Back on the Côte via Champagne

 *** Boring post alert. If you couldn't give a stuff about wine I suggest you stop here! ***

In 2021 when the first COVID restrictions were lifted I high-tailed it to France with a bicycle and had a jolly time cycling around Burgundy. Back then I included the same warning as above, and even though there is some bird content I've done so again.  I've been hankering to repeat the trip, this time with Mrs L. She, after all, dragged me up the east coast from Newcastle to Fife, thus repeating a trip she had done a number of times with children - it felt like it was my turn. And so when half term came along in May (yes, I'm behind again) we put our bikes in the back of the car and drove down to the Channel Tunnel. By lunchtime we were in Champagne eating a picnic lunch in a park having raided a small supermarché somewhere near Reims. The weather was glorious, but unlike being in London and having to suffer no airconditioning and public transport I was sat under a tree near a pond drinking cool apricot juice and eating goats cheese.

With nothing organised until the following day we spent the afternoon chilling out and doing very little until our evening reservation came up and we found ourselves on a nice terrace with a cool glass. The air remained warm well into the evening, as we returned to our accomodation down by the Marne in Bisseuil we realised how lucky we were. I even found time to go birding for a bit in the evening and the following morning, with Nightingale singing alongside the river, Redstart and Grey Wagtail near the bridge, and lots of House Martin over the village.

The following morning, at 9am, we were tasting Champagne. This is not ideal, but equally it beats many other things I could be doing at 9am. I can be quite disciplined when I need to be ( and very undisciplined when the opportunity arises) and made ample use of the spittoon. Sadi Malot is a lovely small grower, quite understated and with a good range of primarily Blanc-de-Blancs, that is to say Champagne made exclusively from white grapes, usually chardonnay. Better still they had halves, and half a bottle of Champagne on, say, a Wednesday night is very hard to beat. It was racy stuff, especially the low dosage cuvées, indeed if you are partial to Grande Marque Champagne like Pol Roger and so on you may find this style a little austere. But it is taut, fresh and incredibly pure, laser-like in some cases. Here is my note on the Brut Authentique which is a nice middle ground.

This is cut from the same cloth as the Zero, another BdeB with that same energy and vitality, but with a bit of dosage (4.3) and more importantly, wood raised rather than stainless steel. This rounds it out a bit and makes it less piercing and more enjoyable, at least on its own. Disgorged mid-2025, so very young. Crucially it is also bottled in halves. Amazing value at the cellar door. Tasted at the Domaine.

I am not exactly Winston Churchill but I always feel I ought to drink more Champagne than I do, and that it should be thought of more like a normal bottle of wine, albeit fizzy, rather than something that is rolled out on special occasions. Half bottles may help me break this cycle.

A propos of nothing at all, it was Rhubarb season. I am very partial.

"Extra"

We stopped in at another house not too far away, Vazart-Coquart, having had a bottle of theirs randomly in a restuarant in London earlier in the year. Also based primarily on Chardonnay their wine was also quite strict and precise, includin the rosé. As luck would have it they too sold halves and so we used up our remaining sparkling allowance on some of these plus a few presents to take home. We had another lovely picnic lunch somewhere or other, and then got in the car for the slog down to Burgundy where I had managed to book the same accomodation in Beaune as in 2021, right on Place Carnot. This had very nearly fallen through at the 11th hour, a week or so before travelling I had received a mysterious message saying my booking had been cancelled. It had indeed been cancelled, but for the most absurd of reasons - the middle man had been fired. As with many things in Burgundy everyone is in the chain, everyone takes a cut. I had booked - and paid! - not the accomodation directly, but with an agent - there is some technical name - who managed the property on the owner's behalf. When for whatever reason that relationship fell apart and he was replaced with a different person he and all his bookings vanished. Incredible! A short phone call to the old agent as needed to establish this set of facts, but it did get me 1) my money back and 2) the phone number of the new agent. From what I could gather no actual reservation had ever been made by the first guy but through good fortune alone the property was still available on the dates we were travelling, albeit that the underground parking had been snaffled by someone else. A bit of a pain, but Beaune has plenty of free parking outside the ring road and we were able to dump the car and forget about it for a few days without spending a cent.

That evening we had an aperitif close by, a couple of glasses of young Pinot Noir, one from David Moreau and the other I cannot now remember as I did not take a note. Then we went for dinner at La Lune, something I had been looking forward to for ages. It is a tiny establishment with under 20 covers, most along a long counter, run by a Japanese genius called Seiichi Hirobe. The food is tapas style with every dish cooked there and then. The chef does every part of the cooking behind the counter so you can see what is happening at each stage, orders and drinks are dealt with by his assistant Antoine. Meticulous preparation is what is happening, what this man cannot do with a knife is not worth knowing. Dishes may come quickly, or may come after some time, and possibly in a different order than you expect, but none of this matters, the food is sensational. Book ahead. A long time ahead, and be prepared to confirm you are still coming the day of your booking or you could lose out.

Given where we were the wine list is so-so and quite short, the prices in Burgundy must make it impossible for small restaurants who cannot tie up loads of capital in a lengthy wine list, but we found a decent bottle of Chassagne from J-C Bachelet and sat down to enjoy the show. Being fusion cuisine there is a lot of fish and shellfish and we were extremely happy with this. Goodness me it was good, particularly the tuna. Although not techinally a fish something called chicken kariage was also incredibly delicious. I try not to sit in restaurants taking photos of my dinner but here, and indeed for a few of the meals on this trip I made the odd exception, it was just too good. We fairly rolled back to Place Carnot. Tomorrow though we would have to work for our lunch as we were cycling the southern Côte de Beaune just as I had done a few years back. Mrs L does not rhapsodise about vineyards in quite the same way I do, how would she take it?