CHABLIS, as the British are prone to say, is a dull little French town, producing wine which is often as disappointing as it is overpriced. Yet as the northern gateway to Burgundy, it is not
a place to be bypassed simply
for the sake of reaching the sensational Hospices de Beaune that
little bit sooner.
For Scottish tourists who fly to Paris and hire a car, it is indeed the ideal first stop on a trip through one of France's gastronomic paradises. Start exploring Chablis and its neighbourhood, and you might decide not to bother heading further south at all. Stop overnight at the Hostellerie de Clos, and you might even decide just to stay put in the calm of Chablis itself. The low-slung hotel is a converted convent, acclaimed by the Gault Millau guide for its fresh crayfish, superb Burgundy snails, and encyclopedic wine list, with page after page of different sorts of Chablis, neither disappointing nor overpriced.
Follow the expert wine waiter's advice and you will be poured one of the fine local wines that never reach Britain. But visit some of the famous wine producers in and around this charmingly sleepy, stony town and you will learn how to put a face to some of the bottles you do see in shops and restaurants over here (Britain, despite its sniffiness, continues to import a vast amount of Chablis).
With a population of 2500, Chablis is really little more than a village. But driving along the river Yonne soon brings you to Joigny, Tonnerre, and above all Auxerre, a town of great character, rising steeply from the river bank. As in Chablis, you will be told in these places that ''Burgundy wine is an art, not a business'' but you will taste enough good wine - red as well as white - to feel disposed not to challenge the statement.
Joigny's Hotel La Cote St-Jacques, with three Michelin stars, may seem nothing if not businesslike in its prices (far higher than those in Chablis) yet it provides an object lesson in what three star cuisine is all about.
A room in the hotel's modern annexe across the river helps to cut the cost, but this is the sort of place where, if you go to it at all, you should grit your teeth and pay the full rate for an experience which shows Britain's current obsession with the Pacific Rim to be as pointless as it is ill-focused.
But the trouble with Joigny is that it is not much of a town. Quite apart from the expense, one night at La Cote St-Jacques would be surely enough. Auxerre, with a fine cathedral and a charming, inexpensive old hotel called the Parc Des Marechaux is much more special, even if Barnabet its best restaurant rates only a single Michelin star.
Built round its own riverside courtyard, with its kitchen wholly visible behind a large picture
window, this may be just one
of dozens of temples of
regional cuisine, but it certainly shows what regional cuisine actually is.
Along with its perfectly matched list of Burgundies this restaurant has one added virtue: a devotion to truffles so intense that every autumn
they glorify every dish, even the mashed potatoes - on a special truffle menu.
If you are lucky, very lucky, you may spot a truffle hunt in your travels - look out for sniffer dogs amid trees along minor roads. But don't thereby allow yourself to miss a roadside stop at the Abbaye de Fontenaye, France's oldest surviving cistercian foundation, wonderfully preserved.
Sing a few notes amid the archways of the abbey church and you will sound like - or so you will be told - a whole chorus.
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