The harvesters’ dinner at Aubert and Pamela de Villaine’s eponymous Bouzeron domaine takes place at 7.30pm each evening and is announced by a hand-held and enthusiastically rung bell – of the sort that used to do service in schoolyards across the world. Unlike the pupils’ reluctant retreat from the schoolyard, however, the bell here summons an immediate response and soon a veritable United Nations of harvesters descends on the long table. They come from Poland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Canada, Italy, Spain and France and on the evening I visited they sat down to a meal of white bean soup, girolles tart, cold roast pork, salad, cheese, ice cream and chocolate sauce. Read More...

Tags: Burgundy, Harvest, DRC, Bonneau du Martray

The wind was whipping the conkers from the chestnut trees at Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair in Vosne-Romanée last Wednesday morning as I walked past, prompting a wimpish dash to the other side of the road to escape them. (You might have done the same if you had seen them bursting apart as they hit the road.) My destination was just a few yards further along rue du Château, where perhaps the most diligent sorting team in the world was hard at work, picking out anything that was sub-standard amongst the bunches of grapes that today are now well on their way to making Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s Richebourg 2011. Read More...

Tags: Burgundy, Richebourg, DRC, Vosne-Romanée