La Degustation

This was the last day of the first part of the Holiday. Plans to do two things - taste some local wine and go out for a meal in the evening to save on washing up.
The little hamlet we were staying in (Orches) has a family that has owned the local vinyards for the last 500 years. This family produce 150,000 bottles of wine a year, and they have a little 'Cave' in the village where you can taste the range of wines thay have and perhaps buy bottle or two.
In the shops, you can spend hundreds of Euro on a bottle of wine, or just a few Euro. We had the "Two Euro challenge" which tasked us to go out and buy as many different varieties of 2 Euro (or less bottles) of wine as we can.
The cheapest was 85 cents, and in the evenings, it's nice to drink this stuff and eat baguettes and copious amounts of cheese. This cheap wine was eminently pleasing (only one was like vinegar), but sometimes when you splashed out say, 4 Euro for a bottle, the step-up in quality was noticeable. After a while, we got quite used to the differences, and began to understand what it was we enjoyed in a bottle of wine.
In the little cave in the little hamlet were the local wines that started at over 7 Euro a bottle and went up to over 20. Straight away, the difference was spectacular. All 10 of us had trapsed in and all 8 adults were ready to go at some free booze, and none of us were disappointed - the samples were generous and the receptacle that was provided for spitting the wine out or pouring the rest of the glass into was totally untouched throughout the session. The owner spoke almost perfect English and was really informative about how the vinyard system worked, and how they differentiate between ordinary stuff and the Grand Cru. -apparently it depends on what patch of land it is grown on. When we worked our way up to the Premier Grand Cru's, the tastes were unbelievable. We must have gone through 15 samples each and were well squiffy by the time we waved a cheery goodbye laden down with cases of first-class plonk. The only thing is that some of the top ones won't be at their very best until three years have gone by. I can wait.

The meal out that was to save us on washing-up followed the normal French pattern. Three cars going to a recommended restaurant only to find the place closed (bloody seven o'clock on a Friday night). On to the second - place (HOW MUCH!!!!??) and then into Beaune where we all wandered around aimlessley until we all agreed on the ambience (not sure what the French for that is) of one town-centre eatery that seemed pricey, but acceptable. To be fair, the food was great, but I was a bit stung by my share of the "avoid the washing-up" bill that exceeded the cost of the return ferry trip by a country mile.
There was a merry-go-round in the central park area not far from the restaurant, and Henry and Hannah had great fun having multiple goes on this thing at 2 Euro a pop until it closed at 10 o'clock.

We got home and had a nice cup of tea and some more wine, and after planning tomorrow's 350 mile journey to the next house proceeded to wash up all the tea-cups and wine glasses and ashtrays....