Always Take the Bike Tour — The Towering Travelers

Story by Nicole

On Wednesday, we hired a French conspiracy theorist to guide us on bikes around the Côte de Beaune.

The above is true, but it happened because we booked a day trip around the region on bicycles to explore and taste wine, and because there was a last-minute cancellation, we ended up by ourselves on the tour, This meant that we had the day to ourselves with Eric, an electronics salesman turned self-taught botanist who now works for the bike tour company. We had a delightful day biking around the vineyards and forests with a local who told us about vineyards, wine, and French culture, and sometimes spontaneously sang or whistled American songs that he played with his band.

Just the awe-inspiring French countryside (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Green and cliffs (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking down over Saint Romain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We started biking around Saint Romain, where we stopped periodically to talk about vines, grapes, and wines. Eric reiterated some of what we already knew and taught us some new facts as well. Three wine facts for the day: apparently Bourgogne is also an exporter of oak wine barrels. Rosé is made like red wine, but the skins are not kept in long enough to develop the deeper red color. White wine can also use red grapes, as red grapes have white juice, they don’t add the skins back in during the winemaking process. We paused at a giant stone table at the top of a hill to eat some cheese with a glass of white wine.

Biking through Saint Romain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Saint Romain (I think) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An old clothes-washing area (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Biking along country roads (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Snack break (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The fortress of Château de la Rochepot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our first tasting was at Chateau de Chassange-Montrachet, where we tasted three white wines and one red. These were newer wines that had not fully matured in flavor yet, but the somaliers taught us what to taste for. The red needed a little time to develop its taste, but the smell was amazing, and it definitely didn’t taste bad, it was just lacking some layers of complexity. We also explored the very impressive cellars full of wine barrels (white wine is aged in metal and red is aged in wooden barrels). The barrels were color-coded to denote the year, and thurs the characteristics, of those barrels.

This cellar is very old (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Color-coded wine barrels (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric walks through the wine barrels (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The original vehicle for selling Chateau de Chassange-Montrachet wine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had lunch in the village of Puligny Montrachet, where we were welcomed to the Olivier Leflaive restaurant by the owner himself. We paired our three-course lunch with a delicious 2011 Marsannay Premier Cru. There was much time spent discussing wine, politics, and the world at large over the meal.

After lunch, we headed out for the last leg of our biking tour. We rode for a few minutes with a woman from the Netherlands who was biking to Spain, and Eric gave her some general directions before we parted ways. I considered for a moment how both incredible and lonely her trip would be.

Eric pointed out the soon-to-be-defunct national postal service (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beautiful biking scenery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our fearless leader (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric and our temporary travel companion (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We finished in Pomard, where Eric left us at a local winery and biked up the hill to get the van and bike trailer. There we tasted nine wines, 3 white and 6 red, that ranged from regional appalation to Premier Cru. Obnoxiously, Jason has learned to taste the difference between a regional appellation wine and a Premier Cru wine, which means that his wine tastes have become more expensive. Prompting a moment of small-world revelation, a couple who was from Denver randomly happened to walk into the winery when we were about to taste the wines and asked to join us.

The garden at Chateau de Pommard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The cellar at the winery in Pommard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After Eric drove us back into Beaune, we walked around the medieval town for a while before dinner. If you’re in Beaune for a bit, do yourself a favor and visit the Parc de la Bouzaise, which is a short walk outside of the old town. Flanked by vineyards and featuring instructional signs about the plants in French and English, it’s a beautiful break from the usual medieval architecture. It also has resident animals including chickens, rabbits, sheep, goats, a pig, and a gorgeous coop filled with some of the less usual types of pigeons.