Hmmm. It’s all a bit slow and damp here this morning. Partly the after-effects of an evening with Neal and Milly-Martin, but of-course the rain doesn’t help.

Still, appointments, appointments…

An early-ish start this morning as I had an appointment in the Côte Chalonnaise at 9:00am. All the way from Beaune, Mont Blanc was in silhouette as the sun was rising behind – if I’d had a longer lens with me, my picture would have looked closer and better – next time! In the ‘jargon’ this is a ‘100% crop’ from my image…

Anyway, visited a couple of Châteaux or three, had a nice lunch in virtually the only place that was open today – still, it was tasty enough and only €21 for the 3 courses. I then headed back to Beaune for a 3:00pm tasting, mooched around Athenaeum and picked up some wines I’d ordered (of-course!).

And wasn’t Beaune rather pretty in the early evening…

Working on tomorrow’s apéro…

Back to Côte d’Or today, and what a beautiful, almost clichéd, landscape – one to warm my heart: By late-morning the sun managed to break through the cloud, bathing the vines and pruning-vineyard-workers in warm sunlight but the remnant of that cloud was a lovely backdrop – it was just so photogenic. A shame then that I only had time for appointments before lunch! Don’t forget, we are in France, everything stops for lunch – well, as it turns out, today (at least) only in theory – almost everything in Beaune is closed. Even Athenaeum is closed until Wednesday!

The rivers and streams are running brown and quickly as there’s been plenty of rain in the last couple of weeks – when it wasn’t minus °C, anyway… There’s a little standing water at the bottom of some slopes, but generally things look fine. By 15:30 we are cloudy again and by 16:00 there are drops of rain – but that’s about the most of it. I caught the last hour of light with a jog through the vines of Beaune and Pommard, then back to the apartment – busy day tomorrow, as you’ve probably noted 😉