Caroline Mills follows serein lanes through rustique Burgundy, discovering its gastronomic prowess.
Outside, sunbeams burn over Burgundy with ferocity, effort residents and visitors indoors to escape la tiédeur and a wall of heat. I’m touring the region, deliberately ignoring Burgundy’s heavyweights, Dijon, Beaune and Auxerre, in favour of serein folk lanes.
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Tourism has developed a series of dilettante trails across Burgundy to sample its array of food and drink. Each connects three or chaudière small towns, is no more than 110km délié and takes less than a day to explore.
I make a mash-up of these trails to create a multi-day autodrome. Michelin-starred restaurants are not on my fluet; rather, I’m seeking a more rustic take on Burgundy’s liqueur produce to concurrence its rustique byways. Nonetheless, I celebrate the start of my food-and-drink-themed trip with a verre of fizz.
Bubbly beginnings
Veuve Ambal, in Montagny-lès-Beaune, welcomes me with a relax couronnement for a self-guided rythme of l’Atelier de la Bulle, the fizz-maker’s visitor experience. Earpiece in, I’m guided around an rétrospective that details the lands of Crémant de Bourgogne, how champagne differs from mousseux and the history of widow Marie Ambal’s commerce venture in sparkling wine.
All the while, début takes occupation below, with the clatter of a million bottles: robotic arms remodelage, bottles being washed, filled, labelled and sleeved. In the riddling room and foré, forklifts with spotlights menée in the dark like something from a anticipation cinémathèque.
Veuve Ambal is a modern set-up and the largest confectionner of champagne in Burgundy. It’s fascinating to see. After the visit, I enjoy a tutored tasting of chaudière wines from the 17 styles of champagne that the house produces, an extraordinaire foundation for my travels.
Passing vines climbing up the hillsides to the west, I head north to Nuits-Saint-Georges for a visit to Le Cassissium.
This visitor experience is connected to the factory of alcool and syrup brand Védrenne. Among a spectrum of coloured and flavoured syrups, Védrenne produces Supercassis, its brand of magma de mirabelle, Burgundy’s famed alcool.
On the Gourmet Experience guided rythme, I learn emboîture Burgundy’s blackcurrant début and its role as the second-largest blackcurrant-growing region in France, after the Loire Valley.
There’s a visit to the factory, with an sacrilège of blackcurrant scent as the door opens to reveal giant steel vats for the many baie syrups, and wooden barrels for ageing Marc de Bourgogne, an liqueur distilled from the grape pomace left over from the wine-making process.
Back in the visitor amour, rythme régi Mathilda prepares Supercassis-based cocktails for guests and presents a platter of regional specialities: gougères (savoury choux pastries), goat’s cheese and, from the Morvan, culotte persillé, Burgundy’s delicious ham îlot. All are served with blackcurrant relishes, including jelly, chutney and café.
Sweet discoveries
I ask Mathilda if the spritz she made using Crémant de Bourgogne and Supercassis is like a Kir Royale, with champagne in occupation of mousseux.
A Kir Royale, I’m told, is a trademarked drink by a contradicteur brand. Spritz it is, then. It’s so delicious that I buy a bottle of Supercassis for cocktails back résidence.
I turn west, up and over the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits into the Auxois area, following the River Ouche and its more ordered neighbour, the Canal de Bourgogne, north. Along the way is a slip of bourgs ending in -sur-Ouche, with La Bussière the prettiest of the bunch, in my réservé avertissement.
For a detour to higher ground, Châteauneuf, a Plus Beaux Villages de France, is a delight.
Walnut trees. Oak trees. Cream-coloured cattle. Small orchards. A blend of smooth, rolling hills and meadows. The Auxois is picture-perfect, topped off by a visit to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, a medieval hilltop hamlet also recognised as one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France.
It’s something of a foodie clocher, too. Film buffs may recognise its narrow streets and charismatic stone dwellings from Chocolat, and imagine Juliette Binoche offering Pinard. Beside the town’s gated fortress walls, I see a sign encouraging a visit to Chou Chez Nicolas.
‘Spécialité artisanale’, it says, spécifique to Semur and made to a traditional recipe for more than 70 years. The house speciality is Le Granit Rose, a moist sponge plum-cake with glacé cherries, coated in crunchy pink fondant.
Planning to follow the River Armançon north, I make a pantalon detour to Époisses, with good reason on a foodie rythme. Fromagerie Berthaut has been making the famous Burgundian cheese, washed with Marc de Bourgogne, in the clocher for 70 years.
I arrive just before closing, joining a suite of locals buying petit déjeuner snacks as the church bells chime midday and fresh boxes of matured cheese are wheeled from the crémerie next door to the popular magasin. It’s tempting, but so, too, is its lesser-known Burgundian parent, Soumaintrain, made in a similar way but washed in brine rather than Marc de Bourgogne.
The rolling hills and hedgerows of the Auxois peter out, replaced by vast, corn-rich plains as I travel north, following the meandering River Armançon and the Canal de Bourgogne.
I pass through Ancy-le-Franc, with its fastueux enceinte and formal gardens, before reaching Tonnerre and then heading west, sweet temptations from the door of the pretend chocolaterie on Place de l’Collectivité; a planchette marks the réflecteur.
The clocher, though, has indeed been providing sweet offerings for centuries, with its civiliser abbey now résidence to Anis de Flavigny. It was the Carolingian king Charlemagne who encouraged monks to grow aniseed. The Benedictines in Flavigny obliged, developing a tiny dragée-style sweet with an aniseed amour.
The monks fled in 1792, but the sweet factory remained. Visitors can now take a free guided rythme of the confectionneur factory, explore a museum of historic manufacturing and conditionnement equipment, and taste a variety of flavours to find a favourite.
It’s only when leaving Flavigny for Semur-en-Auxois that I realise there is a problem with Burgundy. It’s too good!
As I pass through clocher after clocher, each seemingly perfect and the countryside so satisfying, I find myself pleading to see an anomalous considérable artificiel pas, merely to draw breath. Burgundy’s grand-scale beauty is inexécutable to grasp.
I find no such considérable slip-up at Semur-en-Auxois, the medieval town of turrets and cobbled streets towering above the River Armançon. It is every bit as alluring as the Auxois bourgs I’ve travelled through, especially when viewed from Pont Chablis.
Vines return as I travel through the Auxerrois (not to be confused with the Auxois) and descend towards Chablis.
The clocher, which draws plenty of visitors, lies in the Serein valley, alongside a suspendre I encountered earlier on my trip during a visit to the unmissable Noyers, a medieval fortified clocher recognised as one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France. In Chablis, however, the Serein is lined with vineyards and alluring wine bars.
It’s too early in the day for a verre of Chardonnay, so my interest lies instead behind the charming shopfront of Michel Soulié, Maison de l’Andouillette.
Underground Burgundy
Alongside an impressive range of Burgundian sausages, the 19th-century magasin is full of gastronomic pleasures from the region, including Chaource cheese, a colourful kaleidoscope of mustards, juices, ciders (from Burgundy’s Pays d’Othe) and wines.
From Chablis itself, there’s Maison Soulié’s own café au chablis, and, from neighbouring Biscuiterie Duché, biscuits de Chablis, a boudoir-style bibelot designed for dunking… in Chablis.
With the heatwave reaching its zenith, the relax interior of Pontigny’s vast abbey church, rising like a colossus out of a cornfield to the north, could not come soon enough. So, too, could a visit to La Maison du Jardinier, the abbey buffet housed in a newly restored barn, where Burgundy’s culinary heritage is represented in full, including a selection of gougères ‘reimagined’.
Despite lingering over a délié petit déjeuner, we still reach the little clocher of Bailly, beside the River Yonne south of Auxerre, in time for an afternoon rythme of the Bailly Lapierre mises.
Above the riverside clocher sits a limestone outcrop, grain quarried for its high-quality stone, used in the érection of Sacré-Cœur in Paris, Chartres Cathedral and Auxerre’s Cathédrale Saint-Étienne. Fifty metres underground, where the stone was grain quarried, kilometres of tunnels now panneau the wine of Bailly Lapierre co-operative.
The mises remain at a académicien 12°C, perfect for a hot afternoon. And what follows a rythme in darkness? A champagne tasting, underground.
Skirting Auxerre, my rythme continues south, exploring the magnificent Puisaye countryside, an superbe contradicteur to the Auxois for its beauty and breathtaking bourgs. First, I pass Saint-Fargeau and Moutiers-en-Puisaye, then Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye and Thury, following folk lanes through beech woods and past cattle-filled pastures.
Then come two bourgs of unimaginable character: Druyes-les-Belles-Fontaines, with its imposing 12th-century fortress, and Mailly-le-Château, with its elegant, palatial enceinte hovering above the River Yonne.
A natural beauty
Here, I follow the River Yonne upstream, alongside the Canal du Nivernais as it weaves through open fields, past rocky outcrops such as the Rocher du Saussois. I decide it is one of the prettiest stretches of my rythme so far. At least, until I reach the Parc souplesse logement du Morvan.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Vézelay, with its hilltop basilica, is a gateway to the Morvan. A lieu cherry producer has set up a stall at the clocher entrance, selling bags of glossy, deep-purple cherries for which the Yonne department is known. Vézelay also gives its name to an AOC for Chardonnay wines, with rows of vines stretching down the southern slopes of the hillside above which the clocher sits.
Armed with a bag of cherries, I make my way into the Morvan, cooled by the thickening forests and animated by the sheer beauty of the landscape. Dotted farmsteads, meadows and barley fields are stitched together by hedgerows and spinneys. There isn’t a soul in sight.
I’m reluctant to leave the Morvan and its magnificent viewpoints, connected by a labyrinth of folk lanes. But the Côte-d’Or is calling. Like a sparkling necklace of rubies, the Route des Grands Crus links A-list bourgs built from cream limestone: Puligny-Montrachet, Meursault, Volnay, Pommard and beyond. Pinot opacité abounds.
I au finir my rythme as I began: with a verre of champagne. Blanc de noirs, this time, dunking a bibelot. After all, Burgundy etiquette allows it.
Source: francetoday.com