Tag: <span>France</span>

travel ideas, abbey du FontaineFrance is just ridiculously charming. The vine-covered houses, stone walls, chipping paint, corner bakeries, family chateaus, all of this unabashed cuteness can leave you in a blur–but with a good guide, all the delicious details start to come into focus.

Throughout the five-day William Ethan Experiential Art tour, Ethan took us to his favorite little villages and vistas–the places that resonated the most for him over his three years living in Burgundy.

Here are a few spots that will be hard to forget.

France travel guide William Ethan Dupree
Outside the Abbaye du Fontaine (here and above), Ethan takes us to the beginnings of Burgundy wine making: a Cistercian abbey. This hardworking sect of monks tamed the fields around 1100 AD and the wine has been delicious ever since.

For an entirely different abbey experience we went to L'Abbaye de la Bussière, which has been converted to one of the amazing Relais & Châteaux hotels. This little sitting area was where we relaxed after a lunch of escargot and other French delicacies.

travel-ideas-Beaune
When it came to shopping, the small city of Beaune completely delighted me with its Saturday market. Snacking on pastries, we shopped for antiques and ingredients for that night's meal.

travel to burgundy's chateau-commarin
Don't let the foreboding gates fool you, anyone can walk around the grounds of the Commarin family's chateau. Pay 2 euros at the self-serve turn style of this private/public property and you can peer into their moat and take pictures with their statues. What a clever way for owners of historic homes to pay the landscaping bills.

travel to a Burgundy chateau
To add to the magical nature of Château Commarin, there were these tight little mushroom colonies all over the yard. This is one photo of many in Mike's fungi series.

Old-world charm is a severe understatement for the town of Flavigny--from the Les Anis de Flavigny candy shop which has been using the same recipe since 1591 to La Grange restaurant, a farmer collective that only serves food grown on their neighboring properties.

French antique door
Whether Flavigny or near any little town in Burgundy, the antique doors with original hardware had me swooning!

French stone homes covered in leaves
And wobbly-looking stone houses covered in fall foliage...need I say more?

Sitting along the town walls of Chateauneuf, I take in the view of wine country and ponder my return to Burgundy.

Places

vineyard design travelMike and I aren’t usually for organized travel tours but, with our friend and winemaker Ethan at the helm, we decided to give it a shot. Ethan had been studying wine in Burgundy, France for the past few years and became so passionate, so knowledgeable about oenology and the region that he decided to start William Ethan Experiential Art: An educational and culinary adventure through the vineyards, cuviers, cellars, and towns of the Côte d’Or and beyond. When we heard about this tour, we signed up on the spot.

Home Basedesign-travel to Boulliand
design-travel-chateauTogether with our good friends Matt and Hillary, we based our five-day adventure in the cliffside town of Bouilland and specifically  in this unbelievable 15th-century farmhouse.

design-travel-diningThe house had every bit of romanticized French-country charm and did not disappoint with antiques, winemaking relics, and a nice touch of contemporary details.

The Cuisinedesign-travel-chef Food is an integral part of the wine experience, so Ethan spared no expense and got a personal chef. Jean-Luc was an unbelievably talented cook and a total pleasure to be around. We’d hang out with him in this to-die-for kitchen having aperitifs as he prepared dinner (anything from beef bourguignon to moules marinieres).
picnicFor lunch, we’d usually have a picnic overlooking something breathtaking. Here we are above the Haute Côte, gazing out to a sea of vineyards, while eating jambon blanc and camembert sandwiches and sipping Beaujolais.

The Vineyardsvineyard design Burgundy is gorgeous year-round but during the fall, it’s abuzz with beauty. We arrived in the final moments of harvest and saw everything from the labor in the fields to the closing celebration in the streets.

france-wine-toursThe workers still pick grapes by hand but also typically have these wacky-looking tractors in tow. The height and width of the space between the tires is made to perfectly maneuver over and between vines without knocking a leaf! They help tend to the soil while their bins give workers a place to store the fruit.
vineyard-houses Adorable little houses called cabouttes appear in the depths of every vineyard.  Historically, they were used as a place for workers to take lunch or find warmth. We rode our bikes to this spot for the dreamiest picnic.

CuveriesBurgundy-wine-tours While biking from vineyard to vineyard, Ethan ran into a friend outside Domain de Montille. His buddy was running around like a mad scientist trying to get all the grape fermentation underway, but still found time for an impromptu cuvier tour. Massive oak barrels filled the room, all with chalk-written notes keeping track of the temperature, sugar and alcohol levels. Here, I got to take a peak  into the pit of pinot noir grapes.

Caveswinery travel Rows of wine barrels await bottling at the Domaine Boyer Martenot, where I bought the said-to-be amazing 2007 Mersault-Charmes Premier Cru. Now I just need to wait ten years before it matures to perfection…We’ll see if I can hold out.

Newfound Wine Knowledge
The better the land, the better the wine.
design-travel to wineriesGrapes
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are basically the only two types of grapes grown in Burgundy (Gamay and Aligoté are grown where the soil isn’t so rich in limestone).

Land
More than any winemaking region in the world, wine in Burgundy is all about the land. A wine’s caliber is defined by the quality of the exact patch of soil the grapes came from. A vineyard is sometimes limited to a few rows of grapes because that mix of soil,  pitch of land, and sun it receives may be so perfect that adding more rows could taint the wine.

Wine Labels
The reason why Burgundian wine labels are so complex is that you need the name of the region, estate, plot, bottling location, and winemaker to identify the wine (cute names like Red Truck or Seven Deadly Zins don’t cut it). Those who truly understand the wines of this region, know the location of the grapes and the skill of the winemaker on an intimate level.

And wine was just the beginning…Stay tuned for our tour through some of the most charming towns in French wine country.

Places