Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [226]
Photo Credit 49.1
Q: For visitors who are looking for pursuits other than wine, what else does Burgundy offer?
A: Vineyards cover about 2 percent of the land area in Burgundy, and there are about four thousand wineries in the region, which is about the size of Delaware, so it’s easy to see how everyone thinks Burgundy is nothing but wine country. But Burgundy is much more: it has one of the largest forests in France (and in fact forests occupy 34 percent of the land area); it’s the heartland of ancient Gaul; it’s home to dozens of Michelin-starred restaurants and hundreds of simple auberges devoted to terroir cuisine; and there are dozens and dozens of undiscovered rural areas with one-lane roads and about a thousand Romanesque churches, which were spun off from Cluny, which was the largest and most powerful medieval monastic complex outside Rome. Even people who don’t really care much for architecture and art love to see these Romanesque gems on the horizon. Burgundy is almost entirely rural—60 percent of the land area is devoted to farmland—so for this reason alone it is worth visiting and is the perfect side trip from Paris. All you have to do is get off that main road and go up into the hills and you’ll find all this wonderful stuff.
Q: Do visitors need appointments in advance to visit wineries?
A: Yes, usually in France—wherever you are—it’s better to make an appointment if you can.
Q: What specifically about your Burgundy Terroir guide do you feel is especially useful for visitors?
A: I’ve worked on so many guidebooks over the years and I know their flaws. Sometimes the writer doesn’t have time, or he or she really isn’t suited to the assignment, or the editor wants the writer to create the perfect guide but is prevented from giving the writer the proper resources. So as I started working on this Burgundy guide I decided I was going to make the perfect guidebook for my friends. This is the book I would want them to have because they would get to a town and they would have a little sense of its history, they would have a sense of what its unique foods and wines are, they would know of some worthwhile sites to see. Yes, the Burgundy guide is obviously about discovering famous wineries, famous chefs, and famous sites, but it’s also about all these hidden places and wonderful little pockets of charm and beauty. All the Terroir guides are insider’s guides, for curious, intelligent people, but we don’t want that to sound snobby. We can’t stand the tone of some guidebooks that assume because the reader is American and perhaps not well traveled, the text is dumbed down. We assume that even though readers may not yet be well traveled, they picked up our book because they’re interested to learn, and we respect that. The Terroir guides are not about the mindless pursuit of hedonism. They’re about making it possible for someone who loves culture, great food, and great wine to go out and find the authentic food artisans and winemakers. And they’re about preserving traditions that should be preserved. The guides are also not just for tourists—they’re also for people who already know the area. We noticed with our Rome guide that a lot of copies were purchased by people who live there.
Photo Credit 49.2
Q: Can you share just a few of your favorite aspects of Burgundy?
A: An afternoon visit to Cluny, which once housed ten thousand monks, and seeing where the abbey once stood. All you see now is the transept and a reconstruction, but it’s well worth it. An autumnal walk in the woods, or perhaps a springtime walk, when you look out over a countryside which is made up of hedgerows and flowering fruit trees and wildflowers and a Romanesque steeple in the distance. A visit to Bibracte, the lost city of the ancient Gauls. There’s a museum there, not a very great one but still with some interesting stuff. Walk up to the top of the hill where Caesar dictated the conquest of Gaul and read Julius Caesar’s classic The Conquest of Gaul, which, believe