Château du Clos-de-Vougeot
France > Burgundy > Southern > Clos-de-Vougeot
If you find French wine culture fascinating, it's worth visiting the Château du Clos-de-Vougeot to see the wine-making process (Apr–Sept daily 9am–6.30pm; Oct–March daily 9–11.30am & 2–5.30pm; Sat closes 5pm; €3.20), 15km north of Beaune between Gévry-Chambertin and Nuits-St-Georges, where you get to see the mammoth thirteenth-century winepresses installed by the Cistercian monks to whom these vineyards belonged for nearly 700 years until the Revolution. The Château today is the home of a phoney chivalrous order founded in 1934, the Confrèrie des Chevaliers du Tastevin. Chivalrous or not, the "new" monks continue the good wine work. After you've seen how it's made, you can taste it nearby at La Grand Cave à Vougeot (9am–7pm). There's a three-day wine festival, Les Trois Glorieuses on the third Saturday in November, starting in Vougeot and continuing in Beaune and Meursault.
Pages in section ‘Clos-de-Vougeot’: The wines of Burgundy.
|
