una buona annata: Gettin' our wine faces on

Don't get me wrong - I love farm visits and eating well. But c'mon - we're in Burgundy. Home of the Nuits-St-Georges pinots that caused much tearing out of hair during my WSET exam last fall. Home of Chablis. Where's the wine?

Thursday morning, we pulled up at the family-run Domaine Chantal Lescure and into their barrel room of Cotes de Nuits and Meursault. 18 appellations are represented by their wines, and they aim for relationships with their buyers. Certified organic, they hand-harvest their grapes in 25 kilogram cases, with four trained workers who select the best grapes by hand. Their production of 70,000 bottles per year is mainly aimed at the French market for specialist cellars and restaurants - "for the good tables of France", although they do export 30% of their wines around Europe.

The tasting was a simple one, allowing us to ask questions and wander around the room, examining barrels and packaging. We ended in the wine shop, where they have an excellent display of the entire wine-making process. While I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of chatting with the sons about what drew them back into wine-making after years in the workforce as engineers (apparently the most often-abandoned career of French people everywhere, judging by the farmer and winemakers we met), I wasn't wowed enough to buy. Ah, the discerning palate coupled with limited budget and the inability to cellar...

We had a lovely couple of hours in Beaune, a town I would love to go back and explore further. It allowed time for a gorgeous prix fixe lunch outside, and an all-too-quick browse through a major wine paraphernalia shop, where I found the French cookbook series to end all cookbooks.

The afternoon was a rather strange one. We had an appointment at the Fallot dijon mustard factory, except our guide was confused about our group and gave us the standard experience rather than the more personal one.

Old mustard seed mill

We were clothed in the standard "food safety is sexy" cheesecloth coats and hats, which were completely un-necessary as we never entered the factory. Instead, we were crammed into an elevator and then released in a strobe-light filled tunnel meant to simulate the journey of the mustard seed.

Do YOU feel like a mustard seed? Now? Now? How about now?

We walked along a hallway where we could see the factory machines and work, had strange video of us taken against the backdrop of a painted mustard jar, and then were able to sample the goods.

It's excellent and spicy - one spoonful when you're sick will clear out your sinuses! And I did learn that Canada is not only the largest market for dijon mustard, but also produces the most mustard seeds in the world. Go Canada . . . I think.

Our class dinner that night was at another lovely hole-in-the-wall bistro where we finally got our boeuf bourguignon along with variations on that theme. It was worth the wait.