For the second weekend in a row I was dragged away from my adopted hometown, this time without a choice…though it wasn’t all sad news. I was needed by the family I work for to help take care of Paul and some of their friends’ children down in Burgundy, where the mother, Corinne’s, family owns a house and a wine estate. Corinne, herself, has just begun a year long wine course there and commutes between Pommard and Paris.
This particular weekend, which I was not aware of at the time, was the big 138th Vente des Vins (roughly translate as the big Wine Auction of the Burgundy vintages). Paul, Bruno (the father) and I were to leave Friday evening, driving the car down. However we after all their diddling around we didn’t end up departing until almost 9 o’clock which is quite late considering it was to be a three hour drive! Bruno set up a little TV screen in the back and Paul and I watched Madagascar 2 (to which I tried my best to explain what ‘Move it, move it’ means in French) and Austun Poweur, for all those who don’t speak French means Austin Powers. I dozed off after a while and just after minute woke to find that we were almost there. Even in the darkness I could see rows and rows of vines as far as the eye could see. We finally reached the village of Pommard just before 1am.
le guide
The house reminded me of a French farmhouse version of the house in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with all its secret, endless number of rooms and tiny,windy corridors. I wasn’t aware of what I was supposed to be doing Saturday so I just slept in, in, I must say, one of the most comfortable beds of one of their relatives. By the time I finally rose at around 10 Paul knocked on my door, rearing to give a ‘grand tour’ of the house.
Out the windows
It seemed that it was just Paul and I in the house as his Papi had gone to the markets and both Bruno and Corinne had gone to do something wine-associated. We spent the morning playing lego making extremely elaborate forts. Just before midday his parents returned, informing me that their Parisian friends were about to arrive, a couple and their two kids, Marie and Vincent, either side of Paul in age and I was to keep them occupied and fed for the duration of the afternoon. Fortunately it wasn’t too tricky as they gave Paul a new board game so they spent most of their time playing that.
By late afternoon everyone decided to walk off their heavy, long lunch and venture in to Beaune, the wine capital of Burgundy. As it turned out it was the annual Vente des Vins, a very famous yearly Wine Auction that was to take place at the Hospice. This was the reason why Corinne chose this to be the weekend we were to all come.
Apparently these speckled rooves are a Burgundy special
a wine cave
The Main Stage- an epic competition with a French twist- Fastest uncorker…
After a few hours wandering through the drizzle down the windy streets, inspecting the local produces on display at the stalls set up along the road the kids were dying to get to the manèges (the rides). As they threw balls, aimed at ducks, got tipped upside down, jumped through hoops and got spun in circles, the sky darkened allowing the streets to be illuminated by daggling chains of golden fairy lights.
spiffing projections
During the walk back to the cars we passed the church, by day it is indeed beautiful but by nightfall it was mindblowing due to the incredible projection of patterns on the façade.
What was incredible was that each pattern did not just appear on the façade they were either drawn on or fading through…it was incredible, photos, of course, do not give it any justice.
That evening the four parents headed out for a fancy society dinner, a confrérie, which as far as I can tell is something like a brotherhood society or a fratenity. The men both returned home with medals though.
The lovely grandfather stayed at home to, which made babysitting interesting as I wasn’t exactly sure what I should do. At dinner he gave me some of their house wine, which was superb, although I’m not much of a wine girl. After dinner the children went off to play and we stayed seated at the table chatting for a good hour or so about the future, travelling and languages, my favourite topics! Once I’d put the kidlets to bed, thankfully they were rather well-behaved and I only had to threaten to separate them twice before they dozed off, I head down stairs to watch the rugby with the grandfather, France vs Argentina. It turned out to be a rather informative match as I picked up lots of handy vocab that would prove useful the following weekend when I was to go to see Australia vs France, i.e. coup d’envoi- kick-off, hors jeu- offside. I also learnt however that saying Argentinians in French is quite a mouth full- lays ahrguntun (les argentins).
The next morning I again had a grasse matinée (fat morning i.e. sleep in) and as soon I finally awoke Corinne informed me to ‘just relax’ and that I wasn’t needed. Just before lunch the adults decided to go for a petite promenade to look at the vines.
After tasting a few grapes and listening to Corinne give us random wine facts she has recently learnt from her course we decided to walk into the village centre. The girls decided to go buy some foie gras from the butcher’s for lunch but the two men wanted to go do some wine tasting and decided to take me along. ‘Only for an hour’ Corinne warned before we left, ‘as lunch will be ready.’
The winemaker’s name was Patrick Clemencet
http://www.dvp-bourgogne.com/fr/producteur-domaine-clemencet-patrick.php
The wine cave looked very much like a large manor house and after walking through the front garden we found ourselves in a large room with an open fire and a large table down the centre with a large group of (slightly intoxcated) Frenchies seated looking at the wine menu and yelling out to Patrick what they want to taste next, despite the 12 or so bottles already opened and on the table.
After many wine swishes and meaningfully sniffs later, plus atleast 7 different wines tasted and the difference between grand cru and premier cru explained we decided to head back to the house. After quite a few wines I declined a refill to which Bruno said ‘She’s Australian, we need to train her!’ Once we finally left with two boxes of wine as well an extra bottle for ‘apéro’ (apperitif) we quickly realised how fast time flies as we had actually stayed almost 2 hours. Needless to say the girls were not impressed. When we finally sat down to lunch the grandfather offered me more of their house wine, a 30 odd year old bottle of red. He was so excited for me to try and, knowing that my father is a bit of a wine connoisseur, wanted to make sure that I boasted to him about my lunch-time beverage.
As a parting present he even gave me a wine coaster to give to Dad with the family’s wine house logo.
Later that evening we packed up the car and headed back to Paris. As I waited before we were off I had a peek around the garden. Corinne’s father informed me that the house has been in his family for centuries. I inquired about the stone figure etched into the wall to which he replied was St Nicolas, the patron saint of wine (not only Christmas it seems) and he then continued that the statue’s face was damaged during the revolution, yes THE REVOLUTION in 1789.
Not a bad place to babysit as it turns out…
