July 14th 2023

Cellar visits is one of the reasons I wanted to visit Beaune, and I was impressed with the way Patriarche pére & fils had arranged their cellar. No production on site here, but a self-guided cellar visit with 6 wines for tasting.

The cellars themselves are in an old monastery, and the building and entrance is a held in a classic style with arched windows with stained glass.

I liked this little cherub sitting on a barrel sipping some wine….

The cellar visit is self guided, but this was actually great as they had put up several interactive information kiosks, as well as multiple signs, some of them only in French, but most of them with translation to several languages. So you could take the visit in your own tempo.

Of the 5 km of cellars they have, 10% were part of the tour, and this part of the cellar was well organised, with good lighting and decorative arrangements.

What set this cellar apart from several others I have visited that they had brought in sculptures and other pieces of art that decorated the vaults.

The tasting rooms were at the midpoint of the cellar visit, with lovely candle lit tables for the bigger groups. During my visit there was relatively few other visitors and no big groups.

The wines were presented by multilingual sommeliers, who gave great introduction to each wine and were at hand to answer any strange question. I even found a Nordic speaking sommelier for my red wine tasting.

So how about the wines? Two Villáges and one Premier Cru from Mersault Sous Blagny, the latter was excellent. 2 years on 50% new oak.

And for the reds one Villáge and two Premier Crus. The two Premiers were still on the young side, but my Danish sommelier told that 5-8 more years in the cellar would open them up.

It is not possible to get these wines back in Norway, and little room left in my luggage, but I will for sure look out for other producers using the same plot as the rightmost one – Les Vaucrains in Nuits-Saint-Georges.

Finishing off a very nice cellar visit, it is only appropriate to include a toilet direction sign that is only possible in such a cellar. After the fifth barrel on the right!