Driving along the Route des Grand Crus – 2011 France

Date of visit: April 26, 2011, around 5:00 p.m.

This is the first in a series of « other » visits to beautiful villages. The main part of this trip was a tour of the Burgundy region.

On April 26, we left the beautiful village and World Heritage Site of Vezelay, where we had stayed the night before, and visited several beautiful villages and World Heritage Sites, the last of which was the « Grand Cru Road ».

グラン・クリュ街道とは、ブルゴーニュ地方のシャンゼリゼとも呼ばれておりまして、ディジョンからサントネー（Santenay）に行く街道です。ニュイ・サン・ジョルジュ（Nuits-Saint-Georges）、ヴォーヌ・ロマネ（Vosne-Romanee ）など、世界的に有名な村をいくつも通ります。（※フランス政府観光局オフィシャルサイトより）

Of course, going to this place is the main purpose of this trip. I bought this kind of book in Japan in advance and prepared for it.

Just the sight of the « Route des Grand Crus » sign is enough to lift your spirits!

To be honest, I’m not that familiar with Burgundy wines, but even so, there are a series of place names that I remember hearing somewhere.

Burgundy is a world-famous wine, but my first impression of its vineyards is that they are surprisingly small and narrow. I’ve seen much larger vineyards all over the world.

The route I took was from Dijon to Beaune, that is, from north to south. There are only a few hundred meters between the villages. It’s really a series of small villages.

And after a while, we arrived at Gevrey-Chambertin, which even I know. It might be more accurate to say that we arrived in no time at all.

We decided to stop by the carve here because we were so excited. We also had to buy some souvenirs, right?

We parked the car at the right place and walked around the village briefly. The village of Chambertin may be a little larger than the other villages. Even so, it is small enough that it takes less than 10 minutes to walk across.

There were several caves in the village, but I decided to go in this one.

A cave is a wine cellar, or rather a cellar in which wine is stored, as the expression goes.

When I entered the building, the cheerful owner spoke to me in broken English. He told us that we could visit the cellar as much as we wanted. Of course, he said it was OK to take photos.

As you can imagine, it’s cool, but it’s also very comfortable with moderate humidity and temperature.

Most importantly, it’s this much wine!

After a quick tour of the cellar, it’s time for a tasting!

But I’m in a car, so I can’t really drink it. I can’t really drink it because I’m in the car. I taste it lightly with my tongue and then throw it away without drinking it.

While we were tasting, the owner explained about the vineyard. It’s in English, but the owner is not that good, so it’s just fine for me. He explained while looking at a map like this one.

The atmosphere of the restaurant is like this.

I ended up buying 3 bottles of wine here from the ones I tasted.

Now we are back in the car and heading further south along this Grand Cru road. On the way we took some photos of the Chambertin vineyards.

We drove slowly along the road, taking photos and videos for a while, but we bought some wine again at Vougeot, a short distance from Chambertin.

Vougeot was the wine I was most interested in. But it was heavy and rather expensive, so I only bought one bottle. Actually, I regret that I should have bought more…

Then we continued to Vosne-Romanée, which is next to Vougeot. Yes, this is the village that produces Romane-Conti.

Unfortunately, by the time we arrived here, it was around 6 p.m. and the shops selling wine were already closed. But where is it?

Foursquare was a big help in this situation. There is a proper checkpoint!

It also has a map function so I was able to find it very easily. It’s a great location-based app. Thanks for the international packet flat rate.

(A later story, part 1)

The story of Romanée-Conti, which appears below, was not actually Romanée-Conti. It seems to be the vineyard next to it. I was told by a person who read our blog.

I changed the text a little based on that. So, please look at it as if you’ve been there (laughs). I’m sure you’ve actually seen it (right…).

Thank you to the commenter for pointing this out.

(Since you have requested that your comment be deleted, I will be presumptuous and respond in this manner.

The Romanée-Conti Grand Cru vineyard (*corrected later: it was actually the vineyard next door) is here!

At the entrance of the field, there was a nameplate like this.

(Postscript #2)

In fact, this is La Grand Lieu, which is next to Romanée-Conti. It is also a famous vineyard owned solely by François Lamarche. (Information from the person who pointed this out to me)

I mean, it’s written correctly ^^^.

Oh yeah, when I checked in here, I was told I had one more day to become a maître d’, so I went back the next morning and got my maître d’!

But now he’s lost his spot as a Mayer….

Also, as usual, I was sightseeing while doing tweaking. Just around 5:00 local time is around 12:00 pm Japan time, so I was able to see relatively many people on tweaking.

« From the Tweedledee archives.

Although the villages were smaller than I had expected, and the vineyards may not be as large as I had imagined, I enjoyed the « Grand Cru Road » much more than I had initially imagined, as it was lined with the names of some of the world’s most famous wines.

And above all, I learned a lot about Burgundy wine.

The reason for this is that once you’ve toured the region on your own, without any help, you’ll become more familiar with the geography of the area, which is directly related to becoming more familiar with the brands of wine.

After Vosne-Romanée, we went further south along the Grand Cru road to the town of Vosne. We stayed here on this day.

P.S

The wine I bought at this time is still sleeping in our wine cellar.

関連日記：ワインセラー届きました！

You went out of your way to buy it for this purpose.

+LOUNGE フルフラットタッチパネル仕様 12本収納ワインクーラー LNE-W312B <34467>

いつ飲もうかな…。