I was in Burgundy for all of five minutes before I began plotting how I could move there for a few years, holing up in a little village with well-pruned grape vines and a Romanesque cathedral, drinking delicious, affordable bottles of some of the world’s best wine, eating pungent, oozy epoisse cheese after multi-course, farm-to-table lunches. The whole farm-to-table thing just happens naturally in the Burgundian countryside. They don’t make a big deal out of it. Another thing that happens: pastis (for about $2.50 a glass) with your morning coffee. How could I not embrace that civilized tradition?
Here’s proof of me enjoying a nice belt of the licorice-y national beverage at about 11:00 a.m. in the beautiful, medieval city of Cluny. Cluny was once the center of western monasticism and boasted the second-largest cathedral after St. Peter’s in Rome before the building was destroyed during the French Revolution.
Yep, the dude in the little white truck is guiding his flock of sheep into their pen at the end of a day of grazing.
If you go to Burgundy and don’t order escargots, go directly to jail. Plump snails bathed in butter, garlic and herbs — with a carafe of the house white, which will not cost you much and will be as solidly structured as the 11th-century stone cathedral across the street.
Another Burgundian delicacy that it is against the law not to eat as often as possible: epoisse, the local washed-rind cheese (washed in marc, the local unaged brandy, akin to grappa). When it’s perfectly ripe, it oozes out of its rind like honey. Stinky in the most wholesome possible sense. This photo was taken in Beaune, the capital of the Burgundy wine trade, where a well-dressed representative of that trade, just back from Japan, shared some of his Sancerre with us.
Oh, hi. Another kick-ass bottle of Burgundy. This was in a totally ho-hum-looking cafe in the town of Nuits-Saint-Georges where, like a good tourist, I ordered the Boeuf Bourguignon. They did not phone it in — it was luscious. This memorable lunch cost about $18.
On the way to Paris, we stopped at the stunning Fontenay Abbey. It was established by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the austere Cistercian order, in 1118. This is a view from the cloister.
Le Baron Rouge (the Red Baron) is one of those “hidden gems” that was outed a while ago by savvy Paris travelers, so I’m not going to feel too bad about writing it up. You can see above the riches to be found on its chalkboard menu. Also, one of its walls is adorned with wood casks from which you can fill a liter of wine to bring home for short money (i.e. about $5!). It was very quiet the day I visited, but I heard that Sunday afternoons are crowded with patrons enjoying really good wine and charcuterie without the tourist mark-up.
By far my biggest splurge while in Paris was at the fabled Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Hotel, located in the elegant Place Vendome. There I drank a $41 Manhattan with some fellow American ladies of the international cocktail scene: ex-pats Forest Collins, who works on tsunami-warning logistics for the U.N. and writes the 52 Martinis blog, and burlesque performer Gentry Lane; plus Vivienne VaVoom, another burlesque performer who was visiting from Denver. Yes, that’s more than I paid for most of my multi-course meals in Burgundy. But the head-spinning journey from drinking pastis in anonymous village cafes with a bunch of old guys to drinking cocktails in one of the most celebrated bars in the western world with a tsunami expert and two striptease artists? Priceless.
The Great October Strike of 2010 hadn’t begun yet when I flew into Paris on the morning of the 11th, so I was able to catch a super-speedy-smooth TGV train to Lyon right away. I would spend the night there en route to the distillery at the foot of the French Alps that produces the venerable herbal liqueur Chartreuse.
France’s second-largest city after Paris, Lyon is situated amid the comely geography of the Rhone and Saone rivers. I checked into the groovy Hotelo near the Rhone side of things and wandered across the city to the Saone side — the oldest part of the city. I did the mandatory climb up an endless set of stairs for a view of the Lyon Cathedral and its plaza, then rewarded myself with a La Chouffe Belgian ale at an outdoor cafe in said plaza. Right then it was official — I was on vacation in France!
A cab driver suggested I check out Brasserie Georges for dinner. Its largeness and big neon sign (albeit in cool, Art Deco lettering) gave me pause — this place has as much chance of being really cheesy as being really good, I thought. But it was conveniently located right across the street from my hotel… The verdict: really good. Brasserie Georges is a real brasserie, i.e. beer is brewed on the premises. I ordered a slightly cloudy, dry Belgian-style amber and enjoyed the hustle and bustle, the hearty regional fare (calf’s-foot and lentil salad, anyone?) and the swift, sure service that all characterize a good, urban brasserie. If you’re ever in Lyon, it’s well worth checking out.
The next day was the first official day of the strike, but, blessedly, the train to Voiron managed to roll out of the station. I got there just in time to meet my tour guide from Chartreuse, the gracious and multi-lingual Florence Donnier-Blanc. The distillery and its cellars receive hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. She showed me around the cellar, informing me that it is the largest liqueur cellar in the world. Two million liters of green and yellow Chartreuse rest there in oak casks the size of Humvees. Many of these casks, whose wood comes primarily from Russia and Hungary, are 100 years old. (Oh, the herbaceous aroma of that aging liqueur!)
You may have heard that only two brothers of the Carthusian Order — the 900-year-old monastic order that created its “elixir of long life” in 1737 — know the recipe for Chartreuse, which in the green variety involves 130 different botanicals. But those two monks, with one helper, are also responsible for producing the entire world’s supply — in part using small, copper pot stills that are 200 years old. Now that is god’s work.
It was a treat to sample some special-edition bottles of Chartreuse unavailable in the U.S., including a version of yellow Chartreuse made in partnership with some of France’s noted sommeliers and a version of the green called 1605, an homage to the birthday of the original recipe for the elixir that was perfected 132 years later. The 1605 is an enchantingly dry-ish sibling of the standard green Chartreuse. The brothers also produce a line of berry liqueurs that just cry out for sparkling wine and aromatic Alpine specialties like Genepi (which smells similar to Chartreuse and is made from flowers that only grow in the Alps) and La Gentiane (similar to France’s famous yellow, bitter liqueur Suze). The distillery’s tasting room boasts eye-catching displays of vintage Chartreuse, as well as various “imposter” bottles whose liquid is frighteningly Nyquil-colored.
Next, Florence and I hopped in one of the distillery’s Chartreuse-mobiles and made the scenic, winding drive up to the mountains…
…for a lunch of fondue and white wine at a cute, little auberge frequented by hikers and skiiers. It was a ridiculously gorgeous day as we sat there enjoying the view of Chamechaude, the highest peak in the Chartreuse range of the Alps. (Florence insisted that Paramount Pictures nabbed this peak for its logo.)
After lunch we drove to the site of La Grande Chartreuse — the main monastery of the Carthusian Order, which has existed on that site since 1084. The lower house of the monastery houses a museum, the other (above), a short hike away, houses the hermitage where the brothers live. We took in the view of the hermitage on a little hill bearing a crucifix and waxed philosophical about religion, family and life in general. In the woods below, we spied the occasional white-robed monk walking slowly, contemplatively. Labor strikes and other worldly turmoil seemed very far away.
Good god, y’all, I know it’s been a while. This broad’s been working like a dog at the old day job. Work is the curse of the drinking classes, as Oscar Wilde said. Actually, like a lot of famous quotes, this one’s provenance is not verifiable. The quote does not appear in any of Wilde’s writings; rather, it was attributed to him by his friend and biographer Frank Harris in Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions. It was allegedly uttered in the context of Wilde’s snarky comment about the acting profession over dinner at the Savoy in the 1890s:
It seemed to him a great pity that actors should be taught to read and write: they should learn their pieces from the lips of the poet. “Just as work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country,” he said laughing, “so education is the curse of the acting classes.”
» Project Savoy. Speaking of the Savoy, I recently got word from fellow blogger Erik Ellestad that he is but 50 recipes away from mixing all 750 cocktails in the Savoy Cocktail Book, published by the hotel in 1930. I reported on the beginning of this quest back in ’07. What fun to go back and read that post, as it records when I first became aware of Josey Packard, one of Boston’s best bartenders. (Fun fact: my shout-out in that post to Josey, who lived in San Francisco at the time, resulted in an email from her very shortly thereafter. A year later, she was working at Drink in Boston.) Erik, I do hope you’re planning a wrap party when you finally hit the finish line!
» Boston barkeeps on TV. OK, leave it to a Bostonian to put books before TV, but here’s some big news: not just one, but two Boston bartenders are, right this moment, in Los Angeles taping the third season of On the Rocks: The Search for America’s Top Bartender. Trina Sturm of Trina’s Starlite Lounge and Bill Codman of Woodward Tavern are competing against six other bartenders from around the country for the “top bartender” title and a grand prize of $100,000. Yowza! OK, so it’s a bit of a cheesy reality show sponsored by Absolut Vodka, but how can you not root for our hometown talent?
I spoke to Trina before she boarded a plane for the West Coast to see how she felt about the whole thing. She was both nervous and confident. “I’m sure of my bartending abilities, but what about when cameras are on me? The caliber of the bartenders is good this year. I don’t know how I’ll stack up against them. I know there are people better in certain aspects [of bartending], but the whole package? That’s me.” Episode 1 airs October 30 after Saturday Night Live … but not in Boston, unfortunately. So, fans of Trina and Bill will have to gather ’round the computer monitor and watch it on the web. Here’s a big, Beantown best-of-luck to both!
»”Tiki” sculpture. Hey, are you looking for a really, really special gift for the tiki enthusiast in your life or for someone who appreciates useful sculpture? Then check out these expressive, one-of-a-kind, glazed-clay vessels that are kind of a cross between tiki mugs and “grotesques” carved into medieval cathedrals. The artist is Jim McDonough of North Carolina, who, perhaps not surprisingly, is a plastic surgeon who has performed many facial-reconstruction surgeries. He also happens to be the father of Boston poet and sometime Russell House bartender Jill McDonough. The sculptures/mugs are for sale at the Boston Shaker.
Well, I’m off for a little vacation in France. Stay tuned for a post on Chartreuse and other Gallic liquid delights.
"Lauren Clark takes readers on a supremely sudsy tour of New England ales, lagers, pilsners, and porters. This is the New England the Puritans warned everybody about, but few have chronicled."
– Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails
