The sun felt like a blowtorch when we set out from Gevrey-Chambertin, six overweight forty-somethings, cycling down the Côte d'Or on a blue-skied midsummer day. We skirted this most famous of Burgundian villages and took the road that bisects the Grand Cru vineyards, wobbling past Chambertin and the Clos de Bèze.
Given the heat, I wondered if some of us would make it to our destination without recourse to oxygen, but the weather was about to ambush us. As we crossed from Gevrey into Morey St Denis, we stopped to chat with a vigneron. 'Beautiful day for a bike ride,' we said. Shaking his head, he pointed at the horizon. 'Hail,' he said, 'lots of it. And it's coming this way.'
Five minutes later we'd taken shelter in someone's porch, while the hailstones pummelled the surrounding vines. We waited and waited, but still the hail fell. When it finally stopped, we'd made friends with the woman whose house was our temporary refuge and the vigneron had come back and offered to drive us to Nuits.
Despite the rain, we decided to press on. Within half an hour we were in Vosne-Romanée. To the vineyard workers we must have looked like escapees from a mudslide: it was only a few miles from Gevrey, but they had seen neither hail nor rain. Laughing, we got back on our bikes for the final few miles to Nuits St Georges.
The whole experience was quintessentially Burgundian: the front row view of different vineyard plots, each subtly and fascinatingly distinct; the fickle climate; and the charm of the Burgundians themselves. Imagine taking refuge in a Bordeaux chteau. The owners would call the police in seconds. Or set the dogs on you.
I've been fortunate enough to visit most of the world's most beautiful vineyard areas but, as a tourist, I'm drawn back to Burgundy. No other region combines outstanding wine, scenery, food and genuine people in quite the same way. The restaurants may be great (try Ma Cuisine in Beaune or Le Charlemagne in Pernand Vergelesses), but the main reason for visiting Burgundy is to drink wine.
This is a lot harder than you'd imagine. Drive down the Route Nationale 74, the region's main thoroughfare, and every second house seems to be offering 'Dégustations' and 'Ventes des Vins'. As a rule, however, these people have wine to sell because discerning consumers don't want it. Top Burgundy is produced in tiny quantities and growers aren't short of customers.
Another problem is that many of them don't speak English. But if you're willing to parlez a bit of Franglais you can get to taste some very good stuff. (I say taste, but if you visit a grower or merchant it is polite to buy a few bottles of wine.) There are two possible approaches. One is to call a specialist importer such as Morris & Verdin (020 7921 5300), Haynes, Hanson & Clark (020 7259 0102) or Howard Ripley (020 8877 3065) and ask them to help. The other is to pick up the phone and do it yourself.
My recommendations are Joseph Drouhin (00 33 380 246888) and Louis Jadot (00 33 380 221057) among the negociants and the following Observer reader-friendly growers: Etienne Grivot in Vosne (00 33 380 610595), Michel Morey in Chassagne-Montrachet (00 33 380 213171), Vincent Prudhon in St Aubin (00 33 380 213670) and Rémi Rollin in Pernand Vergelesses (00 33 380 215731). If you're too shy to do that, you can always visit the Caveau de Chassagne-Montrachet (00 33 380 213813), where a range of the village's wines are open for tasting. But you'd miss out on the thing that makes Burgundy unique: the cellars, the vineyards and the people who own them.
