L'Abbaye Royale de Fontenay in Burgundy

Our Thursday morning in Burgundy, last October 23, was a disappointment. It wasn't that the sights weren't worth seeing. It was the weather. In Môlay early in the morning, it was gray but dry. I had a good walk around the village with the dog.

We wanted to see the Abbaye de Fontenay near Montbard.

By the time we headed out for the day's touring, however, a light mist had started falling. We were headed southeast to the town of Montbard, 40 km (25 mi.) from Môlay. It was a 45-minute drive, according to Google Maps. And as we drove, the mist turned into drizzle and the drizzle turned into rain. It wasn't predicted.

White cows in a pasture near the Abbaye de Fontenay

Our plan was to go take a walk around the grounds of an old religious complex called the Abbaye Royale de de Notre-Dame de Fontenay, out in the country just east of Montbard. We got kind of lost driving through the town, but I wanted to get a glimpse of it anyway, so it didn't matter. We ended up on a tiny winding road through cow pastures, but we finally found the place.

Despite the rain, we did manage to peek inside the front gate.

This wasn't the first time we'd tried to see the Abbaye de Fontenay. CHM had told us about it more than 20 years ago, and on one of our trips to Provence in the mid-'90s we had stopped in Montbard and found the abbey as we were driving back to Paris at the end of our stay. We drove up right at 6:00 p.m., just as the gates were being closed for the night. Raté.

This stitched-together image isn't perfect, but it gives you an idea of the view through the main gate.

This time, we had Callie in the car, and it was raining. I had read on a web site that you could take your dog on the walk around the grounds and see the exteriors of the buildings as long as the dog was on a leash. That was our plan. With with the rain, it wasn't possible. The worst thing would be to have a soaking wet dog in the car after such a walk. And we didn't want to go on the guided tour of the buildings. Raté.

More tomorrow...

Môlay in Burgundy

The village where we stayed in northern Burgundy back in October was called Môlay.
On the third day we were in Burgundy, I went for a morning walk with Callie the collie
and took a few more photos.

Like nearly every little town in France, Môlay has its monument to the soldiers from the village who died in the Great War between 1914 and 1918.

The famous wine village of Chablis is only half an hour's drive to the northwest.

Next to the war memorial is this old cannon. I didn't find out which war it was used in. Three major wars were fought wars on French territory between 1870 (Franco-Prussian) and 1945 (World War II), including the most deadly, World War I, in which millions died.

The village also has its church. In fact, it is the fact of having a church that makes a place officially a village in France. Little settlements in the country that don't have a church are called hamlets (hameaux), like the one where I live in the Cher river valley.

The church in Môlay is the Église Saint-Laurent (dedicated to Saint Lawrence). It was locked up tight the day I tried to go inside. The village has only about 120 inhabitants, but in the 19th century it was home to three times as many people.

 The closest neighboring village is called Annay-sur-Serein — the Serein is the river, a tributary of the Yonne river, which in turn flows into the Seine. Paris is about 125 miles north. Annay has a stone bridge like the ones you see in many French towns and villages.

Hibernation

In a way, it's too bad that dogs don't hibernate. Winter is pretty boring time. When it's not too cold outdoors, it's too wet for them to wander around the yard. Callie sleeps a lot in winter, but she also comes and begs us to play with her during the day. In this photo, I caught her napping but not sleeping deeply — she saw me.

Still, she gets two walks a day in the vineyard year-round. No matter how wet or how cold it is. If it's really raining, the walks are shorter. This morning the temperature outside is down to freezing, and Walt just told me there's ice on the upstairs windows, but I can see a sliver of moon through the living room curtains. That means it's not raining — or snowing, but that wouldn't matter much. We'll have a long walk before the hunters arrive later this morning.

Friday's pizza

No tomato sauce. Sliced onions, sliced red and green bell peppers, diced smoked chicken breast, and grated Gruyère cheese are toppings enough.

Sweat the vegetables lightly in olive oil before spreading them on the pizza dough. Dice up the cooked chicken and scatter the pieces on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle on a good amount of grated cheese (whatever you like). Optionally, top with a few black olives. Bake on a pizza or bread stone in a very hot oven. Serve with more olive oil or hot pizza oil at the table.

Cockles in a cream and oregano sauce

We didn't eat cockles where I grew up on the North Carolina coast — at least not that I remember. I'm not sure when I cooked and ate them for the first time. It might have been when Walt and I spent a week on the Ile d'Oléron with our friend Cheryl in 2008. That's on France's Atlantic coast not far north of Bordeaux.

Cockles, or coques in French, are a kind of clam. We certainly ate clams, and oysters, scallops, and conchs (whelks) in North Carolina, so I don't know why we didn't eat cockles. The beaches in the area are literally covered with cockle shells, but I don't remember ever seeing a live cockle.

Here's confirmation from an article in a newspaper published in Wilmington, N.C. — it says: "In some parts of the world, cockles are a favorite edible shellfish." But not in that part of the world, apparently.

Maybe cockles live out in the ocean instead of in the protected bays, sounds, and estuaries where clams live. You can go dig clams in calm waters at low tide using a rake or just your hands and feet to find them buried in the sand. You can't really go dig for shellfish in ocean waters because of the surf and the strong currents.

We probably owe the fact that we cooked and enjoyed eating cockles on the Ile d'Oléron to a strike by the island's commercial fishermen. We spent a week there, and the fishing boats were all confined to port the whole time. There was no fresh fish on the markets or in the supermarkets. There was shellfish, however, including oysters, and clams of various kinds, especially coques and lavagnons. That's what we ate all that week.

There are cockles in this post about a poissonnerie (fish market) in Paris that I posted in 2006, but I have no memory of ever eating cockles in Paris.

The fishmonger at the Saturday market in Saint-Aignan comes here from a town on the coast near the Ile d'Oléron, which is about a four-hour drive southwest of us. We've only recently noticed that they often have fresh coques for sale. Walt bought some a week or two ago and we cooked them like clams and served them with pasta. I made a cream sauce with onions, garlic, white wine, and dried oregano. Yum.

Cravant in Burgundy

To wrap up my account of a very full day we spent in northern Burgundy last October, here are just a few more photos. After Chablis and Tonnerre in the morning, Môlay for lunch back at the gite, and then a few hours in and around Irancy, we drove to the next village south, which is Cravant (pop. 875 or so).

La Porte d'Orléans à Cravant en Bourgogne

I just read that Cravant, which sits at the confluence of the Cure and Yonne rivers, had as many as 5000 inhabitants in the Middle Ages. It was an important river port. The town actually dates back to Roman times, when Caesar's troops paved the local road and planted the grapes called César that go into the wines of Irancy to supplement Pinot Noir.

If I understand correctly, the Palotte vineyard plot where some of the best Irancy wine is produced actually lies within the borders of the commune (township) of Cravant. Cravant's vineyards are part of the Irancy AOC.

The old watchtower at Cravant, converted into a bell tower, dates back to the 1300s.

This has nothing to do with Burgundy, but today I am going to be busy cooking sauerkraut — a choucroute garnie with my own attempt at a home-made smoked chicken plus some store-bought saucisses de Montbéliard, saucisses de Strasbourg, and a chunk of poitrine fumée (smoked pork belly). Choucroute (salted, fermented cabbage) is normally cooked with white wine, juniper berries, onions, and carrots. It is served with pommes de terre à l'anglaise (boiled potatoes). That's  how I'll cook it and what we'll have with it.

Tasting and buying wine in Irancy (3)

These were my second thoughts about spending 15 euros a bottle for that Pinot Noir red 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 those doubts and thoughts.

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 connected and started searching.

After a few minutes, I found Stéphan Podor on a web page describing 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.

An Irancy wine that we bought for 7 or 8 € in a supermarket in Tonnerre

The man who had been running the cellar 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. I never did find a price list for the Podor wines on the internet though. 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.

Until a couple of days ago, I mean. Here it is, and the 2012 Palotte wine is 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. Here's the Wikipedia article in French about the Irancy AOC.

Stéphan Podor's price list, found on a web site

I guess 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. We opened some of the Podor bottles at different points during the end-of-year holidays, and we realized it was really too young to drink in 2014 or 2015. As I said in a comment to Judy yesterday, decanting it helped. Decanting lets an immature (or any other) wine breathe quickly and takes the any sharp edges off the taste. I still have some 2012 Podor Palotte in the cellar and I'll age it for a while longer.

Tasting and buying wine in Irancy (2)

So there we were, having tasted three wines in the Irancy cellar we had chosen, really, at random. The "producer" — producteur — in other words the grape-grower and winemaker, was named Stéphan Podor. Actually, on the label, it says Stéphan & 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 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 plot of vines in the Irancy vineyard.

Here's a picture of the Palotte wine that Walt took and published on his blog here.

The man in charge 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 (3 or 4 times) than I spend for a nice bottle of wine in the Loire Valley. 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 the 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 don't know when we'll 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. The car was parked close by, and Callie was just fine and waiting patiently when we got there. We drove out of the village and back up into the vineyards to give Callie another chance to run around for a few minutes, and to take a few more photos.

I was starting to have second thoughts.... À suivre.

Tasting and buying wine in Irancy (1)

Moving on, but looking back. After all those surreal and demoralizing events in Paris last week, yesterday turned out to be a beautiful day, weatherwise and otherwise. It was comparable to that Wednesday in October when we were in Burgundy. In the afternoon, back then, we went to see what the village of Irancy was all about. (Earlier posts are here: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

Below is the place we found when we decided to buy a few bottles of wine to take back to Saint-Aignan. It looked much more interesting that the Chais et Crus shop we had seen at first, and it was right next door. If you look carefully at the photo, you might see that the sign on the shutter says the entrance to the wine cellar is down the little alley to the right.

Credit where credit is due: I grabbed this image off the street view for Irancy on Google maps.

We walked down the alley, having left Callie in the parked car, and found the door that had a « Cave » 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. »

The church and rooftops of Irancy seen from up in the vineyards to the south

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. There's a picture below. 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.

This was a real wine cave, not a facsimile.

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 also to buy some 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.

À suivre...

J'ai du mal...

J'ai mal et j'ai du mal. Those mean two different things. I'm having a hard time writing the same old blog posts right now. J'ai du mal à reprendre ce blog, à continuer comme avant. That's the feeling I have : il y a un avant et un après.

It's the way I felt about San Francisco after the big earthquake in 1989. I never felt safe there after that. I hate the idea that I wouldn't feel safe in Paris, where I always felt so safe for 45 years. I know, it's all psychological.

A journalist on TV (Stéphane Bourgoin, whose area of expertise is serial killers) just said that people's fear of violent crime in France is growing (le sentiment d'insécurité croît en France), even though more than twice as many people were killed every year 30 years ago than now (alors qu'on tue deux fois moins maintenanant qu'il y a 30 ans). What's the explanation for that?

I guess I'll get started again one day soon. On verra. Peut-être demain. As a friend (who might recognize herself here) used to say when all hell was breaking loose at work: "Just do the next thing."

Et si le ciel était vide ?

This Alain Souchon song seems appropriate for these awful days. I'm posting a video of Souchon singing the song live, with the lyrics below. What harm have we done to ourselves in the name of powers that might not even exist...

Et si en plus il n'y a personne

Abderhamane, Martin, David

Et si le ciel était vide ?

Tant de processions, tant de têtes inclinées

Tant de capuchons, tant de peur souhaitée

Tant de démagogues, de temples, de synagogues

Tant de mains pressées, de prières empressées

Tant d'angélus

(ding)
Qui résonne

Et si en plus

(ding)
Il n'y a personne...

Abderhamane, Martin, David

Et si le ciel était vide ?

Il y a tant de torpeurs

De musiques antalgiques

Tant d'anti-douleurs dans ces jolis cantiques

Il y a tant de passions, et tant de mystères

Tant de compassions et tant de révolvers

Tant d'angélus

(ding)
Qui résonne

(ding)
Et si en plus

Il n'y a personne...

Arour hachem, Inch Allah

(...)
Are Krishhna, Alléluia

Abderhamane, Martin, David

Et si le ciel était vide ?

Si toutes les balles traçantes

Toutes les armes de poing

Toutes ces femmes ignorantes

Ces enfants orphelins

Si ces vies qui chavirent

Ces yeux mouillés

Ce n'était que le plaisir

De zigouiller ?

Et l'angélus

(ding)
Qui résonne

Et si en plus

(ding)
Il n'y a personne...

Et l'angélus

(ding)
Qui résonne

Et si en plus

(ding)
Il n'y a personne...

Un Moment de silence

Nothing much I have to blog about seems very interesting or important this morning. Life goes on.

Wolinkski, Cabu, Charlie et les autres

I was never a regular reader of Charlie Hebdo or its predecessor publication, Hara-Kiri. But you didn't have to be a faithful reader to know and laugh with the political cartoonists and satirists who made these publications so influential and contoversial. Their cartoons appeared in many newspapers and magazines. They've been part of the French cultural scene and French (especially Parisian) everyday life for several generations.

From now on, when we write MDR (mort de rire) in French — the equivalent of LOL — we'll have to think twice.

That's what's so demoralizing and worrisome about the shooting yesterday in the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo. If talented people who satirize the powers that be — of every stripe — in their drawings and irreverent view of the world become afraid to express themselves, what does that do to French and other European cultures? It denatures them, and makes them much poorer and less vibrant. The exuberance goes away. We are in mourning today — en deuil. Nous sommes tous Wolinski, Cabu, Charb, et Charlie.

Streets and shops of Irancy

We drove down into Irancy with the idea that we might find a place where we could buy a few bottles of wine. Maybe a supermarket or grocery store, for example, or a wine cooperative, or an individual grower and vintner. Irancy is a picturesque village (like thousands of others in France).

We didn't see any shops. There was one bar-restaurant. We'd already had lunch though, back at the gite. Off the main street of the village there were a lot of very narrow side streets — ruelles or lanes — that I wouldn't have dared to take the car down.

The total population of Irancy is about 300.

The main street is the rue Soufflot, named after the famous architect, who was born here. We saw several wineries along the street, as well as the village hall or mairie (where the maire or mayor has his or her office).

We also saw this place called Chais et Crus — Cellars and Wines — near the mairie. It looked too upscale to me to be interesting. The wines might be good but I could just imagine the premium prices such a shop would charge. It turns out the Chais et Crus is a cooperative, un groupement de producteurs, where several winemakers let you taste and buy their wines. We went into the place next door, which looked more typique and authentique...

The Irancy wines

Chablis and Irancy are just remnants of what used to be a much more extensive grape-growing area in northern Burgundy. Chablis has been more successful than Irancy at re-establishing itself after the phylloxera epidemic decimated the vines more than 100 years ago. Both vineyards are very ancient, and both suffer because the climate is so cold and the weather during the growing season is so unpredictable. The wines are fine, however.

Earlier, a lot of wine from the Auxerre-Chablis region was transported to Paris on barges that floated along the local waterways up to the Seine and then into the French capital, only 75 miles distant. When the railroads were built in the 19th century, Auxerre (the largest town in the area) and Chablis were bypassed. Other regions could suddenly send wine to Paris by train, and the vineyards of northern Burgundy went into decline.

As a result, only about a thousand acres of vines remained around Chablis by the end of World War II — it's 10 times that large today. The fact that California and other regions flooded the world with white wines called Chablis, many of of them of questionable quality, dealt the area's reputation a serious blow too.

Irancy is also a survivor. Two red-wine grapes are grown there, just to the southeast of Chablis — Pinot Noir, of course, the premier red grape of Burgundy, and a local variety called César. A small amount of César in the mostly Pinot Noir wines of Irancy supposedly gives them their special character.

The Irancy vineyard covers about 600 acres on the hillsides all around the village. After we spent time on the heights taking pictures and letting Callie enjoy a nice hour or so outdoors, we drove down into town and ended up buying some wine from a local vintner.

Irancy

“Irancy, one of France's most beautiful wine producing regions...” When I read that, the deal was sealed. It was October 22, and we were staying in a little gîte rural in Môlay, not far from Chablis. Chablis is known for it's white Chardonnay wines, of course, and Irancy is (less well) known for its red Pinot Noirs. (Yesterday's post included a photo of the church in Irancy.)

We had spent the morning in Chablis and Tonnerre, to the north of Môlay. At lunchtime, we returned to the gite to have lunch and decide what we wanted to do in the afternoon. We were having beautiful sunny weather. We'd seen Avallon the day before — in the rain, mostly. On earlier trips, we'd spent time in Auxerre and in Vézelay, each more than once.

I was reading a book I had taken with us, called Touring in Wine Country: Burgundy. The book is 10 or 12 years old and the editor of the “touring in wine country” series was famed wine expert Hugh Johnson. I think I bought the book back then because at one point, when we still lived in California, we started planning a vacation trip to Burgundy. I bought books and maps then, but never used them.

Why? Well, the Loire Valley got in the way. Instead of going to Beaune or Dijon, we ended up in Vouvray, where we found a really nice gite. That was in 2000. We returned twice to the Loire Valley and ended up moving — lock, stock, and barrel — to Saint-Aignan in 2003. Now Burgundy is only a four-hour drive to the east. I don't know why it took us so long to finally drive over there from here.

Well, I do know, really. We were having too much fun in Saint-Aignan. There is much to see and do in the Loire Valley, of course, but it is nice to have a change of scenery now and then. When I read this sentence in that same guide book — “Irancy sits at the very centre of a large amphitheatre of vineyards and is one of Burgundy's most beautifully located villages" — I decided going there would be a good way to spend a sunny afternoon. Irancy is only about 30 minutes' drive west of Môlay.

A church for a Sunday

I still forget that I don't have to go back to work or to school. For years, school was my work. At the end of the holidays, I get this nagging feeling that I'd better get myself organized, psyched up, and ready to return to life out in the world, with colleagues and bosses.

But I don't have to go back to work. It's disorienting. I just sit here and process photos, write something on my blog, go for a walk with the dog, and then think about making lunch — holiday or not. Happy Sunday to you too.

Still cutting and stacking firewood

On New Year's Eve morning, our gardening — tree- and hedge-trimming, in our case — contractor sent over one of his guys to finish cutting our 2014 wood to size for our stove. Walt helped. I mostly watched from the kitchen window as I got New Year's Eve food ready for the table. Our chainsaw gave up the ghost a couple of months ago, and we are trying to decide whether to replace it or just have somebody else do the wood-cutting for us from now on.

When it was all cut, the wood was in a pile in front of our garage door, effectively making it impossible to get the car out. We had to move it all and stack it under our carport-cum-woodshed so that we could get to town in an emergency and so that predicted rains wouldn't soak it yesterday and today. I helped with the moving and stacking on Thursday morning, though Walt again did most of the work. It got done.

Meanwhile, from the kitchen window I watched the sun trying to break through the clouds and fog over the neighbors' yard. I don't remember if it turned sunny that day, but the truth is that January 1st of 2015 was a beautiful day here. We had a nice crisp morning for stacking wood before the rains returned.

Yesterday it rained for much of the day, and it's supposed to rain all day long today too. We'll be going down into the village center this morning for the mayor's annual "state of the village" ceremony for the new year. I'm hoping to learn more about our local Internet service, which has improved a lot over the last few months and which they promise they will make even better and faster in 2015. Day three of the new year is about to dawn...