The Grape Years Weblog

“This is a winetasting that has to be earned,” Franck notes as we get dressed in the wee hours of the morning.

No longer novices, we equip ourselves far better than last year. We zoom off to Beaune in our warmest winter jackets, heavy wool sweaters, thick socks, huge home-knitted scarves (merci mom) and toques pulled down past our brows.

We arrive in front the ornate gates of “Les Hospices” in Beaune at 8:00am. The temperature is flirting with zero. There’s already a good sized crowd mulling about, but this is France, so there is no orderly line with a beginning and an end – just a writhing mob, blocking the road and not overly concerned by the fact.

We pick a spot as close to the gates as we can get, and wait.

This winetasting is legendary. If we can get in, we will be given the privilege to descend into the magnificent vaulted caves of “Les Hospices” and taste forty or more wines from their latest récolte. This opportunity only comes once a year, during “Les Trois Glorieuses” or “The Three Glorious Days” during the third weekend of every November when the Beaune wine auction is held.

We already have our tickets, but that doesn’t ensure entry – that would be too easy! The gates only open between 8:30 and 9:30, and there is only room for 400 people during the morning tasting – and not one more.

I notice a smartly dressed man in front of me trying not to shiver in his classic wool overcoat. I listen to him talk for a few moments with a similarly attired woman beside him – his wife. I surmise that he must be one of the wine merchants who come from all over the world to attend the auction and all the attendant tastings and festivities. The posh couple discuss their daughter’s braces and their next ski holiday in Val d’Isère. The two of them seem to exist in a little bubble of in mutual denial about the steadily increasing crowd pressing in on all sides. Their strategy seems to be that if they ignore the mob between themselves and the winetasting thoroughly enough it might just go away.

I begin to calculate the chances of this Englishman or his wife having the requisite discourteousness to propel themselves though the gate when the time comes. Pragmatism forces me to conclude that it doesn’t look at all promising.

When a glimmer of an opening in front of the British couple appears, I grab Franck’s hand and slide in.

A few minutes later, a burly, bald security man opens the gate, and I realize for the first time in my life what it must feel like to be a rabid soccer fan. The crowd pushes and shoves and I find myself so tightly squeezed that I find myself contemplating the ear wax of the man in front of me. Determined not to expire flattened like a pancake against the ancient metal gate I give a mighty shove and somehow manage to propulse the man in front of me, myself, and Franck inside the main courtyard.

Once inside, I glance behind me to just in time to catch a glimpse of the British couple being pushed farther and farther back away from the gates, until they disappear in the now dispersing crowd altogether.

It’s really a shame they couldn’t get into the courtyard, I reflect, because they would be quite happy here. In stark contrast to the street scene, everything is most civilized, and the security personnel usher us into neat roped-off lines.

We wait in the courtyard for an hour more, but the atmosphere here is jovial, borne of a sentiment of shared suffering for a worthy cause. Besides, all of us inside the courtyard know - we have made it!

Finally, no worse for wear excepting the odd frozen toe, we make our way down the steps into the venerable interlinking “caves” of Les Hospices de Beaune, the vaulted stone walls date back to the 15th century.

This event, like many in the Beaune area, is B.Y.O.T., or “Bring Your Own Tastevin”. We, however, unlike the large majority of the crowd, have forgotten our winetasting cups at home (and, frankly, even though it probably relegates me to the rank of an amateur winetaster, if I had to choose between forgetting the tastevin or the toque, I would choose the tastevin). Luckily every year student nurses set up stands throughout the caves and do brisk business selling emblazoned tasting glasses, baguette sandwiches with your choice of jambon or saucisson, little cubes of gruyere, and bags of gougères. <put link in here to Franck’s recipe> Franck and I buy a glass and a sandwich each, and off we go on our merry way.

The caves are lined from one end to the other with reclining oak kegs, and at every third or fourth one is a winemaker serving the latest vintage of the cuvée that he or she is responsible for. The wine is poured into our glasses in the traditional way, with a large glass tube that is periodically dipped into the keg, and controlled by the winemaker’s finger at one end.

All of these wines come from vineyards that, over the years, have been donated by local individuals who were either very charity-minded or, more likely, felt that they just might need a little extra momentum on that trip through the Pearly Gates.

The huge majority of the wines are from extremely prestigious vineyards; Savigny, Pommard, Volnay, and Corton, to name a few. I find it fascinating to taste the wine in this extremely young, immature form (indeed, the grapes that this wine came from were only harvested two months previously). Even though the wines are strong and tannic, each cuvee has a very different and distinct bouquet of flavours, and it is intriguing to consider how these wines will grow, evolve, and mature.

There are spittoons everywhere, but we don’t seem to be getting much use out of them as we amble through the caves and up and down the ranks of wine kegs. Franck, being the chatty person that he is, stops to talk to almost every winemaker to ask them questions about their wine. I don’t mind, as this gives me the chance to lean against the nearest oak barrel, sip the latest Corton, and marvel at my luck.

Indeed, these wines we are tasting are very rarely offered on the public market. They are only sold by the barrel to the international wine merchants who all crowd into the Beaune market Hall during this weekend to bid on the barrels, and therefore set the market price for Burgundy wines for the rest of the year.

All around me are wine lovers from all over Burgundy and the world, sipping and swishing and tilting their tastevins to and fro. The debate over the relative merits of the 2005 vintage is lively, but the general consensus is that it is shaping up to be a very good year, and perhaps even an excellent one. The wines are strong, and hold much promise.

One taster near me, with a typically French love of provocation, is bemoaning the unmitigated force of a young Pommard to the winemaker responsible for the wine in question. The winemaker shrugs off the criticism.

“Cher monsieur” he responds with no small amount of disdain.  “It is never the nice girls that are the most interesting.”

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