When Walt and I were in Irancy in October 2014, we decided to buy a few bottles of the local wine to bring back to Saint-Aignan. We noticed a winery on the rue Soufflot in the village. It was a house with pale blue shutters (photo below), and it didn't look like a business. There was a sign out front saying that the entrance to the winery was down a narrow alley that we had just walked past.
We walked down the alley and found the door that had a cave (cellar) sign on it. I banged on the door, pulled it open, and yelled Bonjour. The inside of the door was covered in a sheet of silver plastic that had a layer of insulation of some kind under it. It looked very much home-made and rough. A voice from down below yelled out something like Oui, on est là. Descendez.
So we did. The stone stairs were narrow and steep. And definitely dark. About halfway down, I bumped my head on a low stone archway. When we got to the bottom, we found four men drinking wine in a dimly lit cellar. The man in charge didn't mind if I took a picture, but he and the three other guys moved out of the way. They were probably all in their 30s or early 40s, and they were perfectly friendly. We told them we were two Americans who lived in France, in the Loire Valley, and we wanted to taste some wines and buy some to take home with us.
I don't know how many wines they had tasted, or how much they had drunk. I wonder if they were just partying, or if the three friends planned to buy a few bottles. They all seemed to know each other, including the man pouring the wines, and I asked them if they lived in Irancy. They said yes, though one of them said he had been living in Nice for quite a few years and had just returned to Burgundy. (He looked like a young Serge Lama, if that means anything to you.) We tasted three wines with them, and the third one was the one we both thought was best.
So there we were, having tasted three wines in the Irancy cellar we had chosen, really, at random. The
producteur — in other words the grape-grower and winemaker — was named Stéphan Podor. Actually, on the label, it says Stéphan et Marie PODOR. I didn't know if Stéphan Podor was the man we were talking to in the cellar.
We weren't going to spend a lot of time tasting wine, especially since I was going to be driving back to the gite on a circuitous route through several other picturesque villages. I told the man who was doing the pouring that I'd like to buy six bottles (called
un carton in France, which is half the size of a U.S. "case" of wine) of the last wine we had tasted, which was a 2012 vintage called
Palotte. He had already told us all, I believe, that
Palotte was the name of the most prestigious parcel of vines in the Irancy vineyard. Here's what the
cave looked like.
The man doing the pouring looked at me and said something like:
C'est un vin qui se vend à 15 euros la bouteille. Ça va ? » In English: "The 2012 Palotte wine sells for 15 euros a bottle. Is that okay?" There was no price list anywhere, so I had to take his word for it. I hesitated. That's a lot more money than I spend for a nice bottle of wine in the Loire Valley. Three or four times as much. But I didn't want to back down. I could have said, well, I'll just take two bottles. Or three.
Instead, I gulped and said the price was okay, go ahead and give me the
carton. I figured 90 euros, maybe just this once, wouldn't break the bank. We had spent something like 12 euros a bottle for a carton of Chablis Premier Cru that morning. It's not like we go to Burgundy very often, and Burgundy wine is, by reputation, some of the finest France produces. I didn't know when we'd ever go back there.
We said our
au revoir and climbed the dark, steep steps back up to the street, carrying the carton of wine. I ducked to avoid bumping my head again. It had been an interesting but puzzling experience. I was wondering if I had been overcharged for the wine. Why wasn't there a price list? How did I know how much such wines really sold for? Burgundy wines can be very expensive, but what about the little-known Irancy wines?
Basically, I wondered whether the man pouring wines for people who seemed to be his buddies just pulled a price out of thin air when I asked to buy the Palotte wine. Was he thinking he had found two suckers? Did I end up financing the drinking that the group was engaged in? Was it because we had said we were Americans? I hated having such doubts and worries.
I thought about it all the next day. Then it occurred to me that I might find some information about Irancy and the Podor wines on the Internet. Duh! We were busy, and I wasn't thinking straight. I had a tablet computer with me, and we had a wifi connection in the gite (it was slow but operational). That evening I went on the internet and started searching.
After a few minutes, I found Stéphan Podor on a web page that listed different Burgundy wine areas and producers. It turns out he is the mayor of Irancy! That made me feel better. The mayor of a village is unlikely to be engaged in shady business practices. His reputation would be on the line.
The man who had been pouring wines the afternoon of our visit was definitely not Stéphan Podor, however. He was too young. Maybe he was the son of the mayor, or an employee. I decided it didn't really matter. Weeks later, I found a price list for the Podor wines on the internet. I did find mention of the Palotte parcel of vines at Irancy, confirming that it was the most prestigious parcels there. That made me feel better.
A few days later, I finally found a price list for the Podor wines. The 2012 Palotte wine was listed at 15 euros. Podor has only an acre in the Palotte
climat — that's what vineyard parcels are called in Burgundy. The rest of the Palotte vines are owned and worked by other
vignerons. My doubts and worries all turned out to be much ado about nothing, and I could again feel good about the whole experience. It was certainly memorable.
This is the town hall — la mairie — in Irancy. It's on the rue Soufflot. The mayor (le maire) has his or her office here. Two hundred years ago the village had a population of more than one thousand. The population has been declining ever since. According to Wikipédia, the Irancy vineyard is made up of 251 hectares (over 600 acres) of vines. Irancy wines are Pinot Noir reds and bear the AOC label of authenticity. Some have a small quantity — 10% or less — of juice from the local red wine grape called César added, which is said to give the wines a special flavor.
Take the roast out of the pan when it's nearly done, and cut and remove the string that held it together as it cooked. Add more broth or water or wine as needed. Add some olives if you like them. Put the roast back in the pan, surrounded by the cooked vegetables, and let it cook for another 15 minutes. Serve with rice or pasta. The meat is fork-tender. The broth is delicious.
Walt and I took a trip to Burgundy in October 2014. We stayed in a gîte near a beautiful village called Noyers-sur-Serein, and also not very far from the famous wine town of Chablis. On that trip, we also spent an afternoon in and around another wine village called Irancy. I know I had vaguely heard of it before, so I wanted to go there, but there was something I didn't know: Irancy's main street is the rue Soufflot. Why? Because that's where the architect of the Panthéon in Paris originally came from. Both the street in the Latin Quarter and the street in the Latin Quarter are named for him. I had no idea that Irancy was Jacques-Germain Soufflot's family home. He was born there in 1713.
Here's what the village of Irancy looks like. It is built in a natural basin and all around the edges of the basin are vineyards. The wine made there is a Pinot Noir red. We bought six bottles from a winery on the rue Soufflot (not in Paris), drank one or two of them with meals at our gîte and brought the rest of them back to Saint-Aignan to enjoy over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. By the way, J-G Soufflot passed away, unfortunately, before construction of the Panthéon in Paris was completed.
This is the Panthéon seen from in front of the église St-Étienne-du-Mont. It's massive.
The building that intrigues me is the one sitting on top of a massive stone column (I think...) just to the left of the Sorbonne chapel's dome. It looks there is a fenced-in observation deck on top of its steep slate roof. Anyone know what it is?
These are a couple of photos of wall paintings inside the Panthéon that I took after climbing up to the "balcony" to take in the views of Paris from up there. I haven't had time to look for information about them.
This is a photo of the Tour Saint-Jacques that I took in July of 2016 from the balcon du Panthéon. The restoration work at the Panthéon had been completed and the "balcony" had been opened to the public for the first time in many decades. There were three hundred stairs to climb at the Tour Saint-Jacques. There were only 200 stairs to climb at the Panthéon. Because the building stands on much higher ground, on the balcon du Panthéon you are higher above sea level than at the top of the Tour Saint-Jacques.
Looking almost straight down from the Panthéon's "balcony" is a good view of the church called St-Étienne-du-Mont, built between 1490 and 1625 after a 13th-century church on the site had become too small to accommodate the population of the neighborhood. The Michelin green guide for Paris describes the church's façade as "highly original" because of its mix of Flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance elements.
