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| Best street: world. |
We met Dan Smith for un cafe and then went driving around the champagne region in search of some places that would let us degust their champagnes.
There are so many small towns in the area apparently each of these towns can have a couple of hundred winemakers using the grapes from it. The some of the areas having been designated as grand cru have little tombstones in front of the vines that belong to that champagne maker.
We found a champagne house called Paul Goerg that seemed deserted at first, but after a bit of back and forth in broken French and English the lady realised that we wanted to cain the champagnes. Its not like Australia where they have cellar doors and it's expected that you drop by and taste everything, the houses are kind of more like offices and they're probably trying to run a business before we barged in through the front door. I think you're supposed to book at the very least. Anyway we tried some of the champagnes and felt bad that we had rocked up unannounced so we purchased a bottle of one of the blanc de blancs for around 16 of the euros.
The lady at next place Larmandier-Bernier was particularly worried that we hadn't made a booking but fit us in for a tasting anyway. We tried their brut and also their 2006 vintage single vineyard grand cru blanc de blac. The vintage one tasted awesome and I had to have a bottle. So I said immediately I'll take that. Probably should have checked the pricing first as it was 40 of the euros. I guess we'll have to save that for a special occasion. Luckily Heidi's birthday is coming up soon.
After that purchase our champagne budget was done and we headed back to Epernay. We went back to our favourite champagne tasting bar C. Comme and had another glass then said goodbye to Dan and went onward to Dijon.
We navigated our way to Dijon without too many troubles and checked into the hotel. Dijon is a relatively small town and there wasn't too much going on when we arrived. Anyway after a bit of a wander around we found some people having their afternoon wine at a bar called La Comedie. This bar was quite buzzing and served carrot sticks with aoili with every drink round which is probably the healthiest meal we've had all trip.
Hunger was getting to us, so we went off in search of a dinner. We came across the main square which is quite spectacular after you've walked around a pretty quiet town. Also we managed to score a pizza and bottle of rose for 25 of the euros.
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| Panaramic of the main square. |
The next day we went out to get un cafe and the town was swarming. The markets were all setup and every man and his street pooing dog was out and about. We just had a couple of coffees and people watched until it was a reasonable hour to order some vin ie. 11am. Then we went and got a wine from the middle of the markets at a wine bar.
In Dijon there's an owl trail, which is a walking trail to view all the sights. The architecture in Dijon is interesting, they have kriss kross thingys through a lot of the houses in the inner city. Its pretty fun trying to find the owls embedded in the side walk especially once you hit the areas they're digging up to put in the new tram transport system. After we lost the last owl we came across a wine merchant who did tastings. He specialised in the Burgundy region, so gave us a lot of insight into the styles areas and grapes used. Also how "grand crus", winemaker and grapes are all attributed to the taste of the wine.
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| They love their XXXX so much in france their buildings are a tribute to it. |
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| This was an owl a while ago but I think everyone rubs it for good luck |
For dinner, we went to a quiet place and had some snails for entree. They were pretty tastey, but to be honest soak anything in parsely, olive oil and garlic and its hardly going to taste bad is it?
So one last thing we found out they do call Dijon mustard(moutarde) "Dijon Moutard" here too.
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