.

“We are artisan winegrowers,” says Belin. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re tinkerers. Our cellars aren’t necessarily beautiful but it’s the work of the winegrower that one visits here.”

Indeed, this not zone of the sprawling chalk cellars, some of them medieval, even Roman quarries, as one can visit in the city of Reims. This is not the zone of vast underground installations as found in Epernay. This is not a zone of grand cru and premier cru vineyards. For the few (if growing number of) American visitors to this portion of the Marne Valley, the Chateau-Thierry area is less known for champagne than for the WWI battleground of Belleau Wood and the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery beside it. A tremendous American Monument overlooks the point in the valley where the German thrust of 1918 was stopped. The monument also overlooks a slope of champagne vineyard. So a taste of champagne or a deeper initiation into sparkling wine can be combined with war touring in the area.

Fact and figures about Champagne production and consumption

For the American consumer, selecting a champagne comes down to considering the labels of four or five brands, perhaps a few more at your more Francophile wine shop. Yet the champagne winegrowing region is home to 15,800 grape growers and 12,000 brand names. Only a handful of brands, those with large advertising budgets, reach most states of the union, though over the past decade medium and small houses and grower-producers have slowly been making their way into major markets.

More than half (52%) of all champagne is consumed in France. That doesn’t mean that the French are more festive than others, rather that champagne isn’t reserved for festivity in France but also serves as an aperitif at many gatherings, both casual and formal, social and festive. While bottles are available in a wide price range, there are plenty of worthy champagne available at under 30€, including a significant direct producer-to-consumer market offering good value bubbly for under 20€, as is the case of many of the champagne produced in the Marne Valley.

Even in France Marne Valley champagne is little known. Most people are unaware that the growing area extend this close to Paris, this close to brie cheese territory. Nevertheless, some of the grapes from these vineyards go into well-known labels. Belin, for example, sells a portion of his harvest to négotiants manupulants who buys grapes, juice or wine to make champagne on their own premises that they then market under their own label. All of the major champagne houses work that way. They may own some vineyards but need far more grapes than their own can provide.

Belin himself is a récoltant manipulant or grower-producer, meaning that he makes champagne on his own premises from the grapes of his own vineyards and under his own label.

The third major type of player in the wine business is the cooperatives, which produce champagne collectively, then sell them under a collective or individual label. There exist in the growing region 320 champagne houses and 39 cooperatives along with an astounding 4461 grower-producers, according to the Comité Champagne, the champagne trade association.

Last year, the U.S. ranked second in champagne’s export market (20.5 million bottles) after the U.K. (34.2 million) and before Germany and Japan (just under 12 million). Meanwhile, there are currently about 1.4 billion bottles in storage in the region.

Those are impressive numbers, but the most telling indicator of the difference between the French and the export markets is that in France 43% of champagnes bottles sold are produced by grower-producers or cooperatives whereas in the export market only 13% comes from those players. In other words, you’ll likely need to travel to discover them.

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin

As is often the case with small producers, Belin’s father and grandfather were grape farmers, selling their crop to others. His father, Gérard, then began selling champagne through a cooperative before producing champagne from his own grapes, under his own name. Having trained as an oenologist, Olivier began making wine with his father in 1997: tending the vines, harvesting and pressing, assembling wines, dosing sugar. He took firm hold on the reins of the business about five years ago while he continues to consult his father for his opinion whether in his vineyards or in the cellar. The label of Champagne Belin indicates both names. Olivier’s wife Katty is also involved in the family business.

Olivier Belin’s grandparents owned four hectares (just under 10 acres), to which his parents added two more. Belin now produces about 40,000 bottles per year, 60% of which he sells directly to consumers. The average grower-producer in the area makes about 20,000 bottles per year. Altogether the association’s members produce about one million bottles per year. That’s a drop in the champagne bucket consider that 310 million bottles were sold in 2015 for the entire winegrowing region. (Overall, Marne Valley vineyards represent about 10% of the overall champagne vineyard zone.).

With a hectare of champagne-grape vineyard now selling for 1-1.2 million euros, grape growers may be sitting on a gold mine, but it isn’t land wealth that one encounters in the area, rather the work and passion of these grower-producers.

To visit Belin’s installations and taste his sparkling wines in his little tasting room is to glimpse the passion of an artisan involved in his product from start to finish and from tradition to renewal. It’s the opportunity to understand the choices that winegrowers make in producing their product range. Belin, for example, appreciates the use of some oak barrel aging in his assembly. The men and women in the winegrowers association that Belin co-presides may not be tinkerers, but in encountering several of them it becomes clear that they enjoy the occasional risk of the fiddling with their grape juice, such as to create “micro-cuvées” of only a few thousand bottles.

Belin’s champagnes and those of many other winegrowers in the Marne Valley are proof that proper champagnes for celebration or for a friendly aperitif can be found for under 22€. However, it isn’t so much the price of champagne that makes visiting these local worthwhile (though Paris residents might want to take the opportunity to stock up) but the opportunity to discover the humanity behind the production of a world’s most famous sparkling wine.

Furthermore, there’s a fascinating diversity of champagnes produced in the Marne Valley, within their natural reliance on pinot meunier. On a daytrip from Paris—and certainly one can stay longer—the wise wine traveler will visit two or three winegrowers over the course of the day or the afternoon (if combined with war touring) to appreciate the diversity of approaches in the area.

Champagne Marteaux

A bench on the hill above the village of Azy-sur-Marne, four miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, offers a view of the amphitheater of fields surrounding the village. This one of the prettiest views in the valley, though few come this way. It isn’t the view that might lead a traveler here so much as a visit to winegrower Olivier Marteaux.

Previously, polyculture was a way of in the area; farming meant wheat, corn and beets. Those crops are still grown in the area but vineyards is what one most notices when driving through the valley.

Olivier Marteaux’s ancestors were polyculture farmers until the 1950s. His grandfather then developed a wine nursery, selling young vines to grape farmers. In the 1980s the family began keeping their vines so as to grow grapes themselves. They made champagne with the local cooperative before eventually using their grapes exclusively for their own production. With 9 hectares (22.2 acres) of vines—65% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay, 15% pinot noir—Marteaux currently produces 40-50,000 bottles per year.

Marteaux concocts what might be called connoisseur’s champagnes in the sense that they provide a deep, rich taste of terroir that one doesn’t always associated with bubbly. His vintages have been aged for at least six years prior to disgorgement and typically have low sugar content, such as the 2008 extra brut with 2 grams of sugar for a wine that’s 60% pinot meunier, 20% chardonnay and 20% pinot noir.

Among his four types of champagne he makes a rose de saignée, 100% pinot noir from a single parcel. Its tart fruitiness of Marteaux’s rose may not reflect what we’re accustomed to a rose champagne, but it is a taste that will give the wine-curious traveler a sense of the variety available in champagne wines in general and in the Marne Valley’s in particular. A 100% pinot noir champagne is a rarity in these parts and it’s interesting to compare Marteaux’s rose with Belin’s rosé de saignée, which is 100% pinot meunier.

Saignée is the more erudite way of producing rose since it requires precise pressing in order to obtain the proper color from the skin. In champagne production the preferred and allowed method for making rose is by adding red still wine (from pinot meunier or pinot noir) in assembling the wine so as to adjust the color along with the taste. Belin also makes a rosé d’assemblage. More than 90% of rose champagne gets its color that way.

Marteaux’s wife Laetitia if fully involved in the business, just as is Katty Belin is involved in the Belin family business. These are truly family affairs, which is the case of the vast majority of members of the local winegrowing association.

The Champagne et Vous wine festival

A great opportunity to meet producers on an easy daytrip from Paris is at the annual wine festival Champagne et Vous (Champagne and You) organized by the Marne Valley winegrowers association. The weekend festival takes place in late October in Chateau-Thierry on the site of the ruins of Thierry’s chateau. It’s a largely local event that invites the area’s population to understand the role of winemaking in the local economy and affirm the place of these grower-producers in the champagne-making landscape.

See Champagne et Vous for further information about the festival including portraits and addresses of participating winegrowers.

Addresses and further information

Champagne Gérard et Olivier Belin
30A Aulnois
02400 Essômes-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 70 88 43

Champagne Marteaux
6 Route de Bonneil, 02400 Azy-sur-Marne
Tel. 03 23 82 92 47

The Chateau-Thierry Tourist Office, situated near the House of France-America Friendship (see this article) can help those travelers who arrive with any prior appointments but would like to make last-minute arrangements to visit Marne Valley winegrowers.

For further information about war touring and other sights in the area, also see this article on France Revisited.

A B&B and lunch suggestion: Chateau de la Marjolaine
Two miles southwest of Chateau-Thierry, Jean-Pierre and Bruno have transformed this manor house by the river into an attractive B&B, restaurant and champagne bar.
27 Hameau d’Aulnois
02400 Essômes sur Marne
Tel. 03 23 69 77 80 or 06 60 39 98 79

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

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A small wine doesn’t mean a small time. Wine drinker knows that. Wine travelers knows that better.

So it is in the vineyards of the ordinary—I use that term fondly—Bordeaux produced in the region’s Entre-Deux-Mers zone, lying between the Dordogne and Garonne Rivers. Far removed from the evocative, well-dressed chateaux and labels of Margaux, Latour, Lafite, Haut-Brion and Mouton et al., here we are much closer to the Bordeaux of cafés, easy-going restaurants and French supermarkets. You don’t post a photo of a bottle of these wines, you post a photo the friends you share it with.

Each year on the second Sunday of June, you can share some with 2100+ friends as the wine cooperative Les Caves de Rauzan organizes a walk in the vineyards, a day of wine, food, music and viticultural brotherhood on the edges of the small town of Rauzan (population 1100). Rauzan is 30 miles east of Bordeaux and 10 miles south of Saint Emilion.

Les Caves de Rauzan represents more than 400 growers totaling 8649 acres (3500 hectares) in the Entre Deux Mers zone of the Bordeaux winegrowing region. While the individual growers take care of their vineyards, the cooperative takes care of the winemaking. Recent mergers of the cooperatives of Rauzan, Grangeneuve and Nérigean, each with its own site of vinification, have made Les Caves de Rauzan the largest producer of appellation wines in France, primarily AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur and Entre-Deux-Mers.

The vast majority of the vines in the zone produce red grapes—merlot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon—blended for the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur. The white grapes—sauvignon blanc, semillon, muscadelle—are blended for the Entre-Deux-Mers. All told, the cooperative produces 176000 hectoliters of wine. That’s the equivalent of about 25 million bottles: 70% red, 15% white, 15% rosé. Eighty percent is sold by wine trading merchants under a wide assortment of labels. The rest is sold directly.

Cellar treasures? No. These are young and relatively low-end wines on the Bordeaux scale. Oak-heads should look elsewhere, though they’ll certainly enjoy themselves at the party in the vines.

All ages are welcome as the event draws hikers, bon-vivants, couples, families and groups of friends or co-workers. The 3.7-mile (6K) walk or “promenade gourmande” takes place in seven musical and appetizing steps from mid-morning and through the afternoon: welcome, aperitif, oysters, foie gras and cold cuts, entrecote (rib steak), cheese and dessert.

Within the ruins of the Chateau de Rauzan, participants are greeted by the Order of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur Winegrowers (and a jazz trio) and are ceremoniously given a glass and a collar glass holder, turning each person into wine pilgrim of sorts.

Departures every 15 minutes from 10am to 1pm keep the 2100+ participants from bunching up in any one stop. Pilgrims proceed at their own pace, lingering as long as they want at any one station. Nevertheless, a bottleneck inevitably forms at the vine-grilled entrecôte stop where the accumulation of wine and now the steak and marching band help bring the atmosphere to its most joyful pitch.

Watch this video and join the party in the vines.

For more information about this walk in the vineyard see the site of Les Caves de Rauzan.

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

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Château-Thierry, 55 miles east of Paris along the Marne River, benefited from the dedication of Reverend Julian Wadsworth, delegate of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his wife in their efforts to honor the memory of fallen soldiers while assisting residents of Château-Thierry and the surrounding villages.

This is an area where American forces played a significant role along with our British and particularly French allies beginning in the spring of 1918 in countering the final major German offensives and pushing them back and to eventual surrender and signature of the armistice of November 11, 1918. The following October, the Wadsworths purchased the shell-ridden Hôtel de l’Elephant in Château-Thierry in order to create what Julian Wadsworth would refer to as “a war memorial” and “a community house of friendliness.”

Known as the Maison de l’Amitié Franco-Américaine (MAFA), the House of French-American Friendship, it provided day care and nursing services, a free circulating library and reading room, a war museum, tech instruction in the use of wireless telegraph and radio-telephone, the organization of Boy Scouts and Camp-fire girls and a social club for girls, while also supporting cultural exchanges and events in English and in French.

The MAFA “afford[ed] an ideal opportunity for closer acquaintance and the making of abiding friendship between the American, English and French peoples,” according to a pamphlet produced under the direction of Wadsworth in 1925. Entitled “A War Memorial: A Community House of Friendliness,” the pamphlet explains:

“Already the French Government had asked the Methodists to aid with relief for the refugees who were returning to the devastated homes. Thirty-two villages were assigned to them. It was while thinking of the aid which the Board of Foreign Missions in New York had offered for the devastated areas of France that the thought came of enlarging this temporary material assistance and making a more enduring monument which would a Memorial worthy of the soldiers whose graves are in France. The gift of the Methodist Episcopal Church to Château-Thierry should be more than a passing gift of material relief. It should be an enduring monument of happiness, built out of the desolation of war. It must be a loving service for those who are still living in the war-scarred villages of the Valley of the Marne.” (The full text of that brochure can be found here.)

In 1930 the Wadsworths donated the MAFA to the city. While it continued its vocations for decades, its increasingly dilapidated state led it to being closed in 2000.

This year, on the eve of its November 11 Armistice Day / Remembrance Day / Veterans Day commemorations, the town of Château-Thierry inaugurated a new building on the same location, now calling it Maison de l’Amitié France-Amerique (translated on the plaque by its entrance as the House of France-American Friendship). The square out front had long been re-baptized Place des Etats-Unis (Square of the United States).

While the new building doesn’t as actively serve the lofty goals of the Wadsworths’ original project of the 1920s, it nevertheless reaffirms Château-Thierry’s with the United States.

The inaugural ceremony was led by U.S. Ambassador to France Jane D. Hartley and Mayor of Château-Thierry Jacques Krabal, accompanied by local and regional dignitaries in the presence of about 200 Castelthéodoriciens, as citizens of the town are called.

Rather than recount the history of the war or the American involvement in 1918 in the Third Battle of the Aisne, the Battle of Château-Thierry and the Second Battle of the Marne, the MAFA houses on its second floor an exhibition focusing on the life and death of Quentin Roosevelt. Son of Theodore Roosevelt and his second wife Edith, Quentin was shot down by German planes at the age of 20 during aerial combat over France on July 14, 1918, 17 miles northeast of here.

Quentin and his brothers Ted Jr., Archie and Kermit all served in WWI. Quentin was originally buried by the German army in the village of Chamery, where his plane crashed. In 1955 his remains were removed to the Normandy American Cemetery, to be re-laid to rest beside those of Ted Jr., who fought in WWII. The oldest American soldier and highest ranking officer to land by sea in Normandy (Utah Beach) on D-Day June 6, 1944, Ted Jr. who died of a heart attack five weeks into the invasion.

For more about Quentin Roosevelt, read Quentin Roosevelt: The Most Famous American Killed in France in WWI.

The ground floor of the new MAFA is occupied by the Château-Thierry Tourist Office. For visitors who need logistical assistance or who arrive without firm plans for their day, it’s a good first place to stop in order to obtain information about war touring in the surrounding region. For more about sights and memorials related to the American involvement in WWI, including Belleau Wood, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, and the American Monument of Château Thierry see this photolog.

Happily, war touring in these parts can also go hand in hand with wine touring—and not just any wine but champagne. Though Château-Thierry is located in the administrative region of Picardy and the department of Aisne, 16 miles from the border of the Champagne region (actually called Champagne-Ardenne), its surroundings lie within the champagne appellation.

As indicated above the entrance to the MAFA, the Chateau-Thierry area represents “the gates to champagne.” The tourist office is therefore well armed to advise visitors on how and where to visit champagne producers within a 20-minute drive east or west along the Marne, and they can call ahead to make last-minute appointments with grower-producers. (An article about champagne producers of this portion of the Marne Valley is coming soon.)

Finally, in keeping with the MAFA’s historical role as a center for cultural exchanges and learning, there is a space for temporary exhibitions and a room where children can come to learn English.

The MAFA is not a destination in itself, but the starting point for further explorations in this once war-torn, still champagne-filled stretch of the Marne River.

With time and interest, one might take a stroll to see the admirable facades of the theater, city hall and food market on the town’s central square and to look up towards the ramparts of the chateau occupied over 1000 years ago by a certain King Thierry IV before the Counts of Champagne took control of the region. Some medieval ruins still remain behind the ramparts.

The town’s major historical sight, involving neither champagne nor war, is its Hôtel Dieu, the former central hospital with a rich collection of works received during its centuries as a religious institution. There’s also a museum dedicated to 17th-century fable writer Jean de La Fontaine.

For outdoor entertainment, an enjoyable, family-friendly birds of prey show takes place April-September beside the chateau ruins, where, among others, a North American bald eagle takes flight.

Maison de l’Amitié France-Amérique / Château-Thierry Tourist Office, 2 place des Etats-Unis, 02400 Château-Thierry. Tel. 03 23 83 51 14.

© 2015, Gary Lee Kraut

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1. Since 2014 marks the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Landing in Normandy and the Liberation of France by the Allied Forces as well as the 100th anniversary of the outset of the First World War, my most frequently requested lecture on this trip is on the theme of War Touring: Exploring Normandy and Other American War Memories in France.

In this lecture, I’ll explain how the American battle sites in France—from Utah and Omaha Beaches (WWII) to Belleau Wood and and the Somme (WWI)—and their surrounding areas can captivate Americans of all ages. I’ll describe how war tourism has evolved over time and speak of some of the fascinating Americans, French and others that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing in and around the battle sites.

2.My second major lecture is entitled Understanding Patrimoine: The Key to Extraordinary Travels in France. In this lecture I’ll examine the notion of patrimoine, often translated as heritage, which is so deeply engrained in the consciousness of the French that it is applied to everything from cathedrals, chateaux, old mills and gardens to cuisine, wine culture, craftsmanship and horseback riding.

I’ll explain through history, anecdotes and examples from my own travels throughout France how understanding the pervasive concept of patrimoine, along with its sidekick preservation, is a major key to enjoying enriching, insightful and extraordinary travels in France.

3. I’ll also be speaking to several groups about wine tourism in France, particularly Burgundy and Champagne, regions that I know well from researching and writing about them and from organizing wine tours there.

The winter 2014 lecture tour schedule

Jan. 18, Yardley-Makefield Public Library (PA), 2pm. Subject: War touring.
Jan. 22, Alliance Francaise de Doylestown (PA), 10am. Subject: War touring. I’ll be delivering this lecture in French.
Jan. 22, Newtown Square Library (PA), 7pm. Subject: War touring.
Jan. 24, Princeton (NJ) Elks Lodge #2129, 7pm. Subject: War touring.

Jan. 27, Vorhees (NJ), private event with a local wine club. Subject: Wine touring.
Jan. 28, The College of New Jersey. , 7pm in the college library auditorium. Open to the public. Subject: War touring.
Jan. 30, Jake’s American Grille, 5018 Conn Ave NW, Washington DC, 6:30-8:30pm. My friend Janet Hulstrand, a writer and teacher who has contributed to France Revisited, organizes a Francophile/Bibliophile evenings in the DC area and has invited me to make informal presentation about travel and travel writing in France during this evening’s gathering, followed by Q&A time. If interested in attending contact Janet directly at janet.hulstrand[at]gmail.com.
Jan. 31, Alliance Française de Washington DC, 2142 Wyoming Avenue, NW, Washington DC, 7:30pm. Subject: Understanding Patrimoine.
Feb. 4, Rotary Club of Medford (NJ). Subject: Wine touring.
Feb. 5, Mid-Manhattan Library (6th floor), 455 Fifth Avenue, NYC, 6:30pm. Subject: Travel and Travel Writing Beyond the Clichés: In Search of the Perfect Travel Moment. See the library’s events calendar for details.
Feb. 6, Lawrence Library (NJ), 7pm. Subject: War touring.
Feb. 7. Princeton Library (NJ), 7pm, followed by a Burgundy wine tasting at CoolVines, a wonderful wine shop near the library. Subject: Wine touring in Burgundy and Champagne.
Feb. 16, Alliance Française de Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill (NC), 4pm. Subject: Understanding patrimoine.
Feb. 18, Alliance Française de Charleston (SC), held jointly with the College of Charleston, on campus. Subject: War touring.
Feb. 21, Alliance Française d’Orlando (FL), 7pm. Subject: Understanding Patrimoine.
Feb. 25. Pinecrest Library (Miami-Dade, FL), 11am. Subject: War touring.

The post Editor Takes France Revisited On the Road in the U.S. appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Meeting a coffee roaster hadn’t crossed my mind as I planned a brief stay in this corner of Provence, but I’d come looking for passionate purveyors of fine food and drink, and coffee seemed like a great place to start.

1. Yves Aubert-Moulin, coffee roaster

Yves Aubert-Moulin was discussing blends with a customer when I arrived at Cafés au Brésil, a few streets from the café on Place de l’Horloge where I’d read the news. Tall, young, eager, confident and engaging, he seemed more like an ambitious apprentice than a nationally recognized expert. That impression, I soon learned, was close to the truth: Mr. Aubert-Moulin had gained his expertise through an apprenticeship in that very shop or, equally significant, by falling for the owners’ daughter.

“I got into coffee by getting into the family,” he said.

He has worked in the Bouquet family’s coffee shop since 2008 and is now married into both the family and the business, a find blend indeed.

Out of some 600 coffee roasters in France, Mr. Aubert-Moulin was named France’s Best Coffee Roaster of 2012 in an annual competition among six finalists organized by the French Coffee Committee.

Café au Brésil,  24 rue des Fourbisseurs. Tel. 04 90 82 49 71.

2. Les Halles d’Avignon, the covered food market

The wall above the main entrance to Les Halles d’Avignon, the indoor food market, on Place Pie, is covered by a vertical garden, the work of Patrick Blanc, a French botanist responsible for the creation of many such gardens around the world.

Mid-morning,  was bustling with passionate purveyors and their knowing consumers. Its 40 stands make this an ideal place to get to know the foodstuffs of Provence, especially if on a limited time-budget in the region. Turns out this is also a great place to run into some fine chefs, among them Jean-Claude Altmayer (see #5 below), whom I was introduced to as he was kibitzing with his chef and market buddies over coffee.

The market is open mornings daily except Monday, 6am-1:30pm on weekedays, 6am-2pm on weekends. Free cooking demonstrations are held in the little kitchen at the market on Saturdays from 11am to noon.

3. Arnaud de la Chanonie, wine-seller

Late morning is said to be the ideal time for tasting wine before one’s taste buds have been overly solicited and assaulted by a midday meal. But it was too early for me to lift a glass today. Nevertheless, the moment was right to stop at Avitus, a classy wine shop that doubles as a wine bar in the heart of the old town, so as to meet owner Arnaud de la Chanonie.

Avitus is named for a Gallo-Roman emperor from Auvergne, the large region on the western side of the Rhone from which Mr. de la Chanonie’s family hails. But Avignon is known as the capital of Cotes du Rhone wines so the shop/bar is naturally heavy on wines from the Rhone Valley.

Even before a cork has been pulled one senses in speaking with Mr. de la Chanonie the elegant expression of the wines sold here. His approach in presenting the wines he sells is amiable, discreet and informative—altogether helpful if looking for the right bottle to go with the picnic you’ve prepared at Les Halles to take down by the Rhone.

Personally, I already had lunch plans, so I returned to Avitus early evening two days later before leaving Avignon on a 9pm train. It was a Friday, early evening, wine bar time. Mr. de la Chanonie is a fan of jazz, swing and blues. It’s occasionally played live here but was recorded this evening. Between the music, the chummy conversation about wine and whatnot, and the coming and goings of what seemed to be regulars, Avitus felt like a speak-easy. I didn’t see the time pass and wished that I’d taken a later train… the following day.

Editor’s note: Since the initial publication of this article, Arnaud de la Chanonie has moved Avitus to the town of Pernes-les-Fontaine, 15 miles east of Avignon, where it is no longer a wine bar but still a wine shop, at Marché de la Gare, 217 avenue de la Gare.

3. Renaud Tisseur, restaurant owner, Le Bain-Marie

Renaud Tisseur is a likeable presence in a most likable restaurant.

He credits his mother, Régine Viaud, with his devotion to serving quality food within the peaceable setting of the walls of a 14th-century mansion surrounding a plane tree-shaded courtyard. She had opened a first Bain-Marie in 1979 and moved it to this location in 1988, maintaining it until her death. It was reopened in 2006 by Mr. Tisseur.

The restaurant’s soothing seating lends itself to easy-going romance and other meals requiring unpretentious comfort. The menu, reasonably priced, even inexpensive considering the quality, leans easily on French and Provencal culinary traditions with a distinct fondness for foie gras, filet de boeuf and scallops along with assorted herbs and a touch of mother’s generous personality—or at least from what I imagine to be her personality from the small collection of her recipes that Mr. Tisseur has published.

Le Bain-Marie. 5 rue Pétramale. 04 90 85 21 37. Open lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

4. Aline Géhant, chocolate maker

Aline Géhant’s rise in the ranks of chocolate-makers took a major leap when she won the Young Talent Award at Paris’s chocolate trade show, le Salon du chocolat, in October 2011. That award and a taste for good chocolate (I’d selected a light dessert at Le Bain-Marie) had brought me to her shop. But it wasn’t the taste of the chocolate that first led Aline Géhant to her craft at the age of 25. “I fell in love with the material,” she said. Working with only one apprentice, she still very much has her hands in it.

I went Provencal that afternoon with a tasting of her lavender, thyme and fig ganaches—with a special fondness for the thyme—and a few other pralines and classics to go.

Asked if she was interested in adding pastries to the mix as other chocolate-makers do, she said, “I’m not interested in pastries, either making or eating them… I prefer cheese.”

Aline Géhant Chocolatier, 15 rue des 3 Faucons. Tel. 04 90 02 27 21. Open Tuesday-Saturday 10am-1pm and 3-7pm.

5. Jean-Claude Altmayer, chef

Jean-Claude Altmayer is the most exuberant chef I’ve ever met. Perhaps that’s because he has nothing more to prove in the kitchen—he says that he’s cooked for five presidents—but simply enjoys the pleasure of his craft and of direct encounters with his guests, his convives.

On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and upon special request, Mr. Altmayer receives up to 16 guests by his “piano,” a more than centenary stove in the basement of an ancient cardinal’s palace that is now La Mirande, Avignon’s luxury boutique hotel, right behind the Popes’ palace.

I went to the hotel in the late afternoon. The reception staff was politely wary about my request to make an impromptu visit to the chef in the basement but Mr. Altmayer welcomed me without hesitation and invited me to have an aperitif of white wine as he finished prepping for the evening’s meal.

He spoke with passion about his past experiences, encounters with the famous and the not, and his current guest table, all the while revealing his generosity of spirit through he’s joyful scraping out of scallops from the shell

and his handling of bloody pigeons

and his stirring of a large pot.

Several months after my aperitif interview, I had the pleasure of attending one of Mr. Altmayer’s dinners, where his craft, his tales of meals past and his generosity of spirit were all on display. He’s as much a bighearted chef as he is a jovial performer. As chef, he prepares a meal of rustic gastronomy, rich in the French traditions of freshness, precise timing and earnest, recognizable taste. As performer, Mr. Altmayer is a natural who makes everyone feel like a special guest attending a singular event.

When reserving (done though the hotel), be sure to mention any food allergies or major dislikes. However, unless you’ve reserved the chef’s table for your own private group it’s best to leave your food issues upstairs and simply arrive honorably (not overly) dressed and with an open appetite and a sense of culinary joy. Being an undemanding guest is the best way to allow Chef Altmayer, as he stands before his “piano,” to be a wonderful host.

The aperitif (which may be served in the sub-basement wine cellar), followed by a 3-course meal including wine and accompanied by Chef Altmayer’s “performance” and cooking tips costs 86 euros. That may not be appropriate for everyone’s budget, but if the price is palatable and you’re lucky enough to get a seat at Chef Altmayer’s table this may well be your most memorable indoor meal in Provence.

La Mirande, 4 place de l’Amirande. Tel. 04 90 14 20 20. Jean-Claude Altmayer isn’t the chef of the hotel’s gastronomic restaurant on the ground floor but rather the host of an extraordinary guest table in the ancient basement, where he cooks for up to 16 guests on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and upon special request.

6. Philippe and Daniele Hiély, restaurant owners

An aperitif with Jean-Claude Altmayer is a tough act to follow, but the transition to dinner turned out to be smooth and effortless and an admirable act in its own right.

Thanks to the combined passions of Philippe Hiély as master of the kitchen and Daniele Hiély as mistress of the dining room, La Fourchette is friendly, fine-fared Avignon institution where local regulars and visiting tourists happily coexist.

Monsieur’s extensive menu of polished French traditional cuisine ensures that there’s something to please everyone, though the choice may be difficult, while Madame’s good humor in the knickknacked dining rooms—walls decorated with forks and cicadas—ensures that you’ll be able to take your time in choosing.

They Hiélys opened La Fourchette in 1982, so just imagine the complicity that’s necessary to be caught on camera 30 years later like this:

La Fourchette, 17 rue Racine. Tel. 04 90 85 20 93. Open Monday-Friday.

7. Michel Blanc, wine promoter

Michel Blanc represents the winegrower of this Chateauneuf-du-Pape with infectious brio. His title is Director of the Federation of the Unions of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Producers (Fédération des Syndicats des Producteurs de Châteauneuf-du-Pape). That sounds stiff and officious, but Michel Blanc comes across as a joyful wine aficionado who’d be happy to swill any wine with you (and you with him) at a wine festival.

Mr. Blanc and I did actually have the occasion to swill together at a wine festival, la Fête de Veraison, a celebration of Chateauneuf-du-Pape that’s held the first weekend of August. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Six months earlier, on my initial visit to Chateauneuf, the day after the food and drink encounters in Avignon (9 miles south) described above, we met for lunch at the well-fed, wine-happy restaurant La Mère Germaine.

Tastings that morning at Chateau Gigognan and at Domaine de Beaurenard had put me in the mood to learn more about Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

In 1933, Chateauneuf-du-Pape became the first winegrowing region in France to define parameters by which producers could use the appellation. It’s that head-start as a winegrowing area (7959 acres of it) defining terroir and the general conditions for producing quality wines that brought Chateauneuf-du-Pape its international fame. When I grew up 1960s and 1970s, the name Chateauneuf-du-Pape was synonymous with wine sophistication—not that we know anyone whoever drank it. The international wine market has become too vast and varied for a single appellation to be so evocative these days, but Chateauneuf remains a most curious appellation producing a variety of quality wines, some superb, mostly red. White wines represent about 7% of the production and are well worth discovering.

The curiousness of this appellation—and the difficulty of getting a handle on its wines—stems from its diversity of soils (clay and/or sand, often remarkable for their natural carpet of large pebbles and sharp calcareous stones) and of grape varieties allowed in production (13 in number, some with sub-varieties, led by granache, with syrah, mordèvre and cinsault a distant second, third and fourth).

Over lunch we made stops at Clos Saint Michel, Domaine Durieu and Domaine Grand Veneur.

That first visit to Chateauneuf may not have turned me into an unconditional fan or a connoisseur, but having tasted dozens of other Chateauneuf’s since then, studied (well, a bit) an awfully big book on the subject, “The Chateauneuf-du-Pape Wine Book” by Harry Karis (with forewords by Robert Parker and Michel Blanc), revisited the town during its August wine festival and taken part in the grand mass of French wine tasting in Paris with a seat at one of the Chateauneuf tables on the national jury of the Concours Agricole at the Salon de l’Agriculture, I credit Mr. Blanc with turning me into a curious occasional consumer of the wines he so passionately represents.

The passion of a purveyor of fine food and drink rubs off—a good reason to seek them wherever you travel.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

Also see Avignon: Practical Information and Choice Accommodations and Black Diva and the Roman Theater of Orange.

The post Profiles in Provence: Passionate Purveyors of Fine Food and Drink in Avignon and Châteauneuf-du-Pape appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

I was never a very conscientious student but I must have done something right because within an hour of eating like a sixth grader I was sitting in a classroom at Wine University (Université du Vin), 16 miles west of Nyons, swirling, sipping and spitting, in no particular order, a selection of lesser-known wines produced in the department of Drome.

In a modern classroom with the walls of the medieval castle of Suze-la-Rousse, I took part in an excellent lesson on regional diversity with a tasting of Chatillon en Diois (Aligoté), Grignan (Viognier) and Brézème (Syrah/Shiraz). There’re nothing like name-dropping to let people know that you’ve traveled.

Indeed, having stopped two days earlier on the way south in Hermitage country (Hermitage, Tain l’Hermitage, Croz-Hermitage) and tasted, among others, M. Chapoutier’s delightfully complex, promising, white Chante-Alouette Hermitage 2010 (Marsanne, biodynamic), the opportunity to discover lesser-known appellations at Wine University was much appreciated.

See, I’ve done it again, name-dropped, this time with a little more detail. Journalists, writers and bloggers do that all the time, especially with regards to travel and wine. We do that to let readers know not only that we’ve traveled but that we’ve traveled to fine places armed with experience and knowledge and returned with even more. The reader is then left with the disturbing task of deciding whether names have been dropped to impress or provided to convey information. You might therefore be wondering: Does this author actually know anything about wine or is he faking it?

Best not to drop too many names or you’ll take me for a wine maven, a wine snob or that certain kind of wine enthusiast who never ceases to amaze and annoy me. I am referring to the enthusiast who, in a non-professional or non-educational setting, will take hold of an assembly to let us know that we cannot progress any further into the evening until he or she has made thorough analysis of the nectar being served.

I certainly understand the desire to share one’s knowledge and one’s opinions. What’s surprising in the case of the self-appointed and gratuitous wine analyst is his momentary (one hopes) inability to stop chewing his wine long enough to look around the table and realize that at that moment the rest of us are being neither educated nor entertained but simply sitting there like a group of hungry non-believers waiting politely for a faith-based table companion to finish saying grace. We don’t mind, really, we’re just waiting for you to finish expressing your vision of the world so that we can proceed with that humanistic ritual called sharing a meal.

I got to thinking of this while at Wine University because it made me question my own relationship with wine. Having visited large swaths of the wine regions of France, written much about them, interviewed producers, sellers and connoisseurs, attended numerous wine tastings in addition to simply tasting numerous wines, given tours of Champagne and Burgundy and the Loire Valley, given lectures about French wine regions in the U.S., and even conducted incredible wine bar tours in Paris—having practically swum in wine some days, what was my relationship with wine?

Did I belong in Wine University?

Université du Vin is an institution for professionals and enthusiasts and for seriously interested students of all ages to further their education in any number of subjects related to wine and the wine industry over the course of a few hours or many months—all this in a historical setting of a medieval castle-cum-pleasure palace-cum-wine university.

The instructors, to judge by my small sampling that afternoon, were clear, expressive, highly trained and able to address questions without condescension.

I enjoyed my taste of Wine University. It appealed to my curiosity. And for a moment there I felt a tinge of heightened enthusiasm at sitting in an actual lecture-like classroom with several glasses, a notepad and a sink in front of me. I briefly imagined myself staying at Suze-la-Rousse for a week: classes in the morning, a hike or a bike ride on a sunny day, an afternoon in the reference library of 6000 works in case of rain, a long dinner with new-found wine friends, followed by a long-earned sleep in a monastic cell, no, make that a cozy B&B. I’ve had similar moments in other settings I’ve imagined staying put in Italy to learn Italian, in Spain to practice salsa, on someone’s couch to study Spinoza.

But I never will—not with much depth; just a curious little flirt, a brief and memorable affair before moving on. I realized during the class that afternoon that I didn’t have a sustained interest in distinguishing between mineral, floral, fruit or animal or in considering acidity versus tannins or in examining the nuances of yellowish whites and purplish reds.

No, I am not an enthusiast. I am curious. I am a curious traveler, a frequent wine drinker, someone who enjoys meeting wine folk, especially in their vineyards and cellars and homes.

Having finished the Chatillon en Diois and now onto the Grignan, an area whose a chateau I’d visited the previous day (see Part 3 of this article), I was well aware that I’m more enthusiastic about old stones than I am about young wines, but I quite like combining the two when I travel.

On the approach, the hilltop castle of Suze-la-Rousse appears to be the model of a medieval fortification with its high uninviting walls and crenellated tower. But once inside it relaxes its defenses and reveals itself to be a pleasure palace with a 16th-century (Renaissance) courtyard and later transformations including a grand staircase and pastel drawing rooms.

Add the multi-layered study of wine to that and you’ve got an institution where French heritage and the contemporary marketplace for wine play off each other like a light show on the façade of a Gothic cathedral. The current spirit of the place is amusingly evident in the castle’s chapel, once a setting for Holy Communion, recently transformed into a temperature-controlled tasting room.

With or without the wine, the chateau can be visited by appointment.

While the training of young and budding sommeliers and cellar-masters/cavistes with professional or amateur ambitions is at the heart at the university, Universite du Vin also offers classes and courses concerning other important aspects of the wine industry: production techniques, markets, marketing, regulations. Diplomas and degree programs in management and marketing, law, production and scientific measures of quality and of tasting are available in conjunction with other educational institutions. Regarding the wine tasting here, there’s naturally a strong emphasis on French wines but other wines are also present.

Created in 1978, Université du Vin now welcomes about 200 students per year along with another 2000 who come for various training sessions. Classes are also available for enthusiasts and other who may or may not arrive with (or admit to) professional ambitions.

To name but a few classes and courses that are open to those, professional or amateur, with a working knowledge of French: a 4-day initiation to wine tasting; a 1-day class in recognizing and understanding flaws in wine; a 1-day class devoted to the olfactory aspects of wine.; a 1-day class in creating a wine cellar and a wine list for your restaurant; assorted 1- to 3-day classes on getting to know the wines of specific wine regions. This year there was also a 3-day class in English on Rhone Valley wines.

These are serious classes taught by highly trained professions and are not intended as sales pitches for any specific wines or regions, despite the natural presence of many Rhone Valley Wines. You’re more likely to come across enthusiasts rather than budding professionals at a weekend initiation. Wine University also opens its doors to business tourism, e.g. team building or incentive travel in English plus seminar rooms for their more mundane corporate work. For those willing to devote less than a day to educating their palate, there are occasional classes in tasting cheese, olives and olive oil or beer.

Some say that there is no pleasure without knowledge while others feel that knowing that you’ve enjoyed yourself is knowledge enough. I’ll take both as companions as I pursue my own wandering approach to a wine education.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

– Return to Part 1 of Drome Provencale: Eat Like a Sixth Grader, Drink Like a Wine Enthusiast
– Go to Part 3, Drome Provencale: Medieval Towns, Castles, Lavender and Silk

Part 2 endnote: More Rhone Valley name-dropping

Planted more or less from Vienne (just south of Lyon) to Avignon, Cotes du Rhone (including Cotes du Rhone Villages) vineyards extend along both sides of the Rhone River, increasingly to the east as one head’s south, with many appellations along the way.

Concerning the red wines, which predominate, the northern portion of the valley, from Vienne to Valence is known for its expression of Syrah/Shiraz grapes from Vienne to Valence (e.g. Côte Roie, Contrieux, Chateau-Grillet, Saint Joseph, Hermitage, Cornas, Saint Peray). In the southern portion, from Montelimar to Avignon, there’s a dominance of Grenache along with some use of Syrah, Mourvedre and other varieties (e.g. Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, flaring off to Tavel).

Transforming grapes grown over 60,000 hectares (nearly 148,000 acres) and divided into 6000 winegrowing business, the Rhone Valley produces 334 million bottles per year. More details about this long vertical wine region along the route from Lyon to Avignon can be found here.

The post Drome Provencale: Eat Like a Sixth Grader, Drink Like a Wine Enthusiast, Part 2 of 3 appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Beginning in March 2012, you’ll also be able to take advantage of highly personalized travel and touring opportunities that I’ll be creating in the spirit of France Revisited.

The result is travel experiences that are exclusive, entertaining, insightful and relaxed.

Having written five travel guides to France and Paris along with hundreds of articles, as well as editing France Revisited, I find myself in a unique position to help travelers and travel planners create highly personalized travel experiences in Paris and in the diverse regions of France.

I’ve been called upon to assist travel professionals and cultural institutions seeking tailor-made tours and exclusive contacts for their preferred clients.

I’ve enjoyed the challenge of designing specialty tours and arranging cultural encounters for clients from Wall Street to Hollywood and from West Virginia to Oklahoma, for art-loving foodies from Florida and Georgia  and wine-loving professionals from New Jersey and Oregon, for a literary agent in New York and a best-selling author in San Francisco, and for many curious travelers in between. Thanks to France Revisited international reputation, I’ve also been called upon by professionals from Mexico, the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia.

I’ve additionally had the honor of assisting charitable organizations in the U.S., enabling them offer added-value, tailor-made Paris and France tours (e.g. Normandy, Champagne, Bordeaux, Southwest France) for high-end charity auctions and donor tours. My particular interest is in helping causes related to cancer, autism, education, and the arts.

Travel in the Spirit of France Revisited is now available to three types of clients:

– Individuals, couples and families interested in benefiting from highly personalized travel, touring, and consulting services.

– Certified travel agents and trip planners for educational and cultural institutions interested in trips designed specifically for their clients, students/faculty or donors.

– Meeting planners looking to create special off-meeting events and seminars.

You can learn more about these services see a schedule of small-group tours that I’ve designed for 2012 on the Touring & Consulting page of France Revisited. The request form is also found there.

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

It was one of those sights or grouping of sights that I kept hearing about and that I kept ignoring. Each time it rose to the top of my list of places to visit in the months ahead I would push it back a few notches.

Yet Chateau Thierry eventually made it to the top of that list—in part because I’d already toured and written so much about the WWII D-Day Landing Zone that had become increasingly interested in the WWI landscape of France; in part because the 100th anniversary of The Great War, the Der Des Ders, is approaching; and finally because I had the opportunity to interview and tour the WWI sights near Chateau-Thierry with David Atkinson, Superintendent of the Aisne-Marne American War Cemetery.

Before moving on to other work on the subject of these sights, here is a photolog of a day’s visit.

The Chateau-Thierry War Monument overlooks the town and the Marne Valley from above the Champagne vineyards at the top of a hill two miles west of the town center. I arrived on a day of low clouds and on-and-off rain. Though Chateau Thierry is administratively in the department of Aisne, the Champagne vineyards start here.

I went up for closer look at the double colonnade monument constructed to “commemorate the sacrifices and achievements of American and French fighting men in the region and cooperation of French and American forces during World War I.”

Constructed in 1930, the memorial was designed by Paul Cret, the French-American architect who received numerous commissions to create war memorials and battlefield monuments in Europe and in the United States. The American Battle Monuments Commission, “guardian of America’s overseas commemorative cemeteries and memories,” was created in 1923.

A description of the significance of the battles involving American soldiers that began in the Marne Valley is engraved on the memorial.

Figures representing the United States and France hold hands at the center of the west façade.

Visitors unfamiliar with the region may have difficulty situating the towns on the map below of the Aisne-Marne Salient that’s engraved on the monument. You’ll notice that the big Champagne towns of Epernay and Reims are just to the east and northeast. Among the WWI sites indicated on the map, the Chemin des Dames (near the top of the map), a ridge of tunnels and trenches presented now in a museum on the site, also makes for a worthy stop for more extensive war touring in the region.

The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery is 4.5 miles northwest of the monument, 6.5 miles from the town. The cemetery and the woods above it comprise the area’s main WWI sight for symbolic value and, though largely unknown to Americans, those woods are of utmost to members of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Belleau Wood: the very name is a battle cry for the Marines Corps. It was in the fierce Battle of Belleau Wood that the Marines earned their military lettres de noblesse by holding off an important sector of the final German offensives of 1918, before pursuing, along with French and British forces, the advances that would eventually lead to Germany’s recognition of defeat in the form of the Armistice of November 11.

The Army was naturally also a major force along this front though the headlines at the time emphasized the Marines, so there remains a hearty rivalry between Army and Marines as to the credit each deserves. In any case, 17% of those buried at this cemetery were Marines, according to David Atkinson, Superintendent of the Aisne-Marne Cemetery.

With drama similar to the position of the Normandy American Cemetery on the cliff above the once-bloodied tides of Omaha Beach, the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery lies at the foot of the great battleground that was Belleau Wood.

The cemetery, more particularly Belleau Wood itself, has ever since been a pilgrimage site for the Marines. On leave from Afganistan or Iraq or stationed elsewhere, says Atkinson, Marines will come here and ask (or frequently not ask) to spend the night in the woods.

David Atkinson’s American father landed in Normandy a week after D-Day and took part in the Battle of Normandy 1944 as part of the Engineering Corps… and met Atkinson’s French mother there.

Atkinson oversaw the cemetery as superintendent from 2002 to 2003 and again beginning in 2007. [Post-note: David Atkinson retired from the position in 2015.]

He says that despite the site’s significance in American military history, no sitting president has visited the site, though Nixon visited after his presidency. The cemetery nevertheless hosts one of Europe’s largest American Memorial Day commemorations.

The cemetery contains the remains of 2289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the late spring and summer of 1918. The Oise-Aisne American Cemetery, a 30-minute drive (about 17 miles) northeast of here near the town of Fère-en-Tardenois, contains far more tombs (6012) than Aisne-Marne, however the latter’s connection with Belleau Wood gives it its special symbolic meaning.

Eighty, ninety years on, it’s necessary to replace or restore some of the original Italian marble headstones.

Inside the chapel…

… the walls are inscribed with the names of 1060 originally listed as missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered or identified.

A German Cemetery with the remains of 8625 soldiers lies a half-mile up the road.

Superintendent Atkinson took me on a tour of Belleau Wood, where we stopped to overlook the chapel…

… and to glimpse the cemetery between the trees.

The outline of trenches of 1918 can still be seen in Belleau Wood.

Captured Germany artillery is still there.

A monument shows a Marine attacking with rifle and bayonet.

The thickest of the oak trees standing in the woods were witness to the fighting of June 1918. Superintendent Atkinson says that visiting Marines will often want to take a piece of the wood home with them, harming trees in the process. That led him to carve up some trees that were to be removed anyway in efforts to preserve Belleau Wood and to offer up engraved pieces as gifts to visiting Marines and to certain other curious visitors.

I thank him for including me among the latter. Here is my piece of Belleau Wood, along with the flags he kindly supplied.

Practical information

Opening times: The cemetery is open daily from 9am to 5pm except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1.

Getting there: Chateau Thierry is 54 miles east from Paris, an hour by train or by car. Reims is another 30 minutes further east. By car, the war sights are easily visited just off the A-4 autoroute on the way to or from Champagne or on an overnight in the Chateau Thierry area. By train, it’s possible to take a taxi to the monument and to the cemetery or to rent a car for the day.

Tourist information: The official tourist website for Chateau Thierry and the surrounding area in this southern portion of the department of Aisne.

Tours: For an excursion combining war touring and champagne vineyards see here.

Other articles about WWI touring in and near Chateau-Thierry

ABMC WWI Museum Opens at Château-Thierry’s American Monument
Château-Thierry Reaffirms Its Bond with the United States
Quentin Roosevelt, President’s Son, the Most Famous American Killed in France in WWI

Other notable sights in and near Chateau Thierry

Museum of the Treasure of the Hotel Dieu
The town’s most artful site is its Hotel Dieu, a former convent and Church-run hospital-cum-public hospital that presents its treasure-trove of paintings, sculptures, earthenware, furniture and religious articles, all of which were donated to the institution over the centuries. Chateau Thierry’s Hotel Dieu was founded by Queen Jeanne de Navarre in 1304 and had its heyday as a religious institution thanks to major benefactors of the late 17th and 18th centuries. Among modern benefactors are the Friends of French Art California who helped finance the restoration of a painting and a buffet. A guided tour (the only way to access the museum) explains the history of the institution, opens the doors to its treasures, and tells the fascinating and sometimes horrific story of the cloistered life. The Hotel Dieu served as a public hospital until 1983 and remains the property of the public hospital system. There are limited touring times (Fri. and Sat. Nov.-March, also Sun. April-Oct.), so check the website in advance for times and/or call town hall (03 23 83 51 14) for a reservation.

The La Fontaine Museum
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) is the French-speaking world’s most famous fable teller. (The English-speaking world is more familiar with the work of Aesop, whose work comes to us from Greek then Roman Antiquity.) La Fontaine’s birthplace and family home, dating from 1559, has been a museum in his honor since 1876 and has recently been restored. Open daily except Monday.

Chateau de Condé
There’s little to be seen of the castle that gave Chateau Thierry its name, but there is a notable private chateau 10 miles east that’s open to the public. The Chateau de Condé, in the village of Condé en Brie, is rather under-visited considering the quality of its décor of the 17th and 18th centuries and the possibility of encountering members of the Pasté de Rochefort family, owners since 1983. Open April 15-Oct. 15 daily except Mon., 2:30-5:30pm. Open for groups upon reservation at other times.

Dance with the Eagles
A live outdoor show of birds of prey is held daily April 1-Nov. 2 by the ruins of Thierry’s castle. Here, to close the American theme of this photolog, is an American Bald Eagle that I met in its dressing room after the show.

Photos and text © 2011, Gary Lee Kraut.

For another article about WWI memorials and cemeteries in northern France read “Olivier Dirson, WWI Battlefield Guide: One History Leads to Another.”

The post An Hour from Paris: Chateau Thierry’s American WWI Sights (photolog) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

* * *

Isabelle and Catherine Orliac, two sisters in Aquitaine, are heirs to a property in southwest France that supplied wine to Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and the Court of France in the 1780s. The Orliac domain lies in the little-known Côtes du Brulhois, 100 miles southeast of Bordeaux, 60 miles northwest of Toulouse.

The date 1780 appears on the label of Royal Heritage, the Orliac sisters’ deep red wine, because it was on Jule 11, 1780, that Louis XVI signed a letter at Versailles inviting the sisters’ ancestor Jean Orliac to provide the Court of France with his wines.

Based on the original recipes, the sisters now produce three wines—Royal Heritage and two flavored wines called Secret de Famille (Family Secret). These are luxury products, available in only a few restaurants and select shops as well as though a form of direct sale in which buyers “sponsor” a vine.

I met Isabelle for two friendly lunches in restaurants where Orliac wines appear on the wine list: Le Bistrot du Sommelier in Paris and La Veranda (Trianon Palace) in Versailles. The two restaurants are described in the second half of this article.

Royal Heritage is made, as it was 230 years ago, from a blend of four grapes: tannat, cabernet franc, merlot, and abouriou. The Orliac sisters produced their first modern vintage in 2005, which is the vintage I tried. It is hefty, full-bodied, dark fruity, mildly spicy wine. Isabelle recommended serving it with lamb, which I did one evening with friends at home, with much success.

For 140€ or 168€ ($190/225), depending on the vintage (2005-2009 are currently available), one “sponsors” a vine on their 10-hectare (25-acre) domain. Eighteen months later, a bottle of wine from the domain awaits you with its wax-sealed cork and its handsome black box. You can have the bottle sent to you (at additional cost) or you can drive over to the Orliac family’s Chateau la Bastide to pick up your bottle.

Royal Heritage is indeed pricey for a Côtes du Brulhois, albeit a big Côtes du Brulhois. This is a confidential wine whose price reflects a combination of quality, limited production, and the added value of marketing a so-called historical product.

I leave it to readers to decide on the added value of royal history on the price of this wine. However, I note a supplemental value for those able to take advantage of it: the possibility of one day visiting your vine and meeting the wine-growers in this rustically beautiful and little-known area of France. Sponsor six bottles and you’ll likely be invited for lunch at their domain.

That’s a delightful and informative supplemental value indeed, to judge by my lunches with Isabelle in Paris and Versailles, where I got a taste of the Orliacs’ other two wines: one red, one pink, both called Secret de Famille.

The Secret de Famille (Family Secret) wines, which the sisters began producing in 2007, largely follow Jean Orliac original recipes for flavored wines, with modifications to properly stabilize them. Isabelle says that she and her sister are also in possession of other recipes, but those can no longer be marketed, at least not as wine, since they call for the inclusion of various of herbs and flowers that would now classify them as drugs.

The pink Secret de Famille is a white wine at heart that has been blended with essence of rose and of ginger. One would naturally refer to its color as rosé in wine terms, but I can’t help but think of it as pink. Distinctly but not overpoweringly rose flavored, it has a zesty peppery taste. It’s a lively, entertaining flavored wine as Marie-Antoinette would have enjoyed. Indeed, it was produced by Jean Orliac and ordered for the Court precisely because it could satisfy the queen’s taste for all things rose (and pink). More floral than sweet, it can be served as an aperitif, though I’d favor it as a dessert wine.

The red Secret de Famille in which the red wine has been macerated with berries, currants and spices, has a dark fruity, slightly peppery taste. On a whim it could be served with meat that has a fruit-based sauce, but I’d recommend saving it, like the other, for dessert, when one is ready to sit back and delve deeper into personal and wine history while sharing one Secret or the other.

The Secrets cost 40 euros (about $55) each through the Orliacs’ website. They’re also available in the museum shops at Versailles, as is appropriate for a product that Marie-Antoinette enjoyed.

– For information about all three wines see Royal Heritage, 2 Soeurs en Aquitaine (2 Sister in Aquitaine), Chateau la Bastide, 47270 Clermont Soubiran. Tel. 05 53 87 41 02. Complete information on vine sponsorship, bottle and shipping costs are available on at www.royal-heritage.eu once you’ve requested and obtained the proper access code on the site.

Le Bistrot du Sommelier
97 boulevard Haussmann, 8th arr., Paris.

Philippe Faure-Brac opened his Bistrot du Sommelier in 1984 at the age of 24, so the bistro’s longevity alone in this tony business/residential neighborhood is laudable. Of course it helped when, in 1992, he made the leap to superstardom among wine connoisseurs by winning the title World’s Best Sommelier in 1992. Other honors have followed (Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole 1995, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite 2005, Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence 2007) as have books on wine and on wine and food pairing.

This is a place to enjoy hearty, flavorful fare that’s traditionally French and well-constructed without being passé or over-wrought. A gentleman farmer—or in the case of my lunch with Isabelle, an gentlewoman winegrower—might come to feel urban but not too removed from the country… and to enjoy top-flight wine wisdom and wine talk.

Isabelle Orliac is rightfully proud to have her wine on Mr. Faure Brac’s extensive list.

– Bistrot du Sommelier, 97 boulevard Haussmann, 8th arr. Tel. 01 42 65 24 85. Metro Saint-Augustin. Open Mon.-Fri. noon-2:30 p.m. and 7:30-10:30 p.m.

La Veranda at the Trianon Palace
1 boulevard de la Reine, Versailles

Internationally renowned English chef Gordon Ramsay gets top billing at the Hotel Trianon Palace at Versailles since his name brands the gastronomic restaurant here. But Italian chef Simone Zanoni is the one who makes it happen—“it” being the high gastronomy served at the Gordon Ramsay and the polished contemporary cuisine served at the hotel’s second restaurant La Veranda.

La Veranda is a spacious, elegant setting whose décor is unobtrusive enough to allow the main focus of the room to be the wall of windows giving out to a sublime view out to the pastures of the Domain of Versailles, where the troop of sheep may be grazing nearby. Or ignore the windows altogether and request, in fine weather, a seat out on the veranda.

This restaurant is recommendable for a well-polished lunch for those taking the leisurely and luxuriant approach to visiting the town and palace of Versailles for the day or longer. We were certainly in no rush.

– La Veranda at the Trianon Palace, 1 boulevard de la Reine, 78000 Versailles. Tel. 01 30 84 50 18. Reservations typically not necessary on weekdays but recommended for Saturday lunch and more so for Sunday brunch. In any case, it’s worth calling ahead and requesting a window or veranda table. Moderate-expensive. See website for menu.

– The Trainon Palace is a part of the Waldorf Astoria Collection of hotels, Hilton’s luxury line. Though the personality of the rooms and suites is rather subdued, they are handsome and spacious and certainly attractive for business and meeting travelers. Thanks to the hotel’s situation, restaurants and Guerlain spa (with indoor pool), the Trianon Palace is also a setting from which to explore the overall luxuriance of Versailles, both the town, the palace, and the park which begins just outside, so it can certainly lend itself to a romantic getaway from Paris.

© Gary Lee Kraut

The post Two Sisters in Aquitaine Recreate Historical Wines appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Where is Allier?: The department of Allier is in the center of France within the region of Auvergne. Specifically, my destination was an area within Allier known as Pays Bourbon or Le Bourbonnais. Le Bourbonnais was the feudal fiefdom of the Bourbon family whose descendants eventually became kings of France and Spain. Spanish King Juan Carlos I is a Bourbon as is Grand Duke of Luxembourg Henri I. The capital of Allier is Moulins, 2:23 by direct train from Paris. The Allier River runs through Moulins.

Amount of time: 2 days, 1 night, but would have liked an additional day to visit more wine producers and Charolais farmers.

Local products tasted, tested, enjoyed: Saint Pourcain wines, Charolais beef, several cheeses.

Notable sights in Le Bourbonnais

In Moulins:  National Center for Theatrical Costumes and Scenography (Centre National du Costume de Scène), offers some fabulous temporary exhibits for admirers of costumes, fashion and stage performance of all kinds; Mantin Mansion (Maison Mantin), restored home a wealthy man of the late 19th-century left more or less as it was, according to his will, plus the adjacent and Anne de Beaujeu Pavilion/Museum; Le Grand Café, an Art Nouveau café-brasserie whose 1899 décor is listed as a historical monument; a walk in the old town.

Romanesque-at-heart churches near Moulins:  The Priory Church of Souvigny (Eglise prieurale St-Pierre et St-Paul), contains the tombs of the Dukes of Bourbon and is the subject of a fascinating guided tour; Saint Menoux Church, Eglise Saint-Menoux, in the village of Saint Menoux, where legend has it that sticking one’s head in the saint’s tomb (it has a big hole in the side and yes you can) is said to render the simple-minded more intelligent.

Bourbon-l’Archambault: An old spa town with ruins of the feudal fortified castle of the Dukes of Bourbon. Rooms in two castle’s towers contain exhibits that about castle life in the Middle Ages; especially designed for children but informative for all. See restaurant noted below.

TASTED, TESTED

CHEESE

Gaperon, a cow cheese with garlic and a bit of pepper. Dome-shaped, with a natural white crust, medium soft (elasticky) inside, made from raw or pasteurized milk. Not strong to the smell but with a nice little (not overwhelming) peppered garlic kick to it. Traditionally cured by hanging from a string on a hook by a fireplace. The name gaperon comes from gape, meaning buttermilk in a local dialect, since buttermilk was originally added. Its origin is actually said to be in the area of Billom, Auvergne’s garlic capital, in the department of Puy-du-Dome which is just south of Allier. For that reason it’s pared with Cotes d’Auvergne red wines, which, like the reds of Saint Pourcain tested here, are made from gamay and pinot noir grapes.

Sept-Fons, a cow cheese made by Trappist monks in the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sept-Fons in Dompierre-sur-Bresbe.

Cérilly, a very fresh cow cheese preferably made with raw milk by the cheese producing company Déret et fils. There are different versions of Cérilly, from a fromage blanc version to slightly aged versions with a crust by way of the fresh, white, mild spreadable version that I enjoyed. (Déret et fils also produces a blue cheese called Bleu Bourbon.)

Sept-Fons and Cérilly stood out among the cheeses I tried while lunching in the small town of Boubon-l’Archembault at the Grand Hotel Montespan Talleyrand, 2-4 place des Thermes, 03160 Bourbon-l’Archambault. Tel 04 70 67 00 24. This Grand is a great old-fashion 3-star hotel and restaurant with vast rooms and Louis XIV-style décor. Both the hotel and restaurant are worth the detour to this small spa town.

BEEF
Charolais. My main aim for lunch at the Grand Hotel Montespan Talleyrand wasn’t actually to discover those cheeses but rather to try a thick marbled rump of Charolais beef, simply grilled.

White or cream-colored Charolais cattle dot the otherwise green landscape in much of the Bourbonnais and beyond. Charolais actually derives its name from the town of Charolles in southern Burgundy, just over the regional border from the department Allier, so Burgundians naturally claim the Charolais as one of its own. Charolais developed from a strong workaday bovine into an animal bred for beef in the late 18th century. In the 19th century its breeding zone spread, including to the Bourbonnais, which remains a central breeding ground for Charolais.

Charolais du Bourbonnais, as the Red Label beef produced in the area is called, must be traditionally raised traditional with calves feeding on its mother’s milk then 8-9 months of the year at pasture, moving to the stable from the end of November to March, where it’s fed hay, fodder, cereal and grain.  If interested in buying a couple of local Charolais to create your own herd, here’s where.  Sheep are also raised locally for Agneau du Boubonnais. For further information on both meats see the Bourbonnais meats site.

Charolais beef is tastiest and most tender when grilled on the outside, medium rare or rarer on the inside.

By the way, grilled beef is served in France as either bleu (meaning blue), with a quick flick of less than 30 seconds on the grill, saignant (meaning bloody) with up to a minute on the grill on either side, what we would consider as rare, and à point, which might appear medium rare to medium.  Bien cuit (meaning well done) would be anything beyond that, in which case the chef stops paying attention.

WINE
Saint Pourcain
Saint Pourcain—red, white and rosé—is among the lesser known appellations in France. For those unfamiliar with the geography of the center of France—I’m still shaky on it myself—it’s difficult to situate. It’s among a diverse grouping of wines from the Upper Loire region, which is far removed from the main body of Loire Valley vineyards. The closest major winegrowing regions are Burgundy and Beaujolais about 85 miles to the east. For those with a clearer sense of the geography of wine regions in France, the zone (and in some ways the taste) can be considered as being midway between Maconnais and Sancerre.

The production zone forms a long band along the Allier and Sioule Rivers covering a variety of soils. Part of that zone, the part that I visited, is located in the Bourbonnais.

Five main grape varietals can go into Saint Pourcain, the most area-specific being tressalier used in white wines here, along with chardonnay and sauvignon blanc. All Saint Pourcain whites must contain at least 20% of tressalier even though the predominant taste is with the chardonnay or the sauvignon. The reds and rosés are made from pinot noir and gamay, a reflection of the zones relative proximity to Burgundy for the former and Beaujolais for the latter.

Friends in Paris had served as an aperitif a nice white Saint Pourcain produced by the Laurent family a few days before this trip, but here I visited Domaine Gardien, operated by the Gardien brothers Olivier (left in photo) and Christophe (right). The domain consists of 21 hectares (52 acres) of vines in the northernmost area of the Saint Pourcain production zone. The soil of their vines is clay and flint, often with white pebbles on the topsoil.

Among the Gardien brothers’ whites I preferred those with the sauvignon left out, i.e. the 80% chardonnay/20% tressallier 2007 Réserve des Grands Jours, kept en lie and in oak barrels for 6 months, bottled two years after harvest.

There must be something to those percentages that appeal to me because it was the 80% pinot noir/20% gamay 2007 Réserve des Grands Jours that I preferred it among the reds. It’s a fairly hefty dark berry wine though not to be confused with substantial reds made further east. Earlier in the day I’d had the Secret de Jaligny, a 100% old vine pinot noir to accompany a Charolais. Though considered their top of the line I found it less notable, perhaps because I’d recently been to a Burgundy tasting and had a trip to Burgundy coming up a week later.

Saint Pourcain is largely unknown in the U.S. and the U.K. and the few bottles available there may not represent the variety of offerings available closer to the production zone. Even in Paris there are few references in wine shops. Of course, this isn’t a top French wine, in fact it’s relatively inexpensive (4-10 euros per bottle in France), but it is certainly a local attraction and, at its best, a welcome change at any dinner party.

For more on Saint Pourcain wines see the official site of the appellation.

WATER
Various bottled waters from that spring-happy Vichy basin which covers part of the Auvergne region were proposed in the restaurants where I ate during this two-day visit to the Bourbonnais. Chateldon, from just south of the area I was visiting, was my choice of the occasion because less well known (to me) and more chic than the others. Fine bubbles, a smooth and easy drink.  The town of Vichy with its famous brand-name waters for drinking and spa treatment is 34 miles (55km) south of Moulins.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Tasted, Tested in Le Bourbonnais: Saint Pourcain Wines, Auvergne Cheeses, Charolais Beef appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.