Burgundy: Exploring the Vineyards of the Côte d’Or (Golden Slope)

We continue our way south to Dijon, whose name is synonymous to mustard. Today, all the mustard seeds come from Canada. The margins on mustard must not be high enough. The area is all about wine, Burgundy. There are a lot of vineyards. We walked from Aloxe-Corton to Pernand-Vergelesses to Savigny-lès-Beaune to Pommard ending in Beaune, about 12 miles. The villages pale in comparison to Alsace, though things may yet change - whole chateaux are being outfitted for wine.  We were surprised to see how many grapes are still on the vines. In the afternoon, there was actually maintenance work going on in the vineyards.

Our walk in the Côte d’Or (Golden Slope) vineyards was long and hot, but featured several awesome viewpoints, the first between Aloxe-Corton and Pernand-Vergelesses.






The second was above the village of Pernand-Vergelesses. Rick Steves calls it the best viewpoint in Burgundy. Could be.




Walking from Pernand-Vergelesses to Savigny-lès-Beaune was pretty awesome as well.








On the way from Savigny-lès-Beaune to Pommard there were some nice views and we got to watch small tractors in operation in hte vineyards.




These guys had a machine that would pull old vines out of the ground with one mechanical arm, then drill a neat hole in the ground with another arm at the spot of the old vine (more or less). The helper would untangle vines from the arms and plunge a stake into the new hole as a marker. From the photo and the two 15-second videos you get the basic idea.






Pommard had a chateau (below) that was turning into a high-class vine operation.


Beaune (below) was uneventful and the bus back to Dijon left on time.