She ain't quite "nectar of the gods"

Today was planned out but did not go to that plan.

Started off in fine fashion as I watched the Warriors have a good win over the Melbourne Storm - this was achieved by accessing Livestream.com via Unblock.Us and while I missed the first 15 minutes due to "technical difficulties" the remainder of the game streamed uninterrupted.

Having been to the Mustard museum the other day we had booked for the Mustard Factory tour @ 10 this morning. We arrived in good time and joined others on the tour but it soon became obvious that we had been booked on the museum tour which we had done so it was back to the reception area and we rebooked for the factory tour on Tuesday.

Plans needed to be adjusted so off to the Tourism office to see if we could book for a "cave" visit and did so for the Patriarche later this afternoon.

Having achieved that we then went walking in the vineyards that rise into the hills to the west of Beaune township.

Once you leave the confines of town it gets very peaceful out among the vines which stretch literally as far as one can see from left to right - they make a very nice sight

All the vineyards are well laid out and signposted and depending on their position on the slope, their orientation to the sun, the geology of the ground in which they are planted their classification is determined from Grand Cru (32 vineyards producing 5% of the total output in Cote D'Or) then Premier Cru (585, 18%) then Communal Appellations (53 communities, 36%) and finally Regional Appellations (22 Regions, 41%)

So the more expensive wine is a Grand Cru wine, but having tasted a few over the past few days it doesn't matter what the quality of the grapes you need a good winemaker to get the good wine!

On the way back to the digs we walked through a rather pretty park

In the afternoon we visited Patriarche Pere et Fils a significant wine trader founded in 1796 who buy grapes from various winegrowers in Burgundy then mature the wine to their own standard and then retail it under the Patriarche brand

They have 5kms of vaulted cellars running deep under the streets of Beaune containing over 3,000,000 bottles of wine at various stages of maturation - the complex is very impressive

Included in the visit was tasting of approx. 14 different wines from around the region and having tasted the majority of them I didn't find one to my liking

The temperature was up again so we ventured back to the pool well attired in my new "speedos" only to run into another spot of bother - we placed all of our clothes and shoes etc. in a plastic shopping bag and attached it to the tray they provide which you hand in for safe keeping only to be informed that you couldn't hand in a bag - we could put the items individually in the tray and they would accept that but not if they were contained in a bag! Go figure - even the local lady who explained it to us thought the rule was idiotic or perhaps very French

Nevertheless the swim had the cooling effect desired even if by the time we got back to our accommodation another swim might have been nice!

Tomorrow we take the train to Lyon to have a look there.

Bonsoir

 

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