But André was a good sport and stoically got up at 5am, took his shower, carried the overnight bag I had prepared for us to the car and drove us to the outter city limits without complaining or even asking for any hints as to where we were going... but as soon as we were on the highway I knew I better tell him something or one of two things would happen : a) he would start to get cranky and impatient (specially since we hadn't had time for his morning coffee) or b) we would both fall asleep on the road.
So I laid out the weekend for him and to my great relief he relaxed and started to enjoy the ride !
We got to Beaune half an hour ahead of schedule and therefore had time to park the car, stretch our legs, find the building where we were taking the course and even stop at a local brasserie for croissants and coffee. By the time we arrived at Sensation-Vin we were in high spirits and ready to learn all there is to learn on Burgundy wines.
Needless to say the stage was incredibly interesting. We were 8 in total and, except for me, all french. The "professor" started out by explaining to us the way wines are classified and why this is so. Pretty cool to finally learn the difference between a "Grand Cru" and a "Premier Cru" and understand howcome this is so.
He then had us taste different pre-prepared drinks in order to recognize easy charactistics like sugar, lemon, salt, etc when diluated in water.
We then had to identify 20 "misterious" everyday cooking ingredients like cinammon, chocolate, nuts, jam, etc which were in seperate dark glass bottles. This may sound easy but when you have no idea what the element looks like you must really sharpen your odorate and concentrate... and even then... well, lets just say I got 9 out of 20 right!
We then had another pretty interesting test : we were asked to say if the wine served in a dark glass was white wine or red wine simply by smelling/tasting it. To many of you this must sound pretty easy (wink at Uncle Steve) but believe me, only 3 out of 8 people got the answer right... and it's a 50/50 question!
By then all our senses where itching to begin the wine tasting and see if we could put all this into practice. We were tought the three ways of examining a wine :
1/ Observe (color, brilliance, green/violet reflects, etc),
2/ Smell (smoked wood? red berries? open, closed wine?, etc) and
3/ Taste (sweet? acid? tartic?, etc).
We tasted in total 8 wines (4 whites and 4 reds), and one by one we could clearly distinguish certain flavours like fresh peaches or smoked wood or cinamon and honey depending on the wine. It was interesting to see how each of us interpreted what we tasted with our own experience (at one point I clearly tasted tamarindo in one of the wines but had a hard time explainig to the others what tamarindo is!). And then there was the delicate question of to swallow or not to swallow.... I of course did the sensible (yet gross) thing which is to spit out the wine in order to avoid getting drunk as the tasting proceeds... yet André..... well... let's just say he got our money's worth during the wine tasting ;-)
After the course ended we quickly went for lunch at a small yet quite good restaurant for some traditional burgundy dishes (we did skip the wine though being that we had had enough in the morning). We decided to spend the afternoon driving through the "Route des Grands Crus" which is the old road that crosses right through the vinyards in the heart of the Burgundy region. André got to stop at his heart's delight to take picture after picture of the magnificent vinyards and gorgeous autumn colors that we saw (check out his pics here).
We then drove back to Beaune and had a good walk around Beaune, which by the way turned out to be a really cute town. That evening we decided to order a nice red Givry 1er Cru 2000 (so cool to actually know what that means) with our diner and I don't know if it was the wine course or simply a lovely diner in a lovely restaurant in a lovely town but it turned out to be a great choice !
We then drove back to Beaune and had a good walk around Beaune, which by the way turned out to be a really cute town. That evening we decided to order a nice red Givry 1er Cru 2000 (so cool to actually know what that means) with our diner and I don't know if it was the wine course or simply a lovely diner in a lovely restaurant in a lovely town but it turned out to be a great choice !
The next morning we got up really early (if you can believe it!) and went to visit the Hospices de Beaune. This is a well known medieval hospital that continued to function as so until quite recently (the 80s I think). It was really cool to check out the "hospital beds" and "operating tools" in display. I have to say that even though the idea of a hospital for the poor in such dark times as the Medieval Era is quite impressive, I can't say I'm not glad to live in 2007.
After the visit, a quick coffee and pain au chocolat and we were ready for our course to begin at 10am. This time we concentrated on only Grand Crus and Premier Crus and needless to say the wine-tasting part of the course was a whole different experience.
Once the course ended we grabbed a quick lunch at a local brasserie and hopped in the car to drive up the last part of the route de Grand Crus all the way to Dijon. We got to see the last of the autumn colors fade away as slowly but surely we approached the A6 highway back to Paris. Good thing though we had planned to stop at Sceaux on the way back for one last birthday diner with Adrien and Hélène as this was a fantastic way to conclude a fantastic weekend.
Voilà ! Now you know everything ! :D
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