So I have spent two weeks in Vosgne-Romanee, France with Dan, James and Lauren. Over that time, I had the opportunity to explore Dijon, Beaune and the Loire. I walked the vineyards of Romanee Conti and made dinner in its kitchen. My last day there, I was even able to explore the cellar—an opportunity that is so rare that even the interns had to work there for 3 weeks before seeing it. This little town is so quaint and lovely. The bell tower tolls every half hour starting at seven and ending at ten. The seven a.m. bell begins with the usual seven tolls then erupts in a cacophony of ringing for about seven minutes, loud enough to wake the whole town. This bell rings every morning, even on the weekends. At nine, there is a bread truck that drives through the town honking its distinct horn, calling people to come out to the street to buy bread for the day. The noon bell does a similar ringing pattern to the seven, and then this happens again at five and seven at night. The bell marks each major event of the day. At seven, rise, at noon, eat lunch, at five, stop working and at seven, eat dinner. I am curious to learn to what extent the people of the town follow this tolling. We haven’t much followed it aside from waking at 7. We have eaten breakfast then have had something to do during the day. This usually leads us to eat lunch at around 2. We have gone to the grocery store daily.
Then the boys usually go on a bike ride later in the afternoon and we start making dinner around 8. We then eat between 9 and 10. The meals have been phenomenal, as Dan and Lauren are incredible cooks. They made us many dishes including roasted duck, which later became duck soup, CEufs en meurette and lentils with a cucumber relish, among other things. Once, we had purple green beans which were purple raw but to our dismay turned green when we steamed them; we ate copious cheese spreads and lots of moutarde. Yes, we had plenty of Dijon.
I had so much fun in the Loire valley. We went there to visit many castles and although I was disappointed that we weren’t able to taste any wine there, Dan and I made the best of it, exploring spires, bedrooms, kitchens, balconies and gardens. My favorites were to see the petite size of the beds or the architecture of the staircases, some of which were built earlier than the 1700’s. For the most part, the kitchens in the castles were disappointing; except for the last castle we saw which had four individual rooms each with its specific use. One was a butcher, which had meat hooks still hanging from the ceiling. The next was a bakery and then one room with a stove for wood fire breadmaking and then another huge stove for stews. The gardens were incredibly impressive and I decided that when I have my own castle, I want a labyrinth made of hedges.
We went wine tasting in the towns around Vosgne-Romanee a few times and surprisingly had quite a few quality wines. There are so many wineries here, it is definitely a way of life but one that I like. Each winery has a sign out front stating that it is open, but the tasting room more often than not is in the cellar. Many of these wineries are located at peoples’ houses so when you walk in you find the people going about their daily business. Upon seeing guests, they stop at a drop of a hat to show you the winery and let you taste their wines. The smell of each old cellar is such a nice, romantic atmosphere that I feel incredibly fortunate in having. Although I don’t speak French, Dan and James do very well at communicating with the winemakers and without them, I would never have this experience. For that, I am entirely grateful. The tastings are always free and when they find out that we are wine students, they never expect us to buy (although if they are good, we do buy them).
One day, Dan and I took a ride to a little town where the movie Ciocolate was filmed. We didn’t see many shops although there were many cars in the parking lot of the town. It was a small and old town with probably three restaurants and four shops, none of which sold chocolate. But the drive to the town was very nice and we had lunch in one of the restaurants. We both had salads, mine had prunes, ham and gooey cheese that reeked like old, old, old feet. I initially thought that the dressing on the salad produced this putrid smell and was terrified to eat it, but it turned out it came from the cheese which was wrapped in a crepe and easily removable. Dan and I concluded that it was a locally made cheese. Dan’s plate was a salad topped with duck meat, gizzards and fois gras. It was truly the most savory and heaviest salad I have ever seen. It tasted amazing and the restaurant was certainly generous with the duck parts.
I am going back to Italy tonight to visit Anna and the wineries that I worked at last summer. I had made plans to go to Italy to try to find an internship under the table, as my visa issue still has not been resolved. Between the time that I concluded to revisit Italy and now, a winery in Roa, Spain has offered me an internship for the harvest, so believe it or not, I will be going to Spain at the end of the month! So, I threw away my Italian language books (they have been incredibly heavy to carry all this way) and looked up some Spanish review sites online. Oh, how life throws you curve balls.
