Côte de Beaune

We hopped into the car and headed south of Beaune along the D973, which is the ‘route des grands crus’. The villages of Mersault, Puligny Montrachet and Chassagne Montrachet are all in this area. This is the view of Mersault from Monthelie.

Before visiting these villages though we wanted to drive up to Saint Romain, a small, quiet little village tucked in at the back of the côte de Beaune. They produce both red and white wines here. We had tasted and bought some whites the previous day and were interested to see the area. I have to say it’s a beautiful little village, and one I’d love to come back to and stay in. I suggested to Brian it would be wonderful to really immerse ourselves in tasting the wines from this small village, and what a better way to do it than stay here a couple of days, but that’s for another trip.

We found a nice little spot to enjoy our ‘jambon beurres’ (it’s a baguette, cut in half and slathered with butter, a bit of mustard and a good slice of ham). I’d made them up following our trip to the market in the morning.

We then headed down to Mersault for a wander around this beautiful Burgundian village, full of white stone houses, and majestic buildings. Mersault is an important village in this extremely wealthy wine growing region, and it’s buildings reflect that.

This is the church in the main square of Mersault, which has a very distinctive steeple that can be seen from miles around.

We then drove to Chassagne Montrachet via the village of Puligny. When we first visited this little village, some 15 years ago, it had a local brasserie and a couple of pleasant hotels. There are now probably 6 or so large 4* plus hotels, and a number of restaurants.

We were planning to do some tastings at a cooperative we knew in Chassagne Montrachet, but unfortunately when we arrived there they would only sell us wine, we could not do a dégustation. It became apparent that due to the very bad years of 2020/21, and their damaging frosts and then mildew, a lot of producers were conserving their stocks and not offering tastings.

There was concern again this year that the extremely low temperatures in the April dawns were going to be detrimental to the vines. We saw a lot of burners and mechanical windmills strategically placed throughout the vineyards, especially the clos of the Grand and Premier Cru’s. They are investing and working hard to protect their crops this year. Thankfully though it looks like a cooler March has meant the buds were not as advanced this year and the crop is mostly safe, for now.