Whilst I didn’t upload it to my Strava, and despite no jogging yesterday, I still did quite a workout, and I have some residue of that in my muscles today! Starting out on Monday evening at 8pm, and returning home yesterday at 13h30 (over 700km later), I had one of my shortest ever trips to Beaune – the reason, to repatriate the other two-thirds of my wine-cellar.
When I moved house in 2015, I had some place for wine but it didn’t look enough. So a friendly vigneron offered space in their cuverie for what turned out to be two very highly stacked pallets worth of wine and the rent was only a bottle here and there. After 3 years of kindness, they needed the space. I didn’t find another place in Beaune, so it was all coming back to Switzerland with me. There are, of-course, technically, some issues with that. The wine started in Switzerland, which is not in the EU, but I anyway drove to Beaune with it, without a hitch. Coming back to Switzerland was also potentially fraught with customs issues, even though that’s where the wine started out from. Anyway, maybe yesterday’s rain (on the French side of the border) kept the roving patrols of the douane in their cafés. I made it home intact.
I’d hired a van for my two pallets, and in theory it only had a little under 1,100kg as a payload limit – I think I had closer to 1,200kg – but with no passengers – so that’s fair, no(?!) Thankfully the pallets could be loaded with a forklift so all those cases didnt have to be individually stacked! After arriving home, I’d got 3 hours to unload the van or I’d be paying for a second day of van-hire – that concentrated the mind – oh and the leg and arm muscles! Give-or-take it was 120 cases of wine to take out of the van, carry them down into the cellar, work out how best to stack them, and then head back up the stairs for the next one(s). Whilst I said 120 cases, many were 6-packs (1 6-pack, I still counted as 1 case) and the majority of the cases were not complete.
I’m guessing I brought back 650-750 bottles, and I didn’t have the chance to check the contents of all the cases – yes I am completely unorganised and only the foggiest idea what now lies in wait for me! But drinking at home will now be a little more (Burgundian) diverse, and always with a nice surprise as I find things, I already noted some unopened six-packs of 1999s… 🙂
And on Friday – it’s back to Beaune!