This morning we wake up feeling that jet lag weird. Even though we are sleeping better than we sleep at home, our heads are buzzy and we are fidgety. The third day is always the worst.
At breakfast we meet a couple from Florida. Even though we send out our best “do not disturb” mental signals, they are eager to help us enjoy our vacation. They explain travel in the wine region of France and go get us a book so that we may better plan our visits to wineries.
Escaping our new pals, we bid adieu to Auxerre and hit the road for Chablis. We choose a winery to visit and are arriving at the door when our new friends from the hotel arrive at the same time. Weird. However, the guy seems disgruntled about white wine and decides to pass on the winery.
We have a wonderful time tasting their different Chablis, so different from California’s idea of Chablis. Made totally of chardonnay grapes, it is very dry. The better Chablis have a hint of fruit. Our server is charming and once she sees that John is trying to speak French, she tries to speak English and between the two of them they communicate. We buy a bottle and thank her profusely for her time and expertise.
We decide to have lunch in Dijon. We pick out a restaurant named Les Oenophiles and set course on our GPS. After only moderate struggles we find the place with a parking space open right across the street. That has to be a good omen.
We order the offering of the day – a first course of country pate and a second of some kind of fish (cabillaud) with rice pilaf and vegetables. The fish is sadly way overcooked but the vegetables are good and the sauce is lovely. We have a glass of a 2012 St. Roman chardonnay.
This afternoon John plans a stop in Nuit-St.-Georges for another tasting. Our first try is a bust since the proprietor will not let us taste the wine unless we buy six bottles first. No thanks. We travel further up the road and find the Chateau de Premeaux. Mme Claude would be happy to share her family’s wine with us. They have been making it for five generations. She is very charming and once again John’s fractured French elicits an attempt on her part to add some English to her explanations. John buys a bottle of each wine we try. We are up to five bottles now. I wonder when we are planning on drinking all of this.
Now it’s into the car and off to Beaune where we will spend the next two nights. We are booked into Le 5. It looked nice on the internet. We are shown to our room which turns out to be a giant suite all done up in white with a zebra hide on the floor. Plus it is at the end of a endless windy staircase. This is way too many steps for me. It will take me forever to hobble up and down these stairs. We ask for a room on the ground floor. Not possible, all booked. But they are very nice and call around to find us accommodations elsewhere. We settle on the Hotel de la Poste where we’ve stayed before. Everyone is lovely and they help us find a room we like.
By the time all the hotel shifting around is done it is past 7 PM, we are tired and the best idea is just to have dinner at the hotel. The food is mostly good and we are entertained and mortified by a fellow American from Las Vegas who is some kind of grand poobah of a Buddies du Vin club in the U.S. He expounds endlessly to the waitstaff and sommelier about wine and how they have to try some decanted wine he has since it is exceptional, blah,blah, blah. John says the guy is a wine bulvon, a pretty scathing remark for John. Anyway here’s what we ate, but let it be said that the portions were small and we didn’t eat all of everything…
Not surprisingly, after dinner we go back to the room and pass out.