After enjoying the wine routes and little villages of the Alsace region we decided to wind along another wine route a little further west and this time embarked on the Route des Grands Crus, which starts in Dijon and follows the old N74,newly renamed D974 road all the way down to Beaune. It is a beautiful drive along narrow wine-lined country roads past the grand entrances to the big wine houses and then squeeze through tiny towns where our car mirrors almost scraped the windowsills of the houses we passed. We love the wines of France and in particular those in Burgundy where you can get my favourite chardonnay in abundance, but we are admittedly a little shy about making appointments to visit the wine houses as our French is still not great and our budget a tad limited. So, like in the Alsace, we opted to enjoy driving and walking through the lush green landscape and towns and tasted and purchased wine from the villages rather than the vineyards and chateaus themselves.

Delightful Dijon

Our first stop was Dijon, which we visited on a blistering hot Sunday when all the shops are closed in France – and almost every restaurant café too! Still, it meant we could follow the “Route de chouette” (the way of the owl) around Dijon old town past the church’s monuments, squares and old gates. There’s a handy little owl icon embedded in the pavements which points out the way around and we discovered that Dijon has a remarkable number of beautiful creamy white ornate buildings and some huge chateaus. 

Dijon is the capital of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region and is recognised  as a“Ville d’art et d’histoire”,  it’s a beautiful town and they have restored/are restoring many of the half-timbered houses, the Romanesque and Gothic churches and the 17th- and 18th-century private mansions of the former capital of the Dukes of Burgundy. It was very hot when we visited in August and the scorching sun reflected off the glazed tiles of castles and churches and the blindingly white Burgundy stone that paves the streets and forms the walls of the homes.  There are not a lot of trees or shady parks in Dijon and whilst we managed to see the highlights we’d  love to return in cooler weather to linger longer and get a real feel of this beautiful city.

Super cute hamlet of Curtil Vergy

After Dijon we meandered along the Route des Grands Crus all the way down to Curtil Vergy, in the cool A/C in the car.  We wound through many little villages and read the signs of the winemakers on their grand chateaus and vineyards full of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes. We arrived in the tiny hamlet of Curtil Vergy (pop 120) for our night at a beautiful Gite owned by a friend

We were housed in the ‘upstairs apartment’ of the old wine cellar and enjoyed a delicious Crémant d’Alsace in the cool private cellar before we headed out to a little ‘grill restaurant’ down the road for dinner and watched a gloriously golden sunset over the wine fields from our restaurant table.

Charming little Nuits Saint Georges

This is a charming little town halfway down the Routes des Grand Crues and we called in for a visit late one afternoon and found it full of life and colour.

They still had all the flags and decorations up from when the Tour de France passed through the previous month and people were enjoying coffees and drinks on the terrace of the cafes and sitting in the lush marble square.

Beautiful Beaune

This charming town is the capital of Burgundy wines and it certainly has a grand air about it with its classy shops and old wine houses and the gloriously ornate Hospices de Beaune, (aka the Hôtel-Dieu), with its colourful mosaic roofs of glazed tiles, dormer windows adorned with gilded weathervanes, and large interior courtyard in the Flemish Burgondo style. We had planned to take a tour of the Hospice de Beune but there was a queue already at 10am to get in and it looked like a long wait in the hot sun, so we just walked around town instead admiring the wine houses, the half-timbered houses, the quirky big Panda in the square and the many shops and museums dedicated to gastronomy and viticulture.