Auxerre in Burgundy

Yesterday I mentioned that Walt and I have talked about what kind of house we would want, and where, if we were to move out of the house we've lived in for 18 years now. Someday we will a house without staircases (we have two here) and with a smaller yard ("garden" if you call it that.

One option would be to stay in the Saint-Aignan area, of course. However, with the Parc Zoologique de Beauval, only a couple of miles from our house, drawing a million or more visitors per year, traffic around here is getting to be an issue. The upside is that property values  in Saint-Aignan are going up. The other option would be to move to a town like Blois or Bourges. Or to go to a new region. Why not Burgundy? And why not a town like Auxerre?

This 2014 photo shows what it's like to drive toward Auxerre — pronounced [oh-SEHR] — from the south.

And here we are arriving in the town in 2014. Auxerre (pop. 35,000) is what I'd call a big town or a small city'.
Blois is bigger, and Bourges is bigger still. Saint-Aignan is far smaller.

The town of Auxerre is located on the banks of the Yonne river, about two hours south of Paris.
The photo above and the two below date from 2001.

It's scenic with all the boats and barges along the riverfront. Chablis, Tonnerre, Irancy, and Noyers —
places I've posted about recently — are just 20 to 30 minutes south by car.

This is one of several churches in Auxerre. I think it's the Cathédrale St-Etienne.

This is the hotel where Walt and I stayed for a night in September 2001. We were on our way to Provence.
And CHM and I had rooms in the same hotel for a night when we drove through Auxerre in 2011
on our way back to Saint-Aignan after one of our trips to Picardy.

 

More Noyers houses and information

Noyers-sur-Serein (the official name of the village is just Noyers) is one of the plus beaux villages de France, as is nearby Vézelay. The Wikipédia article about Noyers includes two good photos of the village that I wish I had taken: this one and this one. Below are some more of my photos.

1      2

3      4

5      6

Just outside the village are the ruins of the medieval château-fort de Noyers that protected the town from attack for centuries, until it was mostly torn down in 1599 by order of king Henri IV of France. I just read that the château ruins can be explored by visitors, and from there they can take in beautiful views of the village and its surroundings. Now I really want to go back to Noyers again.

Picturesque, serene, medieval Noyers

Possibly the most picturesque and carefully maintained medieval villages in northern Burgundy is called Noyers-sur-Serein. It was a very short drive (10 minutes) south of Môlay, the village were were staying in. The population of Noyers (pronounced nwah-'yehr) is about 600, and there are about 500 housing units in the village. Seventy-eight houses in the village are officially listed as monuments historiques, most of them dating back to the 15th century. A third of the houses in Noyers are weekend or vacation places for their owners. Fifteen houses there are for sale right now. Today I'll just post a few photos I took there nearly seven years ago.

1      2

3      4

5      6

Cravant en Bourgogne

Not all of the Irancy AOC grape-growing area is within the boundaries of the commune d'Irancy. Some of it is on the territory of the little town of Cravant, which is home to nearly 900 people. The town of Cravant has preserved many of its old houses and town gates, as well as its donjon (fortified tower) and beffroi (bell tower).

1      2

3      4

5      6

There was a battle here in 1423, toward the end of the 100 Years' War, in which allied Burgundian and English forces defeated and massacred an army of 4,500 French and Scottish soldiers. Cravant had a population of 5,000 in the Middle Ages and was a major port on the Yonne river, shipping large quantities of wood and wine to Paris on barges and rafts.

Zooming in on Sancerre

I've mentioned Sancerre several times in recent posts. Walt and I have been there a couple of times. We drove through and stopped in October 2014, on our way back to Saint-Aignan from Burgundy. And then CHM and I drove over to Sancerre together in May 2015. Sauvignon Blanc white wines and Pinot Noir red and rosé wines are made there.

Sancerre's wines and landscapes rival those of Chablis and Irancy, but it's not quite in Burgundy. It's a hilltop town (pop. 1,400 or so) on the west side (left bank) of the Loire river, across from Pouilly-sur-Loire, which puts it in the Berry province and about two hours from Saint-Aignan by car. Below is a series of photos zooming in on Sancerre.

Irancy, a slideshow... and much ado about soils

Back in the late 1990s, Walt and I wanted to come spend two or three weeks in France on vacation. We thought about going to Alsace, but then turned our attention to Burgundy and the Loire Valley. In many ways, along with Paris and Champagne, they are the heart of France. I bought two books in a series called Touring in Wine Country, which was edited by Hugn Johnson. One book focused on Burgundy and the other on the Loire Valley. Both were written by Hubrecht Duijker, a Dutch wine writer, and included a lot of beautiful photos.

In October of 2000, we ended up coming to spend three weeks in France — one week in Vouvray nears Tours in the Loire Valley, and then a day or two driving through Burgundy before spending three or four days in in Champagne. We capped it all off with a week in Paris. We were really taken with the Loire Valley, and ended up buying a house here in 2003 and re-locating from San Francisco to Saint-Aignan. In 2014, we finally went and spent a few days in the Chablis area. I re-discovered the book about Burgundy wine country that I had bought 15 years earlier and read this passage. It convinced me that it would be a good idea to go see the Irancy vineyard south of Chablis.

“...Bourgogne Irancy wine is made from Pinot Noir, but also contains a small amount of the little-known red grape César which, it is thought, may have originated here. The César contributes color, tannin, and backbone to the lighter Pinot-based wines, distinguishing Bourgogne Irancy from the mass of rather non-descript Bourgogne Rouges made all over the region. Irancy sits at the very center of a large amphitheatre of vineyards and is one of Burgundy's most beautifully located villages.” Here is a shortslide show made up of another 14 photos I took in Irancy in October 2014.

Another book I bought along the way is The New France: A Complete Guide to Contemporary French Wine. The author is Andrew Jefford, British wine writer. I'm not sure when or where I found it, but I re-discovered it a few days ago and have finally been reading it. In the section about the Chablis area, Jefford asserts: “Chablis does not belong in Burgundy.”

Jefford writes that the Chablis vineyard (and neighboring vineyards like Irancy and Saint-Bris-le-Vineux) is on land that is not at all geologically similar to the Burgundy wine region farther south. Burgundy forms part of the Rhône river basin, he says. Chablis, along with the Champagne wine region to the north, is located in the Seine river basin. The soil of the Chablis area is much more like the soils of Loire Valley wine areas including Reuilly and Quincy (two villages just 35 miles east of Saint-Aignan), and Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire on the upper Loire, than like the soils of the Côte d'Or or Beaune, which are in the heart of Burgundy. “Chablis has more in common with the Upper Loire and the southern sector of Champagne than it does with Meursault and Mâcon,” Jefford says.

One similarity between Chablis and the rest of Burgundy is the grape varieties planted in the two areas. Those are Chardonnay for white wines and Pinot Noir for reds, with very few exceptions. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are also the mainstays of the Champagne vineyards north of Chablis. In contrast, the vineyards of the Upper Loire and Touraine wine regions are planted in Sauvignon Blanc and Gamay grapes (again with a few exceptions).

According to Jefford, similar soils explain why Sancerre, on the upper Loire, and Chablis, in northern Burgundy, produce two of the most distinctive and delicious white wines of France — but using different grapes. Here in Touraine, local wine-makers have told me that their goal is to produce Sauvignon Blanc wines that resemble the white wines of Sancerre as closely as possible. And several of the wine books I've been reading say that the white Chardonnays of the Mâcon area farther south in Burgundy don't compare to the best Chablis whites, because the land the grapes are grown on are so different from each other. Sorry if this is very nerdy and technical, but I'd never realized all this before.

Spectacular Irancy

More spectacular than the vineyards of Chablis are the vineyards of Irancy, only 10 miles south and west. They were especially impressive in October.

Irancy is minuscule compared to Chablis, with fewer than 500 acres of vines vs. Chablis' 12,000 acres. That's part of its charm

Another difference is that only red (Pinot Noir) wines are made in Irancy. In Chablis only white (Chardonnay) wines are made. Nearby, another small wine village, Saint-Bris-le-Vineux, makes only white wines but with Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

In addition to the juice of Pinot Noir grapes, Irancy winemakers traditionally add a small proportion (10% maximum) of the juice of the local César grape to their vintages, but it isn't required for the AOC qualification. It is said to add good flavor to the Pinot.

Irancy, with a population of about 300, is located in a deep valley, with vineyards planted on the slopes all around it. The population of Chablis is about 2,300, and of Tonnerre it's 4,500.

By car, Irancy is two hours from Paris if you take the A6 autoroute and 15 miles south of the small city of Auxerre. Chablis and Tonnerre are nearby.

L'Église Saint-Pierre à Tonnerre

Today is Sunday, this Sunday in France is a holiday. It's called L'Assomption — L'Assomption de Marie, in its long form. In Catholic tradition, the mother of Jesus was taken directly to Heaven by God once her life on Earch was finished. The French Wikipédia article about the holiday, which always falls on August 15, says there is no Biblical foundation for the belief, it has been celebrated by Catholics since the 8th century. August 15 is the day on which the first church dedicated to Marie was consacrated, in Jerusalem.

           

             

This post and these photos don't have to do with the mother of Jesus, but with St. Peter (saint Pierre). That's who the church in Tonnerre, located on a rocky spur overlooking the town, is dedicated to. L'Église Saint-Pierre de Tonnerre was built starting in the 9th century and was greatly altered over the centuries. Then, in 1556, a fire almost completely destroyed the old church. It was re-built. The façade is in the Baroque style. It was from the top of the hill on which Saint-Pierre stands that I took the photos of the rooftops of Tonnerre that I posted a few days ago.

La Fosse Dionne

La Foose Dionne at Tonnerre is a huge upsurge of water. It's a spring, in other words. Part of the upsurge is fed by a river that flows underground for 27 miles before it resurfaces at Tonnerre, and part of it is rainwater from fissures and caverns in the limestone formation under and around Tonnerre itself. That's what I read on Wikipedia. The annual average volume of water that comes up out of the ground every second is about 300 liters — that's 82 U.S. gallons (68 British gallons).

           

             

Over the centuries the town of Tonnerre grew up around the Fosse Dionne. In the mid-1700s the spring was turned into a public lavoir (a kind of "wash house" on a stream or river where people would come to do their laundry by hand). The flow of water from the spring can increase to 3,000 liters per second when the weather turns rainy and local rivers reach flood stage.

Tonnerre

These are the rooftops of Tonnerre, pop. 4,500, in Burgundy. Even though tonnerre in French means "thunder", that's not where the name comes from. In ancient Gaul, the place was called Tornodurum, meaning "fortress". Tonnerre is just 10 or 12 miles east of Chablis, pop. 2,200. Archeological digs around Tonnerre have shown that there were settlements here in the Bronze Age, as long as 4,000 years ago.

1      2

3      4

5      6

I just learned this morning that there are vineyards around this town too. White, red, and rosé wines are made in the Tonnerrois. The vignoble du Tonnerrois covers nearly 2,000 acres (about 3 mi²) of land, while the nearby vignoble du Chablis is six times larger at 12,000 acres (nearly 20 mi²). For comparison, the whole Touraine AOC vineyard (13,000 acres, including Azay-le-Rideau, Amboise, Chenonceaux, Saint-Aignan, and Blois) is only slightly larger than Chablis.