Puligny-Montrachet - Wine Epicenter

How Do You Know You're in Wine Country?
Well, for one, you're surrounded by vines.  Everywhere you look - along the road, in backyards, on the hills.  We arrived at the village of Puligny-Montrachet in mid-afternoon and took a walk along a small winding road to peek at the vines.  Strange tractors puttered by us - four small wheels and then five feet of suspension up to the enclosed drivers cab.  We later saw one crawling through a vineyard - it looked like a spider on wheels.

The damp grey Paris skies were long forgotten.  Here, nothing but bright blues, browns and greens.  So gloriously quiet.  Even the birds flew by quietly, beaks closed.

We checked into our B&B, which was run by a retired English couple.  They looked unsuccessfully for a place to retire in the south of France and eventually settled in the middle of wine country. We sat out on the back patio with the other guests: a retired Australian couple from Sydney, a couple from Los Angeles and a retired English couple who now lived in Wales.  The owners explained that when they bought the house it hadn't been touched since WWII.  It had been occupied during the war by German soldiers and there weren't even stairs to the second level, just a ladder.  No heat, no running water.  They gutted it and started over.

The entire village was constructed from the same light bricks and timber.  Flowers were thick like weeds, growing up the sides of houses and along the road.

For dinner, we joined the Australian couple at a restaurant across the street from our B&B.  It's run by a local vineyard where the wines are the draw - they serve food just so you don't get drunk. It was interesting to try wines inside wine country.  I learned a lot.  Each field in the village is labeled.  The bright yellow are the top-notch vines, labeled Grand Cru.  The lighter yellow are the next level down, labeled Premier Cru.  As we sipped each wine, our lady sommelier described the field - what type of soil, whether the grapes were grown on the valley or up on the hills, etc.  I tried five wines and Dodo tried two of the top-notch ones.

What's interesting is how all this translates into a wine label.  So, in this example, Vincent Girardin is the name of the winery, the wine was made bottled in 2006, it's from the village of Puligny-Montrachet and it is premier cru (1er Cru) and it is from a single field called Les Pucelles, which you can find on the map above.  At the very bottom, it reads grown, aged and bottled on site.  In other words, this is not mixed with anything else, you are drinking wine made from grapes grown on a single field on a hillside.  We bought one bottle and brought it to Syracuse with us.  It was from a field that has a large piece of shale underneath and it has a pleasant mineral taste to it.  We'll break it open and share it with the old lady soon.