Burgundy Trip Report (Sep 2021)

Just got back from a lovely and all-too-short trip to Burgundy - though my liver, waistline, and wallet would claim it was all-too-long.

Travel
As an American, you don’t need to take a covid test before heading to France, but you do need to be fully vaccinated and provide written attestation (the “Statement of Honor” word doc on this page - not the first one). The immigration agent in Lyon barely even glanced at my attestation. YMMV - but print it and bring it with you as it’s a legal requirement and the right thing to do. Everyone was wearing masks (almost all correctly too!) without complaint - how refreshing. There were almost no cases (<40/day) in the Beaune region thanks to masks and the pass.

You no longer need to email the French government a bunch of sensitive info to get your CDC card converted to a pass sanitaire - you can now do it through this website. Mine took about 21 days to process and I filed on the second day of the website’s existence, so uh, get to it ASAP for your trip. Shops weren’t asking for the pass, but restaurants were diligent about it which was refreshing. If your pass doesn’t land in time, you can either try to show your CDC card (other Americans I ran into said they had no problem with this) or walk into any pharmacy and get an antigen test for about 20 euros. You’ll receive a pass that’s good for 72 hours. Load it into the French AntiCovid app so you don’t have to carry the paper around with you - it’s also a valid way of presenting covid test results at the airport. Some people had early luck with getting pharmacies to do the conversion for them but I’ve heard the government has clamped down on that and they’re now supposed to direct people to the embassy for assistance (that’s what the pharmacy I went to said).

If you’re connecting at London Heathrow between now and ~10/5, you’ll need a pre-departure covid test and to book and pay for a Day 2 test even if you’re only going to be in the country for 45 minutes. Find a place in rural England that realizes it’s a cash grab for £20 and just never show up (bookable London options tend to be over £80). You’ll also need to complete a passenger locator form which becomes invalid if you change seats or get upgraded (you need to start from scratch and resubmit). I strongly recommend direct flights to avoid this hassle. The UK now uses automated border control for US passports so I didn’t get my stamp which makes me sad as I like to collect the stamps in my passport - but it also made things a lot faster.

The Verifly app will save you a lot of hassle at the airport too, as you can upload all of your forms and get them validated ahead of time and not have to dig them out of your bag to present them to the check-in agent.

Accommodations
I stayed in an airbnb in downtown Beaune and would 110% do it again, though I’d also consider staying at a winemaker’s gite if it meant that I got to taste with them (no, CLB will not let you taste there if you stay in their gite). It meant I could make a light breakfast every morning and continue to follow bottles over the course of a week.

Restaurants
I managed to avoid the curse of bad glassware in France, so I consider myself lucky. The only bad food I had was a sub-par gelato cone from a chocolate shop in Pommard. Everything else was very good to excellent, but boy do consistent three course meals start to take their toll on your body.

La Table du Square (Beaune). Had a lovely meal here al fresco - the roast chicken was excellent. Paired it with a 2016 Cecile Tremblay MSD which was incredibly underwhelming. This would be a great place for groups, and the crowd was mostly locals which meant that it didn’t take long before lots of people were lighting up and the scent of perfume often wafted over as well.

Auprès du Clocher (Pommard). The view from this restaurant overlooks the center of Pommard, including the church. It’s gorgeous, and the food is excellent. Had a 2017 Marc Roy Gevrey-Chambertin Cuvee Alexandrine that was firing on all cylinders from open.

La Table de Levernois (Levernois). This was the nicest meal of the trip and the fanciest restaurant I dined at, but also wound up having the most expensive wine list. There are few real wine bargains to be had - a Raveneau 1er will usually set you back under 100€ at good restaurants in Burgundy, but the 2014 Vaillons was 170€. Still a good deal in absolute terms, just don’t expect fire sales. They supposedly have half bottles of Mugneret-Gibourg custom bottled for them, so I snagged a half bottle of 2017 Mugneret-Gibourg Chambolle-Musigny 1er Feusselottes for 120€. This was the wine of the trip for me. Just sublime and held up over the next day (it pained me to save some from the half bottle but I’m glad I did).

Le Soufflot (Meursault). What can I say about this place that hasn’t already been said? This is a must-go spot with a vast well-priced wine list. The meal was fantastic and the setting sophisticated without being too fussy. Picked up a 2009 Jacques Selosse Millésime which was infanticide (disgorged in 2020) but went well with the food (especially the gougeres).

Le Maufoux de Beaune (Beaune). A sister restaurant to Le Soufflot, this has a much smaller wine list (but is just as well-priced) and simpler bistro food. A Comtes-Lafon Meursault Desiree was a great pairing to the meal and really well priced.

La Dilettante (Beaune). The most casual spot I dined at, with a refreshingly light salad and a main of slivered pork in miso broth. This was a breath of fresh air after a bunch of heavy meals. Wound up grabbing a bottle of Brasserie des Voirons blood orange saison and a glass of aligote off the list.

Le comptoir des Tontons (Beaune). Also a pretty casual spot with an absolutely bonkers wine list - DRC as cheap as 650€. I had an incredible meal of duck and some sort of mousseline, and tried a 2016 Boisson-Vadot Meursault 1er Genevrieres and a Bruyere Houillon Arbois (Chardonnay/Savagnin blend). The Meursault actually stood up to the duck, and the Houillon was refreshing and went great with the cheese course.

Tastings and visits
I am not Dwyane Wade, and did not get the Dwyane Wade treatment in Burgundy (Fourrier - bubby - why won’t you answer my emails?). I did the mid-tier Joseph Drouhin tasting and tour which was fun, but the tasting aspect was compromised by being in the cellar, so all you could really smell was mold and mildew. Everything tasted fine though - they’ve really upped their quality as of late.

I got into Marchand-Tawse and had a wonderful tour of everything during harvest (processing of grapes, cellars, everything). Their 2018 Gevrey was a bit of a dense mess but everything else I tasted was very good and their 2019 Gevrey is really something special (even given what I tasted over the week). Their wines are much more hit than miss for me, and are really reasonably priced for Burgundy, so if you haven’t tried this producer you probably should.

Thanks to Pierre Brisset, I was able to observe and even participate in harvest at the Chassagne-Montrachet Abbaye de Morgeot vineyard. This was a magical once-in-a-lifetime experience - to pick grapes that will end up as wine that I can buy in about two years. The Chardonnay was just as impacted as everywhere else I saw: yields were down 60-80% and what was there on the vine was often impacted by oidium or rot. There was enough good grapes that they’ll still be able to make some excellent wine (maybe with less concentration than usual), but this was a hard year for white wine in Burgundy. Montrachet looked just as sad.

I did a half-day bike tour via Burgundy Bike Tour which took us from Beaune to Meursault and back, via Volnay and Pommard. The weather was absolutely perfect - 70F and sunny - and the pace of a bicycle meant you could really study the vineyards and see where ownership transitioned between adjacent rows of vines as the trussing and training would change (sometimes slightly, sometimes significantly).

Bottle Shops
I’m not going to bother listing all of the bottle shops I stopped at, as I probably hit a dozen all up and down the region, and I’m just here to tell you that unicorns are unicorns even in Burgundy, so glhf. Nobody is going to sell you unicorns off of a restaurant list, and bottle shops just don’t have them. I found a spot with Coche-Dury reds at reasonable prices (100€ for Bougogne Rouge, 200€ for Meursault Rouge), but you couldn’t buy them alone and had to buy at least a couple other bottles. If you want to find back vintages of stuff and aren’t too picky, or want to find good deals on bottles that are impacted by the Kermit tax, you’re in luck - but don’t expect to find bottles you see on Instagram anywhere. The locals have realized that the internet is a thing and that arbitrage is a thing and so you’ve got places like Prestige Cellar that can professionally comb the local shops over and over and then flip the wines on the internet at several multiples.

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Geoff - Thanks for the great update. Leaving in a few weeks so the Covid pass info was helpful. We put in our request last week so hopefully it arrives in time.

George

Fantastic post for anyone traveling and helps a lot for proper expectation setting, both wrt travel and wine. The difficulty getting tasting appointments and finding cherries in wine stores was present back to 2019 as well…

The pricing at Levernois has unfortunately really escalated.
1er Cru Raveneau was under 80€ there not too long ago.

In regards to finding the rarities at merchants, I think you are absolutely correct.
Retailers like Prestige, and a couple of others, are combing merchants and grabbing bottles that used to be available to walk ins.

What types of bottles are/were getting scooped up?

Whatever you would hope to find in a shop, that is worth the hassle of lugging through the airport, that is what they are buying.

There is still plenty of wine out there, you just need to get away from the usual suspects.
Or know the owner and buy some wine that they actually want to sell.

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i would say beaune is the last place i would visit looking for great deals on sought after wines. surely you can find pretty much anything there, but the top bottles are still guarded. less renowned regions of france, or even better yet spain and italy are where the best discoveries can be made in my experience.