There is a particular slant of light in Burgundy in early spring — pale gold, almost apologetic — that falls across the limestone slopes just before dusk and makes you understand, viscerally, why people have farmed these hills for a thousand years.
I arrived in Beaune on a Tuesday, driving up from Lyon in a rental car that smelled faintly of someone else's cigarettes. The town was quiet. The tourist season hadn't started yet, which meant I had the Hospices to myself, or nearly so, and the wine shops were staffed by people who actually wanted to talk.
The Côte de Nuits
My first stop was Gevrey-Chambertin. Everyone goes to Gevrey eventually. The grands crus line the road like a hall of fame — Chambertin, Clos de Bèze, Mazis, Ruchottes — and you half expect a brass band. Instead there's just the wind, and the vines, still bare in March, and the silence that comes from standing in a place where the soil has been turned by human hands for longer than your country has existed.
I tasted with a small domaine — not a famous one, deliberately — and the vigneron walked me through six vintages of the same vineyard. The differences were humbling. Same grapes, same hands, same hectares of earth. But 2017 tasted like iron and dried cherries and something almost savory, while 2019 was all silk and dark plum and a finish that went on long enough to be embarrassing.
"The wine tells you what the year was like," he said, which sounds like a cliché until you've actually experienced it.
Eating Well
A note on the food, because you cannot discuss Burgundy honestly without it: I ate oeufs en meurette three times in five days. I regret nothing. The combination of poached eggs in a rich red wine sauce, with lardons and mushrooms and bread to soak everything up, is one of the most satisfying things a human being can put in their mouth. I found the best version at a small bistro in Nuits-Saint-Georges that had checkered tablecloths and a handwritten menu and a house Bourgogne rouge that was better than it had any right to be.
What I Brought Home
Two bottles of a premier cru Chambolle-Musigny that I am saving for an occasion that probably doesn't exist yet. A jar of Dijon mustard. Mud on my boots that I couldn't quite get off.
And the memory of that light on the slopes, which I suspect will stay with me longer than any tasting note I could write.