It may be bloody cold but there are some advantages to living in a wine growing area
The end of January in Burgundy sees the celebration of the feast of St Vincent, patron saint of vignerons, otherwise known as an excuse for a bloody good knees up in all the wine villages of the region.
The biggest and most elaborate of these is the St Vincent Tournante festival organized by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin and hosted by a village in one of the Burgundy appellations on a rotational basis. Over the years the festival has grown far too big for any one village to handle, so this year saw a big change, with sixteen villages in the Hautes Cotes de Nuits acting as joint hosts.
We were determined to go, despite both being dog-tired as we’d had guests in the previous night, and it turned out to be worth the effort.
People who’d been to last year’s, which was hosted by Beaune, said it came over as far too touristy and was rather expensive. Unsurprising, really, as Beaune is one of the main tourist centres of the region and therefore used to doing things on the grand scale. This year, as far as I can judge, the organizers seemed determined to take the festival back to its roots. In my opinion they got it right.
The whole thing was a logistical problem on a grand scale. In order to avoid country roads being jammed with cars as visitors traveled from village to village, cars were banned completely from the festival area. You arrived at one of two gathering points, bought your entry pack (consisting of a tastevin, or tasting cup, a map and a book of tickets allowing you to taste at the caves of ten wine-growers) got on one of the buses traveling round a circuit from village to village, stopping wherever you liked to sample the wine of that village, watch the entertainment going on, or simply wander about admiring the decorations. When you got tired of that you could catch the bus to the next village, and so on.
It was the smaller villages that made the most effort, and some of the decorations were superb. The village of Corgolin, in which the theme was autumn, had pumpkins and squashes everywhere you looked, paper leaves of seasonal colours attached to the vines and papier-mache mushrooms on every corner. In one village where the theme was spring a group of carved wooden rabbits frolicked on a grassy bank, and in villages where the theme was summer people had made paper flowers and painstakingly attached them to rose bushes or used them to turn planters full of ivy into pretend geraniums. Walls were adorned with jokey poems, while in front courtyards dummies dressed up in appropriate gear formed little tableaux of daily life down the centuries.
So what of the wine which is, after all, supposed to be the main point? After a day spent sampling it I have to say that I don’t like the wines of the Haute Cotes de Nuits as much as those of our own Cote Chalonnaise but that’s just personal preference. Also, these events are not really conducive to actually tasting the wine. After the sixth place they all start to taste the same and your sense of smell is shot. It was noticeable that there wasn’t any spitting out going on, either. The whole thing was just an excuse for visitors to wander around getting mildly sozzled and having a great time. At one of the caves we went to, I noticed one family who’d bought a selection of nibbles with them and were having an impromptu apero session. None of the participating wine-growers seemed to be too bothered about taking our tickets and I’m sure quite a few people went back for seconds. There was, however, a fair amount of wine being sold, as many people were wandering around with bottles and gift carriers.
As we caught the bus back from our last port of call the festival proper was winding down and the locals were beginning to come out of hiding. I got the feeling that the real party was just beginning. Each village had a banquet scheduled for the evening. These events tend to feature an awful lot of eating - and drinking - lasting sometimes until four or five in the morning. I don’t think anyone locally started work early the following day and I bet there were more than a few sore heads.
As for us, we headed home, cooked ourselves egg and chips and opened a bottle of Cahors.
Sometimes you just need a change.
MM
The biggest and most elaborate of these is the St Vincent Tournante festival organized by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin and hosted by a village in one of the Burgundy appellations on a rotational basis. Over the years the festival has grown far too big for any one village to handle, so this year saw a big change, with sixteen villages in the Hautes Cotes de Nuits acting as joint hosts.
We were determined to go, despite both being dog-tired as we’d had guests in the previous night, and it turned out to be worth the effort.
People who’d been to last year’s, which was hosted by Beaune, said it came over as far too touristy and was rather expensive. Unsurprising, really, as Beaune is one of the main tourist centres of the region and therefore used to doing things on the grand scale. This year, as far as I can judge, the organizers seemed determined to take the festival back to its roots. In my opinion they got it right.
The whole thing was a logistical problem on a grand scale. In order to avoid country roads being jammed with cars as visitors traveled from village to village, cars were banned completely from the festival area. You arrived at one of two gathering points, bought your entry pack (consisting of a tastevin, or tasting cup, a map and a book of tickets allowing you to taste at the caves of ten wine-growers) got on one of the buses traveling round a circuit from village to village, stopping wherever you liked to sample the wine of that village, watch the entertainment going on, or simply wander about admiring the decorations. When you got tired of that you could catch the bus to the next village, and so on.
It was the smaller villages that made the most effort, and some of the decorations were superb. The village of Corgolin, in which the theme was autumn, had pumpkins and squashes everywhere you looked, paper leaves of seasonal colours attached to the vines and papier-mache mushrooms on every corner. In one village where the theme was spring a group of carved wooden rabbits frolicked on a grassy bank, and in villages where the theme was summer people had made paper flowers and painstakingly attached them to rose bushes or used them to turn planters full of ivy into pretend geraniums. Walls were adorned with jokey poems, while in front courtyards dummies dressed up in appropriate gear formed little tableaux of daily life down the centuries.
So what of the wine which is, after all, supposed to be the main point? After a day spent sampling it I have to say that I don’t like the wines of the Haute Cotes de Nuits as much as those of our own Cote Chalonnaise but that’s just personal preference. Also, these events are not really conducive to actually tasting the wine. After the sixth place they all start to taste the same and your sense of smell is shot. It was noticeable that there wasn’t any spitting out going on, either. The whole thing was just an excuse for visitors to wander around getting mildly sozzled and having a great time. At one of the caves we went to, I noticed one family who’d bought a selection of nibbles with them and were having an impromptu apero session. None of the participating wine-growers seemed to be too bothered about taking our tickets and I’m sure quite a few people went back for seconds. There was, however, a fair amount of wine being sold, as many people were wandering around with bottles and gift carriers.
As we caught the bus back from our last port of call the festival proper was winding down and the locals were beginning to come out of hiding. I got the feeling that the real party was just beginning. Each village had a banquet scheduled for the evening. These events tend to feature an awful lot of eating - and drinking - lasting sometimes until four or five in the morning. I don’t think anyone locally started work early the following day and I bet there were more than a few sore heads.
As for us, we headed home, cooked ourselves egg and chips and opened a bottle of Cahors.
Sometimes you just need a change.
MM