A tasting in Burgundy

Traditional Burgundian Press

Chablis & Burgundy by Coach

1 - 5 November 2011

This excellent five day wine break takes in the whole gamut of great Burgundy wine starting with the ultimate great chardonnay based wines from Chablis in the North down to the vineyards south of Beaune. We’ll taste some outstanding wines at several domaines around Chablis in Northern Burgundy and this special wine tour also includes visits to good Burgundy wine domaines and negociants who offer great value, which is not always easy to find here.

We stay in two classic French towns, Auxerre which is just 20 minutes from Chablis and in the beautiful wine town of Beaune.
Having visited these two towns with our clients numerous times every year for over twenty years we have selected our favourite character family run 3* hotels in both towns to stay at to really appreciate the authentic local charm. Our preference for our wine holidays is always, wherever possible, to include small, character hotels, and both of these, which have only 25 rooms and bags of traditional character and comfort fit the bill perfectly.

To round the tour off perfectly on our journey home we include a finale lunch with a leading Champagne Grower on the Cotes de Blanc where we taste more wines made from 100% chardonnay, but this time with that added sparkle from having been through the “methode champenoise”. Champagne Jean Milan is a traditional family-run champagne house located in Oger is one of Champagne’s Grand Cru villages on the Côte des Blancs. The vines of this terroir solely produce Chardonnay. With 5 generations of winegrowers since 1864, Caroline and Jean-Charles Milan are still following their footsteps, respecting traditional savoir-faire but applying new techniques too.

As we are travelling from the UK by coach, you will be able to bring back home 36 bottles each – so 6 twelve bottle cases if you are travelling in a couple. All from wines that you have tasted with the wine makers and that offer outstanding value, even with the current exchange rates – so this trip is a superb excuse to stock your cellar for Christmas and New Year celebrations and beyond.

We really appreciate that many of our clients are not traditional “coach tour” travellers. The fact is, neither are we, so these are not traditional coach tours! We do everything possible to make the journey as comfortable as possible. There is a maximum of just 30 participants, and on this tour we have an extra leg room coach, that would normally accommodate up to 48, leaving spare seats for you to spread out if you wish. Throughout the journey, our Tour Manager will offer you complimentary tea, coffee and biscuits. We also make the journey go with an extra swing as our wine guide hosts an introductory wine tasting on the way. We also include your lunch on the way out, to really make the overall journey as enjoyable, relaxing and comfortable as possible. Of course, you also avoid the busy airports with this kind of trip, and someone else does all the navigating and driving, so no need to worry about whose turn it is to map read or drive! So travelling by coach with A&C is a very agreeable up-market experience! As our clients have so often told us – travelling with A&C it is so easy to really put your feet up and let us do all the work!

Our first base, Auxerre sits on the banks of the River Yonne; the medieval town centre has cobbled streets lined with timber-framed houses. The skyline is dominated by three magnificent church spires: the Cathedral, with its damaged yet attractive façade and C13th stained glass; St Germain, in which there are rooms containing C9th frescoes and St Pierre en Valée, which has a Gothic and C17th façade.

In nearby Chablis we’ll taste at leading negociant, William Fevre whose wonderful steely wines are the epitome of great chablis. The firm own vineyards on more of the Grand Cru slopes than any other. These are huge wines that unusually for whites really benefit from decanting and definetly get greater even with age. Our lunchtime is a casual lunch spent with our friends in an outlying village who welcome us with the whole family and a tasting of around 15 outstanding great value wines, which are always staples in the Arblaster & Clarke family cellar! We’ll also take you out to the pretty village of Irancy to taste with the best producer of Pinot Noir in the region.

Beaune, our second base is Burgundy’s wine capital which has a medieval centre with near complete battlements. You can walk round the battlements or simply enjoy a glass at one of the cafés. The most stunning building is the Hotel Dieu, with its multi-coloured glazed roof tiles, built in 1451 for the sick and poor. There is a wealth of wine shops and restaurants from simple auberges to Michelin starred cuisine for you to choose from in the evenings.

The tastings in Burgundy will include superb Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Crus at Lucien Boillot. On the southern Côte de Beaune in Santenay we visit Domaine Prieur-Brunet for a tasting of Premier Cru wines from the villages of the Côte de Beaune including Volnay, Pommard and Santenay itself, where the red wines seem to echo those of the northern Côte de Nuits. The whites we taste generally include the superb Meursault Les Charmes, Chassagne-Montrachet Les Embrazees and the rare Santenay Clos Rousseau. We continue our tasting over dinner at their traditional bistro, usually with a vertical tasting to match each course.

On the two evening’s where dinner is not included you have the choice of joining our team at their choice of restaurant which will be a good value brasserie, or making your own choice either by strolling out to see what takes your fancy, or by choosing from our restaurant lists built up from years of visiting these towns which both offer a choice from simple wine bar to Michelin starred gourmet establishments.

The Wine Guide, who will travel out and back from the UK with you, is one of our regular team – a wine journalist or wine writer who can really put the visits into context for you, advise on what are good value wines for you to buy and of course let you know where you can find these wines back home. They will also know the regions well and will enjoy sharing their knowledge and love of the region over relaxed dinners at their choice of restaurants each evening.

As ever an Arblaster & Clarke Wine Tour is all about joie-de-vivre and love of the region, its wines and its food! With the opportunity to bring back lots of wonderful wines from our personally selected estates this will be a great late autumn wine break.