8th August - Beaune. Hotel-Dieu and Burgundy tasting

When we woke up in the morning I had been hoping to be able to say....."It's raining, it's pouring, the old man's snoring." Well, unfortunately the rain didn't eventuate! The huge heatwave that has been covering Europe had melted one and all into a gelatinous blob. It was predicted to break overnight, with the French meteo even giving out storm warnings for 70 departments throughout the country. During the last 3-4 days the temperature has kept climbing, with our daily high usually being in the high 30s. It even tipped over to 40 degrees on our car thermometer at one point. This is no doubt starting to sound like a broken record but we have found the heat really draining. We typically start and end each day with a cold (straight cold) shower, usually another around 4pm when we arrive at the day's destination if it is a travelling day, one before bed, and John even got up in the middle of one night and had one. With no coverings at all during the night we are still seriously hot. None of our Airbnbs have had air-con (perhaps a mistake in hindsight) and few have even had fans. However, we've coped, just had to drink gallons and gallons of water each day, plus the odd beer or wine!

The temperature was in fact in the lower 30s in the morning, with rain and thunderstorms forecast for the next day. A message from our nephew in Lille, NW France, told us he had a storm pass through last night and the air there was much fresher. He arrives to spend three days with us in Ceret next week. It will be great to catch up.

We have three full days in Beaune, so could ease up on our 'exploring' schedule a little. Hence, a lovely lazy lie-in was followed by a coffee just before midday, a short wander around town, then lunch at a nearby Italian-French restaurant well recommended by Google and Tripadvisor. It was indeed a lovely fresh, tasty meal.

On arriving in Beaune we had immediately found out that it is, and has been since the 11th century, totally devoted to grape-growing and producing the famous Burgundy wines, made purely from Pinot Noir grapes. The growers really do have it nailed down to a precise art. There are exactly 1247 parcels of land within the precisely defined zone for Bourgogne. Each is specifically allocated to a Climat. It is apparently very important that the parcel is nominated within the correct Climat boundary, as each Climat is associated with a particular taste. Bottles are even labelled with the parcel of land the grapes came from, let alone which Climat or part of Burgundy. It is a massively clever piece of marketing, that has been going on the hundreds of years, making Burgundies both very sought-after and expensive.

Not being terribly fussed about wines, instead of heading directly to one of the many caves here for a wine tour and tasting, we instead first visited the iconic Hospice de Beaune - the Hotel-Dieu - located in the centre of town. This was a hospital built in 1443, specifically to care for sick poor people, and funded by one rather wealthy man and his wife. It was still used as a hospital right up to 1971, when the hospital function moved elsewhere in Beaune. The original hospice is now a UNESCO site, and an amazing place to explore. We spent nearly 2 hours there, listening to the extremely good audio-guide as we toured the complex.

The internal courtyard of the Hotel-Dieu or Hospice de Beaune

Recreation of the hospital beds that used to line the walls

Lovely drawing of details for a lamp inside the hospice

A lot of money was spent on its ornate construction.

Inside the kitchen. Clever clockwork triple spit on the right.

One of the many beautiful chests used for storing bedding and so on

A quick turn through the local cathedral (been there - done that) and home for an enjoyable few hours break. We had plenty of blog to catch up on.

At 5pm we headed out to a wine tasting place, Millesime a la Carte, on the edge of town, by foot in case we got carried away! We wanted to try the range of Burgundies, as there is a great range from plain AOC (appellation origine controlee) through premiers crus to grands crus. We were hoping to see if there might be a Burgundy we could use as a standard purchase back in Ceret. The wines were all 30ml doses from a specialist wine tasting machine, which was just enough for both of us to have a good taste and know if it was a wine we liked or loathed. We started by trying the cheap AOCs which sell around 10E per bottle, and finished by tasting a grand cru of 59E a bottle.

Millesime a la Carte, Beaune.

We'd have to say we were disappointed. At the lower end of the scale they were very thin and tannic, gradually getting more flavour and some with less tannin as we moved up the range. After trying 11 wines (only 330ml between us) we had got to a grand cru which we thought we ought to try. This was definitely ahead of the rest. We had found another one, not even a premier cru as it happened, which had a little more flavour and spiciness and which suited us.

The grand cru we tried

If you are used to a rich spicy pinot noir, then a Burgundy isn't going to be your thing. If you like your pinots thin and tannic, they could well suit the bill. In our opinion there was nothing there, except perhaps the NZ$100 grand cru we tried, that would get close to a sub-$30 Otago NZ pinot like Rabbit Ranch or Roaring Meg. It seems to us that most of the price must be in the marketing and branding - they simply didn't seem to be great wines at all, and for what you get they have to be over-priced. However it had been a very enjoyable experience, and most revealing.

At 10pm last night w wandered back into town to view the summer illuminations of the main buildings within the town centre. Animated lighting lit up the front of the cathedral, a couple of the churches and also the large wall of the Hotel-Dieu and a belltower. It was incredibly well done and well worth the late bedtime. The most amusing was a 3D cat running up and down the belltower chasing a ball of light.