Adventures on the Wine Route

MANY CONSIDER the Beaujolais to be a part of Burgundy, but the way my mind sorts out and compartmentalizes things, Beaujolais is not even a blood relative to red Burgundy. Their soils, souls, and grape varieties are different. However, I consider the whites of the region, Mâcon, Saint-Veran, and Pouilly-Fuissé, to be proper white Burgundies. Here we have similar soils, the grape is Chardonnay, and the differences between the appellations are no more than passionately interesting questions of personality. Deciding whether to serve a Mâcon blanc or a Meursault is not a question of which is the best wine. It is an exercise in forming the most appropriate alliance between the wine and the plate it will accompany, or the environment in which it will be served. A Mâcon blanc should have certain traits and qualities which Meursault lacks, and vice versa.

The Mâcon blanc of my dreams has something gay, undemanding, and unsophisticated about it. It has a pale color. It is the whitest white Burgundy. Its aroma is, above all, fresh and direct, unhindered by sulfur dioxide, new oak, or oxidation. It smells of the countryside, of green pastures, or in riper years of springtime and wildflowers. The suggestion of chalk keeps it from seeming banal on the palate. It has a stimulating little sparkle without seeming bubbly. Mâcon blanc should be light-bodied, never above 12 percent alcohol, and it is even more useful a wine at 11 percent. It finishes crisply, which is not to say that it is thin or short on the palate, but it does not weigh on the palate. It leaves the palate freshened, the lips smacking.

Saint-Veran is rounder than Mâcon blanc, simpler than Pouilly-Fuissé. It will tolerate a bit of new oak. In fact, if production is kept to a reasonable quantity per acre and it is vinified in oak, a Saint-Veran can aspire to attract our attention while we enjoy downing it. Most important when trying to decide when to serve Saint-Veran is the fact that the size of one’s swallow will be smaller than it is when drinking Mâcon, but larger in volume than with a Pouilly-Fuissé, so the cuisine must be considered in terms of the amount of thirst, the size of the swallow it will inspire. If it is refined cuisine best accompanied by contemplative sips, most Saint-Verans and Mâcons would be out of place.

Pouilly-Fuissé is the most difficult of the three Mâconnais whites to buy because both its price and one’s expectations are higher. And it must be said that the Pouilly-Fuissé growers have been spoiled. It is too easy for them. No matter what they put behind a Pouilly-Fuissé label, it earns a good price. Sales are effortless. Consequently, most Pouilly-Fuissé are stretched in terms of yield per acre and then chaptalized to the point that they taste like fermented sugar and water. Most of them smell like greed to me.

Great Pouilly-Fuissé exists. Vintage plays a role in that it determines the wine’s style: 1975 produced unctuous, botrytized wines; 1984 produced delicate, flinty Chardonnays that blossom at table with seafood.

The difference between a great Pouilly-Fuissé and a great white from the Côte d’Or like Puligny-Montrachet? Pouilly-Fuissé, the Mâconnais region, is that much nearer the south, the Mediterranean. The locals play boules and drink pastis. The rooftops are red-tiled. Pouilly-Fuissé has a looser, warmer, simpler spirit. It is less involved with itself than a wine from Puligny; it has less complicatedness.

The Mâconnais forms a perfect sort of entrée into the world of Burgundy, in terms of both wine and place. The first time I traveled to Burgundy, trailing along with another importer, we arrived by the old highway from Paris via Auxerre, Avallon, and Saulieu. We came around a curve and he turned off the highway onto a little road, and suddenly we were surrounded by vineyards. He stopped and pointed out his window, saying, “This is Le Montrachet.” It was a dramatic way to arrive, but one could complain that it was a climactic way to arrive. After that, how much lessened was the impact of seeing the Meursault slopes for the first time, or Volnay, or Pommard, and so on?

It is more satisfying to experience Burgundy’s Côte d’Or as you would order the wines at table, beginning with something simple like Mâcon and leading into the great growths. When you start at Mâcon and head north by the route de vin through the Côte Chalonnaise vineyards of Montagny and Mercurey, you have prepared yourself for that first magical glimpse of Le Montrachet. There is a perspective. Everything is more meaningful. Even today, after countless trips to Burgundy, my favorite route is to cut west from Mâcon to Cluny and then north on D-981 toward Chagny.

In Mâcon there is a restaurant that could be the perfect setting for enjoying the regional reds and whites. The Maison du Mâconnais is located right on the route nationale, across the highway from the Saône River. It is a big, crowded place with wooden tables and benches, a ringing clatter of knives and forks in action, and people taking joy in eating. The menu is admirably short, so you can be sure that your order was not microwaved. There is a generous choucroute garnie, or a petit salé with boiled potatoes and carrots, the sort of cuisine that requires a pot of mustard on the table. Here, of all places, one should be able to order a carafe of cool, crisp Mâcon blanc, or a light, spritzy Beaujolais rouge with which to irrigate the hearty, salty fare. Dining there once with a local wine négociant, I seemed to shock him by adding cold sparkling water to the thick, flat Beaujolais we had been served, but by the end of the meal he and his wife had resorted to the same improvised concoction in order to create something thirst-quenching.

Leaving Mâcon for Cluny, one is not far from the Pouilly-Fuissé vineyards and the landmark Roche de Solutré, a cliff famous in archaeological circles because of the traces of early man found there, including a massive pile of horse bones at its base. The ancients wilefully maneuvered wild horses up the gentle slope on the back side, then stampeded the poor beasts over the edge of the sheer cliff to slaughter them. Very French. And it is at Solutré that I ate rather well myself when I stayed year after year at the Relais de Solutré, a true country inn where I could obtain sausages grilled over coals with a side order of baked apple and a righteous glass of Saint-Veran or Saint-Amour. Now the inn has been purchased by one of those big-fish-eat-little-fish hotel chains and there, out in that beautiful countryside where one wakes up to roosters crowing and cows mooing, your morning jam arrives in a tacky little plastic container. I have yet to find a decent replacement for the Relais, although the Hôtel de Maritonnes across from the Deboeuf factory in Romanêche-Thorins still opens their guests’ day with homemade jam in a clay pot.

The D-981 north from Cluny to Chagny is a little-traveled two-lane route which traverses idyllic farmland populated by the handsomest cows outside Switzerland, massive white beasts who munch the luxurious green herbage with an air of single-minded connoisseurship. The fields and occasional vineyards are broken into wild and cultivated parcels by hedgerows and stone walls, providing perfect hideaways for an off-the-road picnic. When traveling by car in France, sample the relaxing pleasures of roadside dining as the French themselves do. A picnic is so much more rewarding than the hazards of French fast-food stops. (Ours are gourmet treats in comparison.) Shop for provisions in one of the villages: some local sausages and prepared salad from a charcuterie, bread from a boulangerie, cheeses, plus an apple or pear from a fruit stand. When you see a winery sign, pick up a bottle of local wine, because once you’re outside Paris, wineshops are rare. In the marketplace you are likely to encounter some memorable personalities instead of yet another impersonal waiter accustomed to serving tourists who will never return.

The city of Chalon-sur-Saône is the source of the name of this part of Burgundy, the Côte Chalonnaise. Like Bandol or Bordeaux, Chalon itself has no vines, but it was the commercial center, the port of departure for exporting wine from the hillsides of Montagny, Givry, Mercurey, and Rully. Today Chalon is not an important wine center, but the name sticks.

I retain a good share of wine-inspired souvenirs from the Côte Chalonnaise. I have found the cellars of those picturesque, unspoiled villages to be an excellent source of red and white Burgundy at fair prices. But when I think of the Chalonnais, hare and jackass also come to mind.

I think of jackass because of the years when I bought Rully blanc from Madame Niepce, a grandniece of Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce, who is remembered in the encyclopedias as the man who invented photography. Madame Niepce had retired to the family estate and wine domaine at Rully after a notoriously wild life in Paris. She had enjoyed her share of champagne, probably from a silk slipper. She had lived it up, all right. Past extravagance showed on her face. Her clothes and her furniture were antiques, which showed taste and flair, but most vivid were the dried flowers everywhere, on every table, in every vase, up to the ceiling in each corner, and a bouquet of them, five feet across, centered on the dining-room table. Presumably there were only dried flowers because her pet jackass would have eaten them up had they been fresh. Her jackass had the run of the house. He was quite a lovely, caressable beast, but he had two flaws: he had to be let out for his toilet, and once outdoors he had an uncontrollable appetite for tender young grape leaves. Jackasses are not known for listening to reason, and finally the neighboring vignerons formed an angry association to ban his forays outside the house. Madame Niepce resisted ferociously. A free spirit, it pained her to be told what to do. However, the litter problem had she kept her jackass indoors would have been insurmountable. And after all, in Rully, wine interests are going to triumph over the civil rights of a jackass every time. She finally farmed out the jackass and replaced him with a shaggy dog of equal height and weight who displayed no gastronomic interest in grape leaves.

Hare springs to mind because of one of my own gastronomic experiences. I was staying at a friend’s house which was so crowded that I ended up sleeping on a couch in the dining room. When I awoke, I was on my side facing the open kitchen doorway, and the first thing I beheld as one eye reluctantly opened was the cook holding a wriggling little rabbit upside down by its hind legs over a pot so the blood running from its cut throat could be saved for the sauce. This is the first step in preparing a Burgundian stew called civet de lièvre, or in this case civet de lapin, because rabbit was used instead of hare. It is a stew employing the animal’s blood and liver in the sauce. Needless to say, it is a rich dish that makes an impression; some find the sauce too much. Once or twice in my life I had eaten it and liked it, particularly in late autumn when Burgundy turns icy and one’s hands and feet will not warm up. I told the cook how sorry I was to have to miss her civet, but I had already made other plans.

First I had a stop near Buxy, where the Montagny vineyards are located. After tasting, I was delighted to learn that the winemaker’s wife had prepared a civet de lièvre for lunch. Too bad that her hare was dried out from overcooking. I enjoyed it nonetheless because outdoors it was wintry and wet, and at least her civet warmed me from the inside out.

That evening I drove farther south through a thick fog to Roanne, where I had the good fortune to dine in the kitchen of the Troisgros brothers’ restaurant. It was fascinating, observing the battery of chefs in their white toques, highly organized, each with one specific task, everything handled with calm precision. Jean Troisgros announced that he had prepared something special for us that was not on the menu, civet de lièvre. His was not overcooked. Nor was his blood sauce the color of melted chocolate. The civet was actually quite fine in his version, but it is a hearty dish, no matter how delicate the cook’s touch.

ON THE ROUTE DE VIN. CÔTE CHALONNAISE

The next morning the sun came out and the dew-covered Côte Chalonnaise was radiantly beautiful. I drove up to Volnay in the Côte d’Or where I tasted with one of my producers. Then he invited me to select a vintage to uncork with lunch. We moved upstairs into the dining room and sat down to a huge platter of civet de lièvre.

My stomach spoke very clearly to me. “No,” it said.

I picked up my silverware as eagerly as possible, tried to force my eyes aglow with delight, smiled greenly, and said, “Oh là là, I love civet,” or something like that.

Alas, the poor hare had been horribly mistreated, first by the hunter who ended its life, then by Madame the cook, who had transformed its flesh into a dry, sawdustlike texture and its blood into a sauce as clotted as it was insipid. My system allowed three bites, three desperate swallows, then refused to consider anything more.

“You don’t like it?” Madame asked, horrified.

With perspiration breaking out on my forehead and upper lip, I told them about my three civets within twenty-four hours, hopelessly attempting to excuse my … whatever is the opposite of appetite.

Her civet was lousy and she knew it and her husband knew it, but I could have smoothed everything over if only I could have taken a polite nibble every so often, but I could not even look at my plate. I thought to at least rub my bread in her sauce, go through the motions, but when I envisioned it I almost had to jump up from the table. I wore a smile and swirled a 1964 Volnay and tried not to see their forks rising to their mouths.

* * *

Once outside the limits of the Côte Chalonnaise, its Chardonnays from Montagny, Givry, Mercurey, Rully, or Bouzeron are regarded as substitute wines, uncorked when the occasion does not merit or the pocketbook does not permit an expensive Meursault, Puligny, or Chassagne. H. W. Yoxall, the English author, called the Chalonnais whites “acceptable,” a choice of adjective that is not going to cause a buyers’ stampede. In The Wines of Burgundy, which was for years the only book available in English about Burgundy, Yoxall wrote, “Their bottlings should be markedly less expensive than those of the Côte d’Or; otherwise they would not be worth importing—though they are pleasant for local drinking.” Local drinking. If I read that in one more wine book, I may be arrested for the world’s first corkscrew murder.

I have developed a soft spot for the wines of the Chalonnais, particularly the Montagny blanc and the Aligoté from Bouzeron. How many people might, like myself, finish by uncorking many more bottles of Chalonnais whites than the bigger, more serious whites of the Côte d’Or had they not been put off by Yoxall’s snobbish, wrong-headed attitude? Montagny does not and should not try to taste like Meursault. It has its own charm, thank goodness.

The Parisian wine merchant Jean-Baptiste Chaudet confessed in his autobiography:

In all sincerity I came to prefer [Chalonnais whites] to the grand crus because they are lighter, more ethereal, and easier to digest. I am, I must say, a big eater, and I like to drink well and quench my thirst. I perceived that during a meal it was valuable to have this type of wine on the table, wines which do not oblige you to put on the brakes. Aside from that, the prices were more interesting. A low price does not mean that a wine is bad. And the opposite is equally true, an expensive wine is not necessarily better.

Chaudet was no wine snob, no status seeker. He liked to drink good wine, he had his preferences, and if they happened to be cheaper, so much the better.

How tempting Montagny sounds when described by the French writer Pierre Brejoux in Les Vins de Bourgogne: “Their golden green color, their fine bouquet, their taste of hazelnut, and their lightness, so appreciated in a white wine, make them seductive wines which go down easily and leave you clearheaded.”

Wine buyers who end up agreeing with Brejoux and Chaudet have money to save and pleasures to discover. And while all my wine books claim that Montagny does not age well, in 1984 I had a 1966 that stole the show at a three-star dinner at the Lameloise Restaurant in nearby Chagny. The Chalonnais is full of such happy surprises.

Another white that is not purported to age with dignity is the Bourgogne Aligoté. Come to think of it, dignity and Aligoté are not normally mentioned in the same breath. To most wine buyers, Aligoté suggests a sharp, bare-boned wine that needs a shot of cassis syrup to flesh it out and make it palatable. One of my most embarrassing faux pas involved an Aligoté. In 1974 I tasted through the cellar of Aubert de Villaine in Bouzeron, the last wine village before one enters the Côte d’Or. I told him I had recently discovered an excellent crème de cassis, and with his Aligoté I would have the ingredients for a fine Kir to propose to my clients. His expression turned as sour as a bad Aligoté. It would be unfortunate, he informed me politely through clenched teeth, to obscure the quality of his Aligoté by pouring crème de cassis into it. Oops.

He was right, and thankfully he overlooked my naïveté. I have continued importing his Bourgogne Aligoté de Bouzeron ever since, and de Villaine has come up with some notable successes. One even aged well.

Traditionally, Aligoté was celebrated for its precociousness. The Burgundians drank all of it themselves, drawn right out of the barrel, while it was still full of gunk, funk, and fizz. It was the drink in the local bars, cafés, and bistros, the perfect accompaniment for regional specialties like parsleyed ham and garlicky snails. Aligoté is by no means a wine that is expected to last, much less improve in bottle, but in 1979 de Villaine came up with something special.

First, his grapes came from the stony Bouzeron slopes, the only village deemed worthy enough to broadcast its name on an Aligoté label. From a parcel of seventy-year-old vines he barrel-fermented the juice without chaptalization. It was bottled directly from the barrel, unfiltered. Nothing added, nothing taken out! Every last bottle was necessary to fill my fifty-case order. It was a striking wine, with depth, balance, and a delicious aroma reminiscent of fresh pear and pear skin.

I saved a few bottles just to see what might develop. Every time I opened one, rather than beginning to deteriorate, the wine continued to improve. In 1986 I served my last bottle of 1979 to de Villaine and his wife when they visited California. Some creature in my cellar had devoured the label, so the de Villaines could not see what it was they were tasting. I asked what they thought it might be. At first sniff Mme de Villaine, an excellent taster, said that it showed some of the aromatic richness of a white Hermitage! Her husband said no, it was not from the south, it was more Burgundian. It might be a Meursault, but no, there was that firmness, that structure, that stony aftertaste. It might be a Chablis…?

It was still alive and really, well, quite grand in its way. A mere Aligoté. But if you are looking for great Burgundy, there is your recipe: a careful winemaker, old hillside vines, traditional vinification without excess chaptalization, then bottled unfiltered.

The recipe works for Pinot Noir, too. No grape is more sensitive to its vineyard site. In France, the Côte Chalonnaise is really the only place outside the Côte d’Or that produces worthwhile Pinot Noir. Rully, Givry, and Mercurey have excellent cuvées, and Chalonnais reds labeled Bourgogne have the possibility to be more interesting than Bourgogne from the Côte d’Or itself, because most Côte d’Or Bourgogne is from flatland vines while Côte Chalonnaise bottlings are likely to be from hillsides. A Chalonnais Bourgogne rouge might be lighter in body, but it can be more expressive, with more personality, and these are certainly the world’s most rewarding Pinot Noirs for the budget-conscious.