The road, such as it is, winds up through the vines to the tiny village. We passed the church which dominates the microscopic Place, turned into a lane with a high wall, and stopped before the entrance to a modest courtyard flanked on three sides by low farm buildings. No name, no number. Nothing to mark the threshold of the most illustrious domain in all Burgundy.
One is just supposed to know. We left our car outside and walked in. In the middle of the yard a slender lady with fair hair was talking to a youngish man in a raincoat with his back to us. At our approach he wheeled around and came to meet us with quick short stride.
The gait was familiar. So were the steady intense eyes. Here surely was the man we had come to see, the son and the successor of our old and regretted friend. Monsieur Edmond de Villaine. The bureau or office of the Domaine consists of a small room in the left wing. Its door opened and a figure in black emerged, her spectacles glinting in the sunlight. Halfway across the courtyard we were joined by Noblot, the husky cellarman. Take so many of the staff, he grew up in the Domaine.
At the top of the stone steps Madame Clin drew from the folds of her dress a large key. There is nothing fancy about the cellars of the Domaine. The floor, dark damp earth. Walls and low vaulted ceilings glistening with moisture. The rows of casks, neatly aligned, are strictly utilitarian. The cool obscurity redolent of wet soil, seasoned oak, and the aroma of Pinot grape is pinpointed with fireflies as Noblel lights and hands around the candles in their pewter holders,.
Setting his candle on a nearby barrel, Noblel removes the stopper from the top of the first cask, plunges the glass tube of the pipette into the bunghole. In a moment he withdraws it, a shining column of red, and carefully fills each extended lasting cup.
