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- Food<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
28 August, 2018<\/p>\n
The supermarket in Chatillon-sur-Seine, in northern Burgundy, does not sell New World wines. You would struggle to find even a cheese that was from outside France, and the choice is strongly weighted towards products of the region: there are six or eight kinds of Chaource, maybe 12 of Comt\u00e9. I think we found a single gorgonzola. It offers a brilliant and varied choice \u2014 as long as it\u2019s French. I found more kinds of lardons than I could possibly have imagined \u2014 but no pancetta. I wonder what happens if a Chatillonais wants a curry. The only time I saw a non-French wine was in the duty-free section of the Terminal Charles Dickens in Calais. I should\u00a0 add that I was in France around the time of the Juillet 14 celebrations (marked with a massive pop concert on TV) and the French World Cup victory. It is possible I experienced maximum Frenchness.<\/p>\n
Chatillon is the land of cr\u00e9mant de bourgogne \u2014 geographically next to Champagne, making wine by the same method. One local producer told us that until the time of Napoleon, their vineyard had actually been Champagne. It is definitely la France profonde. A New York Times piece from 1952 describes the town as \u201csmall, not even attractive . . .\u00a0 in a region few people have reason to visit\u201d. Today the official major attraction is the Route du Cr\u00e9mant. If you drive 45 minutes one way you can visit the Cistercian Abbey of Fontenay. The same distance in the other direction gets you to the Charles de Gaulle museum and memorial at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.\u00a0 But the occasion for the NYT article was the discovery of the Vix Grave \u2014 evidence that at one point Chatillon was a well-connected centre of wealth. <\/p>\n
In the Chatillon town museum is a bronze krater (wine-mixing vessel), found in the nearby village of Vix, of a completely bonkers size. It weighs more than 200 kg and it\u2019s 163 cm high. It would hold 1,100 litres. You can picture yourself climbing into it with ease and comfort. As a practical object, as a display of wealth and luxury, it\u2019s totally excessive. It was buried around 500 BC in the grave of a woman whose identity is unknown but who we can infer was extremely important, along with her chariot, jewellery and so on. As the NYT slightly cruelly put it in 1952: \u201cThe krater is a reminder that a barbarian woman living in this part of France 2,500 years ago may in some ways have led a more sophisticated and cosmopolitan existence than most of the local women a visitor passes in the streets today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The modern woman in Chatillon does have an advantage over the Lady of Vix \u2014 I feel sure that wine today is better. And if she wants education she can go to the the Oenocentre Amp\u00e9lopsis, ten minutes from Chatillon, where the proprietors of Domaine Brigand have created a very enjoyable (and playful) museum of winemaking and wine history, covering everything from vine-growing to fermentation, pruning and diseases. The 120 vines in their \u201cJardin de Bacchus\u201d, each pruned according to the method of its region, are planted alongside blackberries, roses, herbs and white flowers and soft fruits, to guide us towards understanding the components of wine aroma.<\/p>\n
The Vix Krater is testament to the early wine trade, proof that in Burgundy people have cared about wine for a very long time, even if in 500 BC some people were slightly over the top in expressing their appreciation. (This object was made in northern Greece and shipped in pieces to Burgundy, so someone specifically ordered it. I imagine the woman flipping, dissatisfied, through some Greek artisan\u2019s catalogue: \u201cHaven\u2019t you got anything bigger?\u201d)<\/p>\n
So wine and food in Burgundy have grown up together. Perhaps as a result the wine menus seemed considerably less fussy than those in the UK. A local \u2014 good \u2014 restaurant, apparently beloved by many, gives you a buffet of various traditional dishes with red wine by the carafe included \u2014 for something like 15 euros a head. What is the wine in question? Some kind of burgundy \u2014 who knows? In another restaurant, a member of our party, dissatisfied with an Alsacien pinot gris we ordered, asked for un verre de vin rouge. When the glass arrived \u2014 I still don\u2019t know exactly what it was \u2014 it smelled like the platonic ideal of wine. A vigneron\u2019s shop we went to in Chatillon sold just six or seven wines, and a cassis (blackcurrants are another regional speciality). The lack of choice is in some ways reassuring. What goes with goug\u00e8res? What goes with the fat Burgundian snails, or rabbit? What goes with artichokes? Honestly I don\u2019t know the answer. (Is a snail red meat? Is a rabbit?) But going with the local choice is a pretty worthwhile method. So we cooked more or less Burgundian food and drank extremely local wines.Perfectly-ripe apricots from the market became apricot tart and compote. Two rabbits became the classic rabbit stew with white wine, shallots and thyme. (Julia Child in Mastering the Art of French Cooking mentions this dish briefly before dismissing it as too boring.) <\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t see any of the famous Burgundian snails pottering around in the woodland \u2014 it was far too hot and I assume they were hiding; I only found shells, majestically large compared to English ones. Fortunately, if you want actually to eat snails in Chatillon you don\u2019t have to catch them yourself: go to the patissier and traiteur S. Barbier where Madame Barbier will take your order and somehow, presumably, act as intermediary with the snail farmer. Ask her for 96 prepared snails and she does not bat an eyelid. (The Burgundian snails are delicate and soft, mushroomy, earthy, slightly livery.) The Barbier patisserie is very good: we particularly enjoyed the Dijonnais, which is a spectacularly light and feathery cassis mousse on a sponge base. When you praise it, Madame Barbier says, \u201cWell, Monsieur Barbier trained in Paris, you know.\u201d No further explanation is necessary.<\/p>\n
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<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/food-shoes.jpg\"\/)
Boiled shoes<\/a>
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\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/R2WHRK.jpg\"\/)
Breaking a few eggs<\/a>
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\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/food-pheasants-1-120x120.jpg\"\/)
Game night<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
<\/h3>\n
\nBoiled shoes<\/a>
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\nBreaking a few eggs<\/a>
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\nGame night<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snails, wine and history in northern Burgundy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}