Yesterday evening, the venue was the the Château de Chasselas – it was a little party to celebrate St.Véran as the location of the 74th St.Vincent Tournante – 27-28 January 2018.
Of-course, St.Véran is actually an appellation, not a village, hence, the party was in Chasselas and location of the St.Vincent will be the in the neighbouring village of Prissé. It’s only the second time for a St.Vincent in the Mâconnais – and the (venue) planning is booked up until about 2030 – so a St.Vincent in Beaujolais will certainly have to wait…
The clouds were gathering as I approached Prissé – French radio warning of storms across many of France’s départements. I shoe-horned my Scooby (car) into a place by some vines and walked to the château – drops of rain heralding the storm to come – fortunately the weather kindly waited until 5 minutes after the 19h30 start-time before the wind, rain, thunder and lightning hit – it was only a problem for the late-comers! The weather proceeded to put on a modest show, but we were spared the full tempest!
Because my January usually consists of three weeks in Chablis, followed by a few days in the mountains, I so rarely get to the St.Vincents – though the location in Irancy (2016) worked very well! But on this evening I got to show solidarity with the launch ‘party’ in warmer if equally stormy (I’m looking at you Irancy!) fashion.
Leading up to the ‘talking section’ was a first-class guitarist-singer, who I assumed to be Michael Jones – apparently a well-know Franco-English performer who is the patron of this event. This was partly wasted on the crowd in his first session – great riffs even a few from AC-DC punctuating the ‘songs’ in the style of Muse…
Then, during a small interlude, it was fun seeing a (conservatively) 60 year-old vigneron, dressed in black with his (conservatively) 25 year-old companion in a very tight outfit. It really wasn’t necessary to watch her progress around the room, it was much more interesting to observe the looks that this ‘pair’ got from the (female) audience! The man in black later picked up a guitar and so did his companion – this was Michael Jones, not the first guy! All was now okay with the previously skeptical part of the night’s audience – there are different rules for musicians 🙂 The first guitarist was ‘Tof’ part of Michael’s band, and they belted out a great set of songs that had the (at least) 100-strong audience in raptures and singing along – bravo! And even better – Scooby was still parked where I left him when I decided it was time to head for Beaune!
So, get down to Prissé on the 27 and 28 January 2018! – If you can 🙂
Oh, and if you can’t wait to add one to your collection, you will be able to buy the St.Véran 2018 tasting glasses in the shop of the Chateau du Clos de Vougeot…
The Saint-Vincent is a regional celebration that was created by the Confrérie des chevaliers du tastevin in 1938* and the poster (right) for the 2017 event has been released this week. It is a meeting of all the grower syndicates of Burgundy in one village each year, and their associated (about 80) small statues of Saint-Vincent are paraded through the streets, before the eating and drinking commences.
Then, just for the fun (I suppose!) we had hail yesterday in Beaune – about 17h45 – it looked like snow to start with, but got harder! Hopefully there’s not much more of that this year. 