n.d.p. in burgundy: la soeur cadette, vézelay

Despite my enthusiasm for the Yonne town of Vézelay, I had, until a few weeks ago, still yet to pay a visit to La Soeur Cadette and Jean Montanet, the area's lone excellent winemaker. He just never seemed to be home when I was in town. After two stays in Saint-Père on separate bikes trip last summer, it had become a source of mild embarrassment.

A recent visit from my parents gave me the occasion to rectify the situation. The Native Companion and I organised a family trip and the first order of business, before even booking our regular chambre d'hôte, was to see if Jean Montanet was around. For as much as I adore Vézelay's basilica and nearby natural wine bistrot Le Bougaineville with its heavenly cheese cart, it's still the luminescent Chardonnays, violetty Pinot Noirs, and mineral Melon of La Soeur Cadette that put the town on the map.

n.d.p. in piemonte: capella di sol lewitt, la morra

One advantage of traveling through wine regions with people who are totally uninterested in wine is that sometimes in bored desperation they will propose visiting obscure local landmarks that turn out, in the end, to be very cool indeed.

Such was the case with J's architect wife C, who on our way back from a desultory Sunday traipse through the mediocre churches of Alba at baking midday proposed visiting something called the Capella di Sol Lewitt, located on a ridge overlooking the famed Brunate vineyard between Barolo and La Morra. We weren't sure what to expect of a chapel painted by the pioneering conceptualist creator of such presumably non-devotional works as Inverted Six Towers and Isometric Projection #13.

In the end it looked for all the world like amid the strict rows of cascading cru vineyard, someone had installed a really cheery taqueria.