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Published: October 12th 2009
Wednesday - Religieuse, Wine Tasting and Chalon
Chocolate Nuns
This morning Nick and I are sent out to a particular patisserie Anne has discovered in the village of
Ladoix. We have been sent to buy pastries -“
religieuse”, which are cakes which are meant to look like nuns and just happen to be full of chocolate. I’m not sure why these cakes need to be shaped like nuns and called “
religieuse”? Are they meant to have any religious significance? Could I eat a big chocolate cake instead of going to church? They do bring to mind a Tom Waits song, “Chocolate Jesus”. As I’m reading through my scribblings I’m watching a news item from my local TV news and I can see a lot of people queuing up to touch the perspex case which covers another case which contains a few bits of a French saint. What’s that about? I’m not a religious person so I probably don’t understand the importance of such things but I’m sure one of the Ten Commandments fits in here somewhere. But what do I know? it’s probably just as innocent and straight-forward as eating Jelly Babies!
They are certainly full of chocolate, though,
and they do taste good!
Wine Tasting
We drive back and take a detour through some of the villages and end up in the village of
Aloxe-Corton looking for wine. I don’t know if Nick was trying to find this particular village, we seemed to get there as the result of taking a number of random choices as we drove along the country lanes. The village has several wine cellars and end up at the cellar of
Louise Perrin whose cellar has wines produced from grapes from the local vineyards. In what reminds me of a scene from a 1960s Hammer film, Louise opens up a trapdoor and invites us into her cellar to taste the wines. We’re either going to taste wine or be attacked by vampires!
I know nothing about wine! My wine buying is usually limited to buying 3 bottles for £10 in Tesco’s special offer. Nick has acquired some knowledge of wines of the area so I decide to just copy everything he does. I think I’m doing this in the vain hope that Louise doesn’t realise that we are British tourists.
We both decide to buy a couple of bottles of
Wine Tasting
Hmmm... on the dry side and rather tannic, wouldn't you say?, from the vineyards just outside the village and produced and bottled by Louise. When we later look this up in Nick’s wine guide it is described as “on the dry side and rather tanic. The bouquet is fresh (blackcurrant, gooseberry), animal (musk) and powerful.” That should go down well with a curry, then.
Chalon
In the afternoon we all drive out to
Chalon, a town about 30km from Beaune. This is more of an “ordinary” town than Beaune, which attracts a lot of tourists. Like Dijon, the centre of town seems much quieter than the centre of a similarly sized British town. There does also seem to be a greater variety of shops and less chain-stores than you would see in a British town. We spend the afternoon wandering through the shops, into the main square and down to the river (Saône). I notice quite a lot of murals painted onto houses and the bare walls of buildings. I don’t know if this is specific to Chalon or something you would see in other French towns? Nick and Anne find a street with enough variety of restaurants in to keep
them coming back for a week. Late in the afternoon we come across a museum dedicated to
Nicéphore Niépce, one of the inventors {
there were many!!} of photography. I hadn’t realised he came from Chalon. It’s a pity we came across it so late as there isn’t really time to go in.
The Last Supper
Continuing the religious theme! It’s my last day in Beaune and we go for a meal in the centre of town. In the absence of KFC and Pizza Hut, and because nobody has thought to open a Bulgarian restaurant yet, we have to settle for a French restaurant. We find our way to
Dame Tartine in the centre of town. The quality of the food and wine there is excellent and yet, fortunately, it is one of the less expensive restaurants in town. It is still an occasion when you need to have your credit card with you, though! Nick is delighted when the wine he chooses for us is also the one the wine waiter recommends to the people on the next table.
We have a wine waiter!! I don’t think I’ve ever been in a restaurant where there's been
a specific wine waiter before. We speculate as to whether he is a student at the wine school in Beaune.
This is our last supper. We should be being philosophical and putting things in perspective. I should be getting Nick and Anne to reflect on their adventure here. We’ve had too much wine for that!! We finish the evening writing songs about
Gaspard Monge.
I forget to mention Gaspard Monge in my earlier blogs, didn’t I? As all mathematicians will know, Gaspard Monge invented
Descriptive Geometry. He has a statue in Beaune, a place in the Panthéon and a crater on the Moon named after him. He is also now part of my plan to win the Eurovision Song Contest {
It’s easy, “Monge” rhymes with “Vendange”!}.
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