It's good to be us

As always happens eventually, Dave gave up on breakfast today. I was the first one down, and eventually everyone but Diane and Dave joined me. All I had was yogurt and tea and a small piece of bread. Cedric came later and brought some jam he’d made of figs. It was a little too sweet for me, but the way he calls them “figgies” is just adorable. It was fun just sitting around chatting, and then suddenly it was time to finish getting ready and go cook. Today’s cooking experience was a little different, because the hotel is also hosting 100 guests from one of the river cruises for lunch. So the chefs worked late last night, and were up early, and then somehow also showed extraordinary patience teaching novices how to do in 10 minutes what would take them 30 seconds.

Because they had so much to do, there was more watching today than yesterday, but there was still plenty to do. We made gauffretes, which are waffle cookies (like ice cream cones), and the boeuf bourguignon, and tried to make the 7 sided potatoes. I also chopped shallots, which didn’t go any better than it did at home, although the knife wasn’t particularly sharp. Mostly, though, there was foie gras. Foie gras flan, smoked foie gras, foie gras rolled in cocoa, foie gras rolled in speculoos, a crumbled cinnamon cookie. I did one of the chocolate ones and the texture is amazing – it is almost exactly like butter, and if you leave your hands in one place too long it melts.

The end of the cooking time is always signaled by Patrick pouring wine (today a Saint Veran), and then we have a short time to get cleaned up and put away our aprons before lunch. Lunch lasts about an hour and a half and today Valerie (another of the locals who comes in to cook with us) brought in a cake, once again more like a bread pudding, this time with prunes. We spent a long time trying to explain the difference between sheep and ships to Cedric and Valerie. Eventually I had to write it down and draw some pictures. But they told us that English is harder learn than French, because French people speak more slowly. This made us all laugh. Also it had worked out that I wore my banana slug t-shirt today because we had escargot for lunch, and it made people laugh that I had a picture of one (sans shell) on my shirt.

We had another short break (45 minutes) after lunch, and then we piled back in the van, along with Valerie and her Bichon-looking dog named Buddy. Our first stop was the Roche de Solutré, a wonderful limestone cliff above the villages of Pouilly and Fuisse. The location is famous because former president Francois Mitterand used to climb up it with friends, family, and other politicians on the Sunday before Pentecost. Carol, Dave, Patrick and I climbed up, while the others stayed down below and walked around. When we left the Chateau it was actually raining, but by the time we got to Solutré it had stopped. The wind was blowing something fierce though! They have a corral about halfway up with some horses of an ancient breed who keep the grass trimmed and are gorgeous to look at as well.

When we got down the three of us guests who’d climbed up needed to find the toilettes, but Patrick was concerned that we’d be late, so he drove the van down to meet us. Then he drove fairly aggressively to the other side of Macon and pretty much all the way across the Beaujolais region to Domaine Dupre. Jean-Michel and his wife are a young couple who are making very tasty wine. We got a tour of the tank rooms and then sat in the cellar to taste 5 very nice wines. Dave and I bought a bottle of the 2012 Regnie, made with fruit from vines planted in 1918. Jean-Michel himself gave us the tour and doesn’t speak English, so Patrick was doing the translating. J-M would speak passionately for 4 or 5 sentences, and then Patrick would say a sentence or two in English. I think some things got lost. It was a very different experience from yesterday, which was a much larger outfit. Things here seemed much less regimented and also maybe not as careful – wine bottles were sort of everywhere, and things weren’t as scrupulously clean and organized. It was much more relaxed. Afterwards several people bought wine (including us), and those of us who weren’t buying stood outside in the soft warm breeze looking at the field and vine covered hills as the sun set and turned the clouds orange. It was a little after 7 pm when we climbed back in to the van.

We rode back to the Chateau through the deepening night, marveling at the giant harvest moon as it rose (the eclipse was not visible from here, if you were wondering). The three ladies in the middle started singing Shine on Harvest Moon, which they knew almost a whole verse to, and then other moon songs that they only knew a line or so. And every so often someone would say “Boeuf Bourguignon”, and we’d all make happy sounds, because of course we all knew that was on the menu for tonight. It was almost 8 by the time we got back, and so we pretty much went straight to dinner without changing – Patrick even wore jeans.

Dave and I can’t remember if dinner started with the usual foam-over-veggies, because what came next was so amazingly delicious – a gratineed oyster with leek sabayon, diced scallops in a warm vinaigrette with caviar, and mushroom duxelles with sweetbreads. But before that even came out, Patrick pulled out two bottles of Regnie from Domaine Dupre – a 2006 and a 2009 that Jean-Michel had given him to share with us.  But first he brought out a white wine made from 7 cepages (grape varieties) from the very south of France to go with the starter. Then the spectacularly flavorful boeuf b. came out, garnished with onions, mushrooms, lardons, and the 7 sided potatoes, and the 2006 got poured, and it was a toss-up whether to eat or to just sit and breathe it all in. Lorraine was near tears from how good it all was. Halfway through the boeuf Patrick poured the 2009, and then there was the cheese course which I had been thinking about all day (and managed to impress everyone by naming 4 out of the 5 cheeses I wanted). Then there was sorbet with gauffrettes, and lots of talking and laughing. It was so special and tasty and fun and wonderful, and we all kept saying “It’s good to be us,” because this is such a treat and we are so lucky to be here with each other.

Dinner was short tonight – just under two and a half hours – and I may actually get to sleep before midnight for the first time in a week. So I will say bon nuit, and au revoir, and see you tomorrow.