Today we begin a wonderful journey with John Beaver Truax through Burgundy. He visited for a week during the 2015 Hospices de Beaune auction and we'll be posting a series of installments of his trip each Thursday over the next few weeks. Enjoy!
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I was recently in Italy for a couple weeks. It was for a combination wedding and family vacation -- not wine-related at all -- in Tuscany and Umbria. So there were no visits to wineries. There was, however, plenty of wine, and a few things about wine and life and Italy occurred to me:
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Our last stop in Chablis was with Patrick Piuze, a 41 year old French Canadian who found his way to Burgundy. He worked the harvest for Franck Grux at Olivier Leflaive in 2000. Grux was so impressed with his hard work and enthusiasm he was offered a job.
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Having the opportunity taste at Bartolo Mascarello was one of the great honors of my life. I have been in love with the wines since my first bottle of 1996 Barolo at Babbo for I think, my 26th birthday.
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The vineyards of Barolo are impossibly beautiful. My first morning, I woke up to the legendary fog that gives the local Nebbiolo grape its namesake.
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This visit was definitely a highlight on a recent trip to France. To get to Thierry's, we made the short walk -- perhaps 30 paces -- from the winery of Auguste Clape, where we were privileged to taste with three generations of Clapes. But that's for another blog post. Today the topic is Thierry Allemand, and especially the two interesting lessons that Thierry took it upon himself to teach us on that day.
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So, after resting and recuperating for a few days in Morgon, it was time to head south to where my love affair with wine really began: Piemonte.
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Beaujolais is a great place to travel when you're with the team from Kermit Lynch. No U.S. importer has done more to promote the wines of Beaujolais than Kermit Lynch. Among his other great finds is the entire line up of the Gang of Four producers of Morgon: Thevenet, Breton, Lapierre and Foillard.
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From Joguet we drove directly to Pierre Breton. We had hung out at Pierre’s place only a few months earlier and it was good to see him again. On this visit, unfortunately, time was quite short and we headed straight to his underground tasting room and started opening bottles.
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It was a great appointment with Philippe Foreau – 90 minutes longer than he had slotted us in for – and so we were late to an embarrassing degree for our next appointment, with Pierre Breton.
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After Huet we just had time to squeeze in lunch at la Geule Noire, a nice farm-to-table in a cave carved out of tuffeau stone where the chef attempts to “fuse” Basque and the local Tourainaise cuisines (razor clams, pig’s snout, pig’s feet, veal with Serrano and Manchego, washed down with the local beer Noirette and a bottle of Pinon’s Silex Noir 2010). One of the best meals of our trip and highly recommended.
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