Wednesday June 3rd: Beaune (Burgundy Wine Region)
We head into Beaune early to go to their daily market. We browse through the usual stalls of meats and cheeses. There are a few interesting stalls of homemade soap or hand carved wooden spoons. We eye some delicious looking raspberries (framboise) and we opt for a small carton.
We do a Rick Steve’s Tour of the town learning a lot about it’s old Hospice – a charity run hospital built in 1442. From the beginning of it’s existence as a Hospice, the entire operation was run on donations. Over the years, many large donations have been made to the organization – including large vineyards. This is reflected in the many wines of the region all bearing the name of the Hospice. The building is now run as a museum. It’s a lovely town, small and medieval. We find a very nice park to do an afternoon workout. There is even a public bathroom – a very nice bonus!
After our workout we enjoy some chili and baguette. Then it’s time for laundry! While doing laundry we read about our wine tasting options in the town and area. We grab a booklet from Patriarche winery. They offer a tour and tasting of 12 different wines for 16 euro. It’s more than we have spent on tastings (we have mostly been doing free tastings and then buying a bottle of wine), but the tour of their Caves sounds very interesting and the ability to taste 12 wines and really learn about the area and region sounds fun. So…we decide to splurge. After laundry we walk over to Patriache Winery, started in 1780.
We start our tour by being given small silver wine tasting dishes. Not like anything I have seen before. It’s a circular, small shallow dish with little dips and divots in it. We then are shown to our first video. We select English and press play. Throughout our tour we watch different videos about the history of Patriache as we tour through the production area, storage area and Caves. This winery has a network of Caves over 5km in length winding underground across the city of Beaune, dating back to the 13th Century. Originally the building was a convent: the nuns built many of the Caves and made wine. Then in 1780 it was purchased by Jean-Baptiste Patriarche.
The tour was fantastic! We got to see winery maps and learn about the Burgundy regions. We even tasted a wine that was made from the same grape, in the same year, but grown in two different areas (literally on different sides of the same hill) we were able taste and smell the significant difference between the two wines. It was amazing. We saw wines dating back to the late 1700’s and early 1800’s as we wound our way through the maze of tunnels (caves). With some “bonus” tasting we tried over 16 wines (small tastes, but still!) Then, after the tour in the retail store they had us try their Cassis (black current liquor), along with 5 other liquor varieties they make (apricot, strawberry etc.)
On our way back to the car, we stumble upon an art exchibition opening. We arrive in time to see an avant-garde msuic performance piece. It’s fascinating, and a little strange. Afterwards, we enjoy the free cookies and wine in the lobby. We hope we blend in with the locals!
After leaving we have a snack in the square, and relax a bit before finding a spot to spend the night.
Thursday June 4th: Beaune – en Route to Beaujolais
Today we don’t do much. We wake and do some cardio, before heading back into Beaune. We have decided we liked the park we worked out in yesterday and we want to do our workout there today before heading off. We stop on our way out of town and grab a bag of day-old pastries. Yummy!
After our workout we head out of town driving towards the Beaujolais wine region, but we opt for a very relaxing day. It’s very hot, so we stop into a Lidl for some fresh salad makings and a bottle of white wine. Emilie also picks out some of the local Cassis and sparkling water for a mixer. We find some beautiful green space with parking and areas in the shade and a picnic table. We have a picnic and spend the afternoon reading in the shade and sipping our white wine — Hard Life 🙂
At 6pm, in a nearby parking lot we see a Food Truck pull up: Emile Street Burger. Everytime we see the name Emile, Emilie will get excited thinking it’s something named “Emilie”, but then realize, no, it’s just quite close. We have fresh/perishable food leftover from lunch we need to eat and we do at about 6:30pm. But, when we get hungry again at 8:30pm and the food truck is still there, we opt to go grab a burger.
We share a burger with Raclette cheese, English bacon, onions, lettuce and tomato. It is very good. Plus, we are lucky because we got the last one! We like our spot, so we opt to play some cards and sip on some sparkling cassis and then head to our “bed”.
Friday June 5th: Cluny to Beaujolais
After cardio in the morning we stop at a McDonald’s for some needed internet time. We spend a couple hours prepping for later travels, catching up on some emails and the various things. One thing we do if find a winery to tour in the Beaujolais wine area. We call and schedule a tasting. They don’t have anything open for today, but we are able to schedule one for tomorrow at 12pm After this we head into the town of Cluny to grab information about wineries in the area. We find one called Cave Charnay-lès-Mâcon in the town of Charnay-lès-Mâcon. We drive around the town of Cluny, but opt to keep on heading through. It’s ridiculously hot (104 degrees) and we want to be either in the shade or inside. The winery is open and offers free tastings! We try their whites and roses because they sound much more refreshing than a red. We very much like one of their roses and we purchase a bottle for 6.60 euro. Leaving here, it’s around 3pm and we decide that we very much enjoyed our relaxing day yesterday and since we need to stay close in the area (it’s only 1 hour to the Julien Merle Winery – our Beaujolais tasting tomorrow). So, we find a very nice rest stop and relax in the afternoon in the shade (has to be – it’s so hot!). We read, snack, sip our rose and repeat. So far our France Road Trip goes very well!
Saturday June 6th: Beaujolais (Legny)
We wake-up and do some morning cardio, we eat breakfast and then drive into the little tiny town of Legny where our wine tasting is.
We want to find a little area to get a chest and bicep workout in. We find that the town of Legny is not really a town, but a couple of houses and there isn’t a park/area for us to do this. So, we head back a couple kilometers to Bagnols and we find a little square with grass, shade and a picnic table. It’s a little strange of an area because it’s centrally located and it is a busy Saturday morning. The locals kind of look at us a little funny, but — oh well!
After our workout, we enjoy an artisan ice cream in the small square, which is alive and buzzing mid-morning on a Saturday. After people watching while we eat our ice cream, we stop in at the local Patisserie for a baguette for later in the day.
We drive back to Legny to Julien Merle winery. We are greeted by Natalie, Julien’s wife. She speaks perfect English and we follow her under the house into their “caves”. The cellar is very cool in comparison to the 39* C outside temperature. We taste their wines as Natalie tells us about the winery. Julien has been in the business for 12 years and took over his father’s vineyard when he was in his 20s. Now in his 30s, Julien switched his style of winemaking early on in his career. They grow all the grapes organically and the wine is made without sulfites. Because of this, all of their wines are intended to drink young. This means that when they are bottled, they are ready to drink. In fact, they don’t age well because they don’t have the stability of the added sulfites that most wines contain.
We meet her dogs and her new “babies” (a brand new beehive full of honey bees), and walk away with 6 bottles of wine purchased. Our favorite is a red wine called Philibert, named after Julien’s grandfather. It is smooth and delicious, easy to drink and pair-able with almost anything.
We head away from Natalie and Julien Merle Winery very happy and very hungry. We stop for a snack and plan our next stop. We head towards Lyon and stop at rest stop off the highway. It’s gross, dirty, smells like urine, and there are a number of strange men all standing around staring at us. Feeling uncomfortable, we decide to move on. We drive towards the river in Lyon, hoping to find green space along it’s banks as we have in other cities. We park in a Park N Ride, but do not feel comfortable here either. Ok…we head further out from Lyon, finding a park and an empty green space area that we think might work. We hang out in the park, reading and playing basketball and soccer with an extra ball we find in the sports court.
As the sun sets, the forest is dark and creepy and local kids are hanging out in the park. Where do we sleep?? We give in and find a rest stop on an autoroute, finally stopping just as a storm comes in.
eSquaredExcursions 
Now it’s getting sp sp spoo spooky! Dark woods ahhhh
Nice work on finding wines and local food. Thanks for the stories. Well done.
LikeLike
Great information, thanks for sharing!
LikeLike