I’m fairly new here and I just returned from my first trip to Burgundy. This site and you all were so invaluable in our planning I wanted to try and do a write up in case it can help any one else with their travels. We put a ton of work into the planning and really had an incredible time, so I hope the reviews are discerning enough to be useful.
We picked up wine maybe five years ago and I’m quite obsessive about it now, but I have way more experience reading and listening to I’ll Drink to That than actually tasting Burgundy. So a lot of this was an awesome discovery process, and I was so excited to share it.
Paris (Stayed in Le Marais)
- EME – Fantastic dinner here our first night thanks to recommendations here. Loved every plate, which seemed like 15 courses instead of nine! Being my first big French meal, I was worried it all would be a little too grand for my taste but was not the case at all. Everything paired great with Chablis from De Moor.
- Les Bon Georges – This was a pivot for lunch after we had to re-arrange our schedule around Tan Dinh closure. Food was definitely rich and a little more touristy than most of our stops, but still enjoyable. Pretty high energy to help kick the jet lag.
- Willi’s – Spent a great afternoon at the bar drinking 15 Dauvissat La Forest and dodging the heat. Loved it here and wish we had time to come back and visit or have a meal.
- Huguette – Nice spot for lighter seafood and good people watching.
Burgundy (Stayed at Como in Puligny and Le Cep in Beaune)
- Le Cellier Volnaysien – Weather was very nice and had a great lunch on the patio. This seemed to be some of the more authentic regional food we saw with summertime menus. We really enjoyed our first bottle of D’Angerville, seemed like a fair and interesting list of Cote de Beaune selections.
- Le Montrachet – This was our longest and most formal meal by far. It was very good and very enjoyable, but we kept saying we were glad to not be having again. The restaurant wine list was quite different than their online list, and we had a hard time communicating in English with the somm that night. Certainly don’t blame them for not speaking our language, but it was the hardest time we had on our whole trip, seemed kind of funny to happen here.
- Domaine Thomas Collardot – Had a brief but great tasting at the Domaine. Was able to reserve this by direct email without any prior relationship. Would really recommend if spending time in Puligny.
- La Cabane (Chassagne) – Very highly recommend for an enjoyable casual meal. We had a dish of the day pork rib and French fries and it was a really nice change of pace to sit outside with great food coming off the grill.
- Le Bistro d’Olivier – Lunch here on our way out of Puligny. The dining room was very modern and re-done, and the food was all awesome. We had a roast chicken for two daily special, and we talked about it for days after. Mr. Olivier was walking around the dining room greeting everyone. For wine they had tastings, big by the glass selection including his Grand Cru, and a cool selection of bottles.
- Rebond – I know there’s some history here but this was recently re-named, recommended to us by a friend. The menu was small, and it didn’t initially really speak to us but all the food we had was very good. The highlight was getting to taste our first bottle of Raveneau! It was a highlight of the trip to enjoy that within our budget.
- Wine Tour with Paris Wine Girl team – Doing any type of tour like this is usually not my thing at all. But without having any domaine connections and my first time to the region we decided it would be a good intro. We spoke with Emily on the phone quite a while ago and went over our preferences in detail. We did a full day tour where they picked us up at our hotel and we saw the entire region along with two Domaine tastings and lunch. We visited Domaine Michel Magnien in Morey and Bader Mimeur in Chassagne.
- Ma Cuisine – This had to be the experience of the trip for me. I had been dying to have a bottle of truly stellar red but didn’t match with any of the experiences/food. We sat upstairs, it was really comfortable temp wise and they served an awesome lamb shoulder. The wine list didn’t disappoint and had a 2020 Roumier CM Les Cras. Will be remembering this one for a long time to come.
- La Cuverie de Vosne – Great relaxing lunch, glad we made the drive from Beaune.
- L’arche des vins – Really enjoyed a quick stop at this small wine bar near to Caves Madeleine.
- Caves Madeleine – Our highly anticipated final dinner. (Although I was scared to death I messed this up when I didn’t answer their confirmation phone call on day of!). The meal and the wine were everything we had hoped for, everyone was seated outside on the terrace and the tasting menu was delicious. It was cool to just see the sommelier work, felt like there were awesome wines floating around to all of the tables.
I was so happy that we decided to visit. Of course we only got to taste 1/1,000 of the things I would have loved, but I think the experience will help us with prioritizing and tasting things going forward and just means we’ll have to come back again!
I tried to take plenty of photos and had Claude put together a little combined image of the bottles we tried. These were almost all completely new and it was an unbelievable treat!
