{"id":407,"date":"2016-11-29T16:29:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-29T16:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=407"},"modified":"2020-07-29T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T14:17:06","slug":"clos-de-vougeot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"Clos de Vougeot"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the pleasures of going to Wine country and visiting wineries is the chance it gives you to think to yourself, \u201cImagine if I owned this joint!\u201d\u00a0 A lesser pleasure among all those of wine tasting, but a pleasure nonetheless.\u00a0 Nowhere in the world are such imaginings so fertile as in France and nowhere in France are they better than at the Clos de Vougeot in the C\u00f4te de Nuit of Burgundy.\u00a0 Pronounce that Kloh de VOO-zhoh.<\/p>\n

A clos<\/em> is an enclosed field, or in this case and enclosed vineyard.\u00a0 Yes, there\u2019s a wall around it but the vineyard is enormous, the second largest of the grand cru<\/em> vineyards in the C\u00f4te d\u2019Or.\u00a0 (Corton is larger.)\u00a0 There is a hierarchy of vineyards and thus wines in Burgundy and grand cru<\/em> is the highest level.\u00a0 As beautiful as it may be, the reason to visit is not the vineyard but the building sitting in the middle of it.<\/p>\n

\"clos-de-vougeot\"<\/a>Photo courtesy of the Confr\u00e9rie des Chevaliers du Tastevin<\/em><\/p>\n

The chateau of Clos de Vougeot has a history, in fact quite a lot of it.\u00a0 It was erected in the 12th<\/sup> century by Cistercian monks.\u00a0 The name originates from the nearby abbey of Citeaux, which is the mother house of the Cistercian order (known as Trappists in the United States and elsewhere).\u00a0 It was one of the most influential monasteries in medieval Christendom.\u00a0 It was eventually abandoned, restored in the 19th<\/sup> century, damaged in World War II and once again restored after the war.\u00a0 That latter task was carried out by the members of the Confr\u00e9rie des Chevaliers du Tastevin<\/em>, a definitely snobby club of rich and famous Frenchmen.\u00a0 Today the Confr\u00e9rie <\/em>has, according to its web site, 12,000 members.\u00a0 It\u2019s still rich and snobby but no longer exclusively French.<\/p>\n

You can visit the chateau and pretend you\u2019re one of the 12,000.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth doing on its own merits, just to see a 12th<\/sup> century castle in the heart of a great vineyard.\u00a0 You can do a self-guided tour and watch a film or you can be shown around by one of their guides.\u00a0 Based on our experience, the guided tour is worthwhile.\u00a0 The cellars and the formal rooms bring on that imaginary ownership mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most exciting part of a visit is knowing that you are at the epicenter of Burgundy winemaking.\u00a0 Sadly, the one thing you can\u2019t do at Clos de Vougeot is taste wine.\u00a0 That is, you <\/em>can\u2019t taste wine.\u00a0 But every year in spring and fall they hold a \u201ctastevinage\u201d, a grand wine tasting with a jury of 250 of the finest connoisseurs that can be assembled.\u00a0 They\u2019re famous wine-growers, great merchants, heads of viticultural unions, wine-brokers, oenologists, government officials from the government’s wine office, restaurant owners, enlightened amateurs.\u00a0 Maybe you\u2019re one of them, otherwise you\u2019re not going.\u00a0 Out of the tastevinage comes a seal of approval, the emblem of the Confr\u00e9rie des Chevaliers des Tastevin <\/em>that the selected winery can put on its bottles.<\/p>\n

By the way, what is a tastevin<\/em>?\u00a0 It\u2019s a wide, flat cup that sommeliers use to slurp a little bit of well-aerated wine before serving it to you.\u00a0 Or at least sommeliers used to do that (maybe some still do) in restaurants that had sommeliers.\u00a0 If you take the guided tour, they give you one.<\/p>\n

\"tastevin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Amazon.com<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the pleasures of going to Wine country and visiting wineries is the chance it gives you to think to yourself, \u201cImagine if I owned this joint!\u201d\u00a0 A lesser pleasure among all those of wine tasting, but a pleasure nonetheless.\u00a0 Nowhere in the world are such imaginings so fertile as in France and nowhere … Continue reading Clos de Vougeot<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}