Day 9 – April 7, 2026 – Beaune
“He’s young! And Handsome,” gushed Judy when the Captain of the Poetry II was introduced at the Welcome Aboard party. “Is that kid driving our boat?” Was my skeptical grunt. And you think he looks young? You should see the Assistant Captain. Just out of his teenage years if I’m any judge. Cute, too, I suppose. The captain claimed he’d been sailing since he was eight years old, so he’s got a good 10 years under his belt by now.
Our day was spent traveling from the Tapestry II parked on the Seine in Paris to the Poetry II at Charon-Sur-Saône on the Saône river. Turns out that, unbeknownst to me, we don’t actually sail down the Rhone until we get to Lyon tomorrow. The two ships are almost identical although this tub only has two electrical outlets versus three on the Tapestry II. But we’re roughing it and getting by somehow.
The train ride from Paris’s Gare de Lyon to Dijon was smooth and fast – 200 mph, they claimed. The scenery was agricultural fields and industrial compounds with the occasional city thrown in. Another beautiful, sunny day, our second. Someone said temperature records were being broken, but that certainly wasn’t our experience in Normandie. Someday we’ll have to come back and explore Dijon.
We traveled by bus to Beaune, the wine capital of Burgundy (the political capital is Lyon). Our guide, another American transplant, this one from California, has been here since the 1990s. She didn’t elaborate but somehow it doesn’t seem to be a 30-year love affair. She came here as a marketing rep for a wine importer and never left. She has a wine touring business so she was quite knowledgeable.
Beaune lays claim to being one of not many really beautiful cities in France. They go to great pains to make the roundabouts coming into town especially nice, featuring flowers and designs resembling welcoming doors to a vineyard.
She took us to a new wine museum in Beaune, very nicely done, shaped like a corkscrew, with a tasting bar. Burgundy has two principal grapes – the white Chardonnay and the red Pino Noir. We tasted both and while the Pinot was about what I expected, the Chardonnay was something entirely different. Out guide said that the stuff we drink back home has a strong oaken, buttery taste while the wine here is much less oaken, even though it is aged in oak. Judy and I, no lovers of Chardonnay back home, were converted. We had a glass with dinner that evening and reached the same conclusion.
Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris are wines originating in Burgundy. The world’s production can be traced back to Burgundy.
I wish I could give you the full run down on French wines. Our guide’s analogy was that of nested Russian dolls. The outermost doll is wine from anywhere. The next doll represents wine from France, the next the region, then the district and then the vineyard. I may not have that right, but you get the idea.
The character of the wine depends on a number of factors. The location of the vineyard is important – on the slope of hills above the fertile valleys is best; crops in extra-fertile soil grow well but produce no fruit. In Burgundy, the quantity and type of limestone in the soil is a factor. So is the orientation of the vineyard towards the sun.
Then, there is the year-to-year variation based on temperature, sunshine and rainfall. Hence the vintage of wine.
In the 1980s, vineyards in Burgundy were frequently converted to housing and commercial uses. Not so today. The popularity of Chardonnay and Pinto Noir, etc., has tipped the economic scales toward wine production. That’s not to say development has halted. Quite the contrary. Like most places in the world, development seems a pandemic.
We also did a quick tour of the old city part of Beaune. A visit to the Notre Dame was available, but at 12 Euros a head we passed. ABC. We wandered the nearby shopping streets, bought a genuine bottle of Dijon mustard, only to find that most of the mustard seeds come from Canada these days. The wine and other ingredients are local, however. We also scored ice cream cones before heading to the ship.
Then on to the ship and the welcome party, etc. and dinner. There are 109 passengers and they’re all spitin’ images of the last boat load. Seem to be lots of Aussies and Canadians this time.
Tomorrow we dock at Tournus, get a guided tour of the city and then visit a chateau.
