Une voyage à Bourgogne, France

So, I got asked on Monday or Tuesday last week if I would be interested in taking a last minute trip to Bourgogne (a region in France). It was a friend of mine, Jenny's (who is also Canadian), birthday and her friend organized a trip there. Ended up being 5 Canadians in a gigantic van rental. It was nice to be around Canadians, as I have only made two Canadian friends in my time here and it was a bit "homey", which is refreshing when living in France.

Anyways, for those of you who don't know where Bourgogne is, I found this useful map!

It is a little difficult to read, but the pink area is 'Bourgogne' and just above it is 'Ile-de-France' which includes Paris. It was about a 3 hour drive to Beaune and Dijon where we were most of the time. Although we got lost a lot and it took a lot longer to get some places than it should have haha.

Our first stop in Bourgogne was Beaune, at a 'Wine Cave' called "La Cave de l'Ange Gardien". Basically wine caves are where you taste wines (and I believe often produce their own wines as well, though all the wines you taste at a cave don't come from the cave itself). It was an AMAZING wine tasting. An older couple owned it and they were so cute and nice. It was very hard to find and we called them about 3 times lost (either there was a double address and google sent us to the opposite one we wanted, or google maps really messed up). Eventually, the husband just came and found us in our car and we followed him there (it was pretty embarassing but extremely funny and he was just smiling at us all when we finally DID get there, so he was nice about it).

We tasted 12 wines! I have never been on a wine-tasting with so many wines. He told us right away that we should drink all of the wine in our glass each time or we wouldn't make it through the tour! He explained a lot about wines of the Bourgogne region (in french too, so very good practice! And when we didn't know a word we would ask him and he would tell us in English and he even helped us with how to spell it in french).  He also gave us a page to note things down about each (so we'd remember what to buy mainly I believe, but also just for curiosity sake, which is so up my alley).  We learned, for example, wines from the region of Bourgogne can't be irrigated and they aren't allowed to mix types of grapes. As a result, every wine has a very unique taste that can be associate with the location it comes from - you can really "taste" the land they come from (which I find really cool).

Map of the wine regions I learned about in the wine cave of Beaune. Now you can see where Beaune is within Bourgogne as well. 

We tired, for example, wines from the Macon region (for example: one called 'Macon-Solutre-Povilly' which was the lightest wine I have ever tasted and he called it the one that's 'good at the time, but easy to forgot'! - very true; and another that was very expensive and he explained it as a 'wine to stop disputes' because when you are fighting with your "lover" you are to open the bottle and then after it's been opened it must be finished because it is expensive and by the end of the bottle, you won't remember what you were fighting about! - too funny), ones from the region Cote de Beaune (for example 'Cote de Beaune Villages'), Cote de Nuits (for example 'Cote de Nuits Villages'), as well as one from outside of Bourgogne. The two that I ended up buying were the last two we tasted. One was a champagne called 'Dom Vincet' that our guide told us they don't need to advertise because it sells itslef (he was right) and the other a very thick almost syrupy wine called ' Creme de Cassis de Dijon' that I have never tasted any wine like it. He explained many things you can do with the last one other than just drink it (because it is very think and very rich so you really couldn't just drink a whole bottle by itself) which included mixing the two I bought together ( and he said, and I quote, "We're going to blend them and then we'll be allowed to die").

Within the wines we tasted there was also a 'wine for men' because it is apparently an aphrodisiac for woman. As soon as we heard the ingredients we were like "Ohhhh" and then "Mmmmmm". Ingredients inclus, par exemple: du chocolat noir, du café torréfié, du tabac, et plus (dark chocolate, roasted coffee, and tobacco). As well as a wine that you don't get a hang over from! All the commentary was very interesting. Including also, some very funny quotes from our guide. For example: "In England, they don't want to just get drunk, they also want pleasure. But the drunkness is not obligatory, it's just needed" - we all laughed out loud. He also compared wine and food to a couple; the food enhances the wine and the wine enhances the food - comme un mari et une femme (a husband and wife). I will likely be giving this cave a good review online even though I normally boycott those, because that is how my friend's friend that organized the trip found them - tripadvisor had a lot of good reviews for them!

After the wine tasting we went to a little restaurant nearby suggested by the owners of the wine cave to taste some food specialties of the region. I split boeuf bourguignon and filet mignon with a mustard sauce with Jenny, as well as two local beers. It was all delicious. Since arriving in France, I have begun to acquire a taste for dijon mustard. The only dressing my host family puts on salad is dijon mustard mixed with olive oil and it has been growing on me. The mustard sauce on the filet mignon was delicious. The boeuf bourguignon was a bit like a really hearty stew - delicious and great for the freezing cold weather we had on the weekend.

Then we drove to a fromagerie 15-20 minutes away in Gevry-Chambertin. There we saw where they make the cheese and read about the process. Then we tasted 5 different cheeses (least strong to strong, which lets your taste buds adjust to the strong tastes) with a glass of wine. Before coming here I was not that big into strong cheeses, but now even the strong cheese doesn't taste that strong to me! As much as I do miss cream cheese (although last night when I arrived back from Bourgogne, there happened to be cream cheese in the host family's fridge for the first time, ironically!) and a goooood old slab of marble cheese, I am definitely going to miss eating the "stinky and sticky french cheeses' almost everyday. Here you can get them even in the grocery stores for pretty cheap, but I imagine back home they will cost me an arm and a leg (well not really, but they will be expensive).

Cheeses aging at the fromagerie 'Gaugry" in Bourgogne. I won't go into too much detail about the cheese making factory, but I feel I should note a few interesting things. For example, Gaugry treats 9000 litres of milk per day which adds up to      1 700 000 litres per year and this "transformation of milk" leads to the production of 700 000 different cheeses! This fromagerie uses only non pasturized milk (milk that has not been heated over 40 degrees C).  In a nut shell, the milk is allowed to equilibrate to 35-40 degrees C, after which there is a maturation process where the milk is acidified by the addition of a lactic culture followed by a refinement process (takes 2-3 hours). Next the milk is run through basins with the addition of a small quantity of a natural cow enzyme that allows for the coagulation of the milk (this allows for the future cheese to be molded). The resulting curds are then left for 20 hours. The next step is the actual molding of the cheese which basically involves removing the curds from the basins, cutting them, and placing them in the appropriate molds. The next step is a draining stage (which includes turning the molds 2 times), where the cheese loses 80 percent of its whey (which is the serum or watery part of milk that is separates from the curd during coagulation). The next day the cheese is taken out of the molds and put onto metal grates that are then placed in a refrigerated room to allow the surface of the cheese to dry.  Et voila - le fromage francais!

My 5 cheeses and wine :).

 After the cheese factor we just went and got snacks and wine for at the hotel. The funny thing was, we had just tasted so many great wines, and then we went and bought very cheap wine from the grocery store. But hey, we are on au pair budgets, so unfortunately, we can't always have "classy taste". Although there was one bottle that we couldn't even finish because it was so bad. In France, you can find wine that's cheaper than water.

A prime example of just how cheap wine can be in France.

 Also, here is what happens when you put 5 Canadians living in France in a room with some wine and a gigantic baguette (we could not believe how big this baguette was and just could not leave it behind):

Meet Francois-le-Pain.

I was really happy they had similar senses of humour to me! I enjoy doing silly things every once and a while (or frequently, who am I kidding) to get a good laugh. Afterall, laughter is the best medicine right?

What we devoured in a night! The hotel was abandoned! There was only one other room used, which ended up being quite nice actually; no line up and breakfast and no worries about being too loud!

 The next day we went to Dijon. We visited two churches (Eglise Saint-Michel de Dijon and Cathedrale Saint-Benigne de Dijon). In the second one we visited the crypte, which was pretty cool to see. Also, the lady that ran the crypte (normally you pay 2 euros to get in) was super friendly. She let us go in for free (we bought some postcards after so that we would be giving some money to the church still). It seems as soon as you get out of Paris the people get more friendly and helpful; it is very refreshing to experience that once and a while. We also took a quick stop at the musée des beaux-art dijon. The building was very nice (it was the museum, a palace, and the city hall). I think the coolest thing I saw there would have to have been the mummified cat in the Egyptian art section, but there were also some very lovely paintings.

The lovely and quaint Dijon.

Eglise Saint-Michel de Dijon.

Inside the church.

An example of some of the neat designs on the buildings in the Bourgogne. As you will see in some of the pictures coming up, it was often designs on the roofs, which were really cool.

Alison and I by the church.

Le musée/palais/hotel de ville. The dukes of Bourgogne used to live in the palace.

Mummified cat!

Inside the museum. I love all the roof paintings you see in France. Not only are the amazingly done, but somehow they were painted on the roof, which just fascinates me because I can't imagine how difficult that would be to do.

Cathedrale Saint-Benigne de Dijon. An example of one of the really cool roofs.

I love all the amazing organs in the churches, and this is one of the best ones I have seen yet.

The crypt.

After the second church we returned for a few hours in Beaune. We got some soup and a drink (it was freezing out and we needed to warm up). Then we went to visit l'Hôtel-Dieu, but unfortunately we lost track of time and only had about 15 minutes to visit it. I hadn't realized it was actually a museum, and that you had to pay to go into the museum in order to see the really cool part of the building! We almost didn't do it but last minute decided to speed track through it, and I am very glad we did (and you are about to see why).

The fabulous Hôtel-Dieu - the best of the roofs in the Bourgogne region! The building was built (and has been perfectly preserved wwince the middle ages) to be a hospice for Beaune. It was constructed in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin who wasthe secretary of a duke of Bourgogne (Philippe le Bon). After the war of 100 years, Beaune suffered from a miserable famine resulting in 3/4 of its inhabitants being poor. Rolin and his wife decided to create the hospice for these poor people. The polychrome roof has a entral Europane origin and its style (as I mentioned) inspired other buildings nearby, resulting in it being considered as typical and traditional of Bourgogne.

The inside was also beautiful and consisted of 9 rooms- this one being the 'Grande Salle des "Pôvres"' which means the large room for the poor.

Me - quickly taking a picture before starting our 3 hour (well, 5 including driving around a Parisian suburb for almost 2 hours looking for the drop-off point of the rental car) trek back to Paris.

Overall, it was a great getaway from Paris! I am very happy I was able to see this wine region and some of the things it has to offer! Hopefully you found hearing about my adventure entertaining! 

Until the next trip,

A