A Celebration Of Burgundy, Served Chilled

By Robert V. Camuto
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 23, 2007

The countess was late to arise Saturday morning. Which posed a problem. It was breakfast hour -- 8 a.m. -- and there was no one to make coffee or serve croissants at the countess's B&B in the heart of Burgundy wine country. And breakfast was essential. It was January, it was freezing, and we had a long day of wine drinking ahead of us.

At 8:15, Countess Michel de Loisy -- impeccably groomed with swept-back silver hair, gray woolens and pearls -- arrived in the dining room and, in British-accented English, apologized for her tardiness. She had warned us that at her advanced age, she had "holes in my memory."

In Burgundy in general and at the countess's Domaine de Loisy in particular, it is hard to feel rushed about much. We sat at the grand wood table, surrounded by family heirlooms and busts and portraits of noble relatives. Coffee started brewing, and croissants and bread were passed around with the countess's homemade jams. Things were rolling.

Three friends and I had gathered for the 2007 edition of Burgundy's annual end-of-January celebration of the patron saint of wine: the Saint-Vincent Tournante, a festival that changes venue and style every year to highlight a different Burgundy wine appellation. The 2007 event was in Nuits-Saint-Georges, a predominantly red-wine-growing village of about 5,700 located 13 miles northeast of Burgundy's wine capital, Beaune.

The Saint-Vincent festival is one of the most accessible and affordable gatherings in a region that produces some of the world's most coveted wines. The allure of Burgundy -- after the gorgeous, picturesque countryside of tiny villages and small walled estates -- is the chance to sample an Old World wine order not quite in sync with the 21st century.

The next edition of the festival is scheduled for Jan. 26-27 in the much smaller Saint-Romain, a tiny (about 200 inhabitants), ancient, white- and red-wine-producing burg in the forested hills about eight miles southwest of Beaune.

For the 2007 celebration, my fellow wine musketeers included Ken, an engineer and fellow American living in France, and John and Jennifer, a couple of reconstructed Southerners who live in New York.

As this was a sainted celebration, it was normal that it begin in the early morning with solemnity and ceremony (and end with the last revelers stumbling home to bed the next morning). We didn't want to be late for the start.

After a quick breakfast, we hurried out into the damp, bone-chilling air to the opposite edge of town and the war memorial where thousands were gathering. A group of government and military dignitaries in ties and uniforms assembled in front of the memorial. So did dozens of members of the Confr¿rie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, Burgundy's fraternal order of wine ambassadors, wearing their trademark red robes with gold sashes and squared-off caps.

With pomp and precision, the order's grand master laid a wreath at the base of the memorial in remembrance of the generations of winemakers who had come before, particularly those who had fought and died for France.

A light snow began to fall. As the wreath-laying ceremony ended, we were absorbed by a sprawling, colorful procession that would wind its way through the streets of the town for the next hour. One marching band of at least 30 pieces struck up a fanfare; down the street was another. Richly colored velvet banners on long wood poles announced Burgundian towns with long, hyphenated names: Pernand-Vergelesses, Flagey-Ech¿zeaux, Sampigny-les-Maranges.

Pairs of men in heavy winter flannels and weathered coats paraded effigies of Saint Vincent on shoulder-borne wood litters. There were about 70 statues in all, carved in wood or cast in plaster and depicting a range of Vincents, from a stout, bearded, tough guy to an ethereal, angelic wisp. In most of those representations, Vincent held a bunch of wooden grapes, painted gold or left in natural wood tones. In some, he wore around his neck a silver tastevin, a shallow Burgundian wine-tasting cup.

The Wine Faithful

Just how, one naturally wonders, did Saint Vincent become the wine patron, celebrated so fervently here in Burgundy? The real Vincent of Saragossa was martyred in Spain in the year 304 and had nothing to do with fermented grape juice. One theory of why he was adopted by winemakers is that the first three letters of his name spell the French word for wine, so . . . voila! That was as good a reason as any.

Burgundy wine towns are impeccably kept collections of low, centuries-old stone buildings and streets, punctuated by the occasional bell tower, public square or color-patterned tile roof. Walking Nuits-Saint-Georges was like a visiting a neighborhood that puts on a show to celebrate Christmas. But instead of lights, trees, mangers and images of Santa, the town was decorated with 500,000 red and yellow paper flowers, thousands of purple balloons tied into grapelike bunches, and often-carnivalesque displays about winemaking and wine drinking using life-size papier-mache figures.

About 10 a.m. the procession entered the iron-gated courtyard of Saint-Symphorien church, a tall, ornate Romanesque 13th-century edifice on the edge of town. Outside the church, the banners and effigies of Vincent were parked in a line. Hundreds of participating winemakers and other locals packed the church, where the archbishop of Dijon presided over a Mass in which wine served as a central spiritual metaphor. It was a reserved-seat event, but other Masses were held simultaneously at other churches in town and were open to the public.

"Jesus tells us, 'I am the new wine,' " the archbishop was quoted as proclaiming from his pulpit in the next day's local press.

I must confess that we did what many of the winemakers and parade participants did: skip church to warm up at a local bar.

Street Party

The end of Mass meant the beginning of the celebration. At 11 a.m. the pinot began to flow, and by noon the streets resembled a giant tailgate party -- food, drink and music -- only without the game to follow.

Roaming the streets were bands of costumed revelers, including burlap-wearing peasants and a group that disguised itself as a swarm of phylloxera, the vine-destroying insects that ravaged Europe in the late 19th century.

Here's how it worked: For about $15, you got a stout crystalline wineglass along with six color-coded drink tickets to use at the tasting stations, which poured wines from dozens of local producers. For an additional $22, you got a hot lunch. There was also a six-course afternoon banquet, followed by an evening tasting of Nuits-Saint-Georges wines dating to 1921.

Every Saint-Vincent celebration is different, reflecting its venue and local organizers. The 2008 version in Saint-Romain will start with a similar procession followed by a Mass, but the smaller village is planning a more intimate scale for the fest. Fifteen bucks will still buy a glass and wine tickets, and there will be musicians and fanfares. But instead of public serving stations offering scores of different wines, five or more of the village's 10 winemakers will open their wineries to tastings. There will be no grand organized lunch, but there will be a Saturday evening banquet featuring a multi-course Burgundian meal and wines.

The first thing to understand about Burgundy's vineyards is that they cultivate only two principal grapes for fine dry wines: chardonnay for white and pinot noir for red. The second -- and astonishing -- thing to know is just how different the wines taste. Burgundy has some 3,500 winegrowers spread across 87 appellations. Forget the idea of grand chateaux or Napa-style wineries with gift shops. The typical Burgundy winery is built under the winemaker's house, with swing sets and kids' bikes in the yard.

Not only do Burgundy pinot noir and chardonnay taste completely different from their New World counterparts, but Burgundy wines often taste completely different from the same stuff made across the street. The wines -- from those costing less than $10 a bottle to the most expensive in the world -- are literally all over the place. That variety makes Burgundy about the most interesting wine country around. It doesn't hurt that the food -- lots of escargots in butter, and meats (and even eggs) cooked in red wine -- isn't bad, either.

Liquid Lunch

I should add that it's pretty much impossible to taste anything in temperatures hovering around 20 degrees. The four of us huddled around our glasses and stamped our feet in a packed square. One of the marching bands from that morning had set up in a corner and drew a crowd of a few hundred. They boogied through a rendition of "In the Mood."

We were in the mood for a hot lunch, and we made our way to a large, unheated multipurpose hall with about 1,000 other hungry people. It took about a half-hour to arrive at the food line, present our tickets and be served a paper-plate lunch that consisted of a slab of p¿t¿, a cut of cooked ham drowning in an unmemorable sauce, and cheese. I wished we'd splurged on the banquet, where we no doubt would have been comfortably seated and tucking into Burgundy escargots at that point.

What kept everybody happy was the wine. With every course, the servers would pour another glass of what turned out to be some tasty and aromatic red Nuits-Saint-Georges from vineyards rated "premier cru" (not the most expensive "grand cru" designation, but the good stuff nonetheless).

Our insides began to glow and our feet had begun to thaw. We sat at one of the long tables, where next to us was a pair of middle-aged married couples from Brittany who were having a merry time. Over the next hour or so we communicated in a mix of French and English with Jean-Claude and Nicole and Edmond and Liliane.

Jean-Claude seemed to be expert at finding good wines and being served over and over. With each new wine, Edmond would stand -- as I observed many men in the hall do -- raise his glass and start singing one of those songs that men in France a generation or more ago learned as part of their obligatory military service.

After the singing repertoire -- which also included plenty of Burgundian drinking songs -- was exhausted, we said our au revoirs and went back into the throng.

As the day went on, the crowd got younger. The average age that morning had seemed about 50. In some places that afternoon it appeared to have dropped 30 years.

As the sun sank low in the sky, John pronounced the day "about the most fun I've ever had walking around in ice and slush."

Back at the B&B, we sat by a wood fire along with the countess's favorite cat, which was sprawled on a chaise longue. A friend of the countess's dropped by and explained that our hostess had been held up at a wine tasting -- the one with the vintages going back to '21 -- which was dragging on overtime and would continue well into the night.

"You may see the countess later," she said. "But then, she may not see you."

France-based writer Robert V. Camuto is the author of "Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country," which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in fall 2008.