yonne bike trip: le bougainville, vézelay

Deciding where to dine in Vézelay was an easy decision. We cased restaurant's lining the town's one road and lumped for Le Bougainville, the only restaurant where Michel Tolmer's "Epaule Jété" poster in the window indicated the presence of natural wines.

The poster these days is a reliable, if by no means infallible, indicator of a restaurant that prizes good wine. This in turn is a reliable indicator of a good restaurant. Dining on hunches : it's what you do in the countryside. Like oil prospecting, only less nefarious or profitable.

Anyway, my friends and I hit the motherlode in Vézelay that day. Le Bougainville is the realised idyll of a country bistrot: quaint, welcoming, with a wine list to die for and a superlative cheese plate. And chef-owner Philippe Guillemard and his wife Sylvie are like the angels who admit you to heaven after a lifetime of suffering Parisian hospitality. They're quiet enthusiasts who, from their restaurant perched in the shadow of Vézelay's famous basilica, offer the town's visitors a dining experience to rival the transcendental view up top.

hey one-percenter : le griffonnier, 75008

Hey, One-Percenter ! Ever wished to enjoy a simple French bistrot experience, only significantly nicer, at marginally greater cost ?

Haven't we all. I'm barely solvent, and still I routinely find myself wishing I could simply pay more for a civil experience in Paris. There's a cultural chasm in contemporary French restaurateurism, between the segment that whorishly lunges after money and modernity, and the rest, to whom the very idea of money is vaguely offensive, like a horse suggesting horse-riding to other horses.

The great thing about 8ème arrondissement power-bistrot Le Griffonnier is it's the sort of establishment one thinks must exist, and turns out, in fact, to exist : a place where politicians and bankers eat the same unimprovable French village staples as you do for lunch every day, only their plates arrive with a glistening side of wealth, by which I mean serious service and serious wine.

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine denis bachelet, gevrey-chambertin

Professional readers might note that, as I write up my experiences tasting around Burgundy, I tend to tread uncharacteristically gingerly when dealing with the wines themselves. This is because I haven't tasted enough. I've never bought Burgundy professionally, nor have I had much opportunity to taste the region's wines very deeply or broadly. Wine criticism, like any criticism, is the act of placing subjective reactions within a context of more-or-less objective information, and it's what I feel to be a lack of the latter that keeps me a bit British and even-handed and unjudgmental about the wines I tasted on this trip.*

For instance, at Domaine Denis Bachelet, the 3.8ha cult Gevrey-Chambertin estate whose Charmes-Chambertin is among the most sought-after and revered bottles of the appellation, what perspective could I possibly bring to the wines, having never tasted them before? They're masterful, magisterial, and no, we could not, at that time, purchase any.**

I was happy just to be there. Even if I could do little more than mutely confirm the greatness of Denis Bachelet's zen-like production.