Mischief and Mayhem - Just a day in Burgundy

Well after all of the craziness going on in our lives these past few months, we finally had a day where we could go explore beyond Paris.  Louis was in town....a quick weekend stopover in Paris between work trips in Portugal and Geneva....and he had a request that we leave Paris and explore somewhere else.  After presenting a few options, we decided on Dijon and the region of Burgundy.  More specifically, we went to Beaune which is a small town about a 20 minute train ride from Dijon.  We did just a day trip although if we had it to do all over again, I think we’d be better off spending the night.  We headed out on the TGV early on Saturday morning and just a little over 2 hours later, we were in Beaune.  It was a chilly day but at least it wasn’t raining, which was good because our plan was to rent bikes and explore the wine region of Burgundy.  Our friends Stacey and Alex recommended a bike shop in Beaune and Cedric (the guy who worked at the shop) helped us out by not only renting us bikes but also giving us some great suggestions on where to go for both tastings and lunch.  We headed off on our bikes and shortly after leaving the small town, we found ourselves amidst the vineyards of Burgundy.  It was pretty amazing and surreal.  I mean here it was just a regular old Saturday and we were bike riding through Burgundy.  Amazing!

We just happened upon a small little winery called Mischief and Mayhem where the lady was from the UK and spent some time telling us a bit about the wine region.  The wines were only ok although Nate and I bought a courtesy bottle.  The strangest part at this winery was when this lady poured us the reds she told us that she wasn’t sure how long they had been open and if they would be any good since she hadn’t been in the tasting room for a while.  Umm, ok?  Perhaps she wasn’t interested in really selling wine and more interested in getting to her lunch (after all, the wineries all close from about 12:00 to 1:30/2:00 for lunch).  So yeah, as nice as she was, it didn’t leave a great impression.

We headed off to our lunch at a restaurant recommended by Cedric.  It was a very homey feel of a restaurant and very typical French food.  The meal was delicious and we met a fellow bike traveler visiting from Boston.  All in all, a very lovely lunch.

We were back on our bikes and ready to explore and find another winery.  We again just happened across this one winery that seemed interesting.  It was called Edmond Cornu & Fils.  A lady greeted us and took us down into the wine cellar where she proceeded to pour us a few tastings.  Now she didn’t speak any English but luckily Louis is French Canadian and therefore could help translate.  She spent quite a bit of time with us and the wines were fantastic...as evidenced by the 7 bottles we bought between the 3 of us.  And we would have bought more too but there was only so many we could fit into that empty backpack we brought along.  It was overall a great experience and she even gave us a special taste of their Corton Grand Cru.  We are all still kicking ourselves for not making room to buy a few bottles of this one.  

Nate & Louis learning all about the region from this sweet lady

In any case, we had a wonderful experience here and in fact spent so much time there that we needed to start heading back to the bike shop to return our bikes and catch our train back to Dijon and then Paris.  Again, it would have been great to have had more time....there is so much to explore!!  We were mainly in the Aloxe-Corton and Ladoix areas but the southern part of the region was highly recommended as well.  I think it will definitely be on our list of places to head back to.  All in all it was a brilliant day and one that I think we will all remember for a long time to come.