My final stop along the Route des Grands Crus, Meursault, is a dream for those who love white Burgundy. It’s the quintessential white wine village: picturesque but not pretentious, truly excellent but down-to-earth producers, and heaps of charm and beautiful architecture all surrounded by vines. Although the AOP designation doesn’t include any Grand Crus, Meursaults are world class whites that can compete with any of the other Chardonnays. It’s not a very touristy place, yet there’s plenty to explore.
I started off at the Hôtel de Ville, which is currently under renovation, in the center of town. The impressive building with a notable colorful tiled roof and decorative fountain was made famous when featured in the old French film La Grande Vadrouille. A stone’s throw away, you have La Petite Vadrouille which is the ideal place to pick up picnic supplies. Whether you want to have a snack amongst the vines, or a full lunch, they’re wonderfully welcoming. The small epicerie has an excellent selection of cheeses, a “cave à saucisse” for all your dried sausage needs, Burgundy grown shiitakes and other produces, chocolates from a Meursault born maker now based in Strasbourg, locally made raw milk cream and butter, and, bien sûr, wine. After we fortified ourselves there for an outdoor picnic, it was time for a small stroll (which is what their name translates to) about town.
There’s plenty of beautiful architecture to see, like the Romanesque and gothic church Église Saint-Nicolas de Meursault or the Château de Citeaux with its turreted gate house and pigeonnier, and a variety of walled estates that you can glimpse through their fences and gates. There’s even a 12th century leprosy hospital with a very modern zinc addition that you can visit. The former hospital isolated leprosy victims and served the poor, and now serves tourists as the Meursault tourism office with exhibition spaces.
For a place that looks so traditional in its style, there’s plenty of technology to be found. The town has helpfully set up free wifi where you can find your local winemaker of choice on a map in order to visit, and there’s even a Tesla charging station at Château de Meursault. The Château is a lovely building with a long history, stunning grounds next to a small stream, and a tall dovecote. It’s also the site of a hugely important cultural event each year: La Paulée de Meursault. The Paulée is a lunch that’s traditionally held in November to celebrate the end of the grape harvest. What was historically an informal meal between Cisterian monks and the harvest workers, was revived in 1923 by Jules Lafon, and has become a truly international event for winemakers, workers, writers, and connoisseurs. It caps off the “Trois Glorieuses”: a three-day celebration in Burgundy that starts with a gala dinner at Clos de Vougeot, leads into the famous auction at the Hospices de Beaune, and ends with the grand celebration luncheon of La Paulée. It’s probably the nicest BYOB (bring your own bottle) event one could ever attend with each attendee bringing their most special and prized bottles to share, and the festivities continue long into the evening. Reservations can be hard to come by and need to be made far in advance, but it’s an honor for any wine lover to partake in the conviviality and commemoration of the Burgundian harvest each year.
This article is one of a series that I wrote on the Route des Grand Crus. To read more and see others in the series, please see Chateau de Pommard’s blog.