On To The Isere

After leaving our chambre d’hote in Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez on Saturday morning, our first stop on the Ferme en Ferme circuit was right in the village, at La Ferme du Moulin des Chartreux. The farm is located just outside the walls of the old monastery, and raises several kinds of animals for meat and for cheese.  After looking around the farm, we bought several goat cheeses, a meat tourte, and a fresh pintade (guinea hen) for roasting, complete with the head.  One of the owners took some pictures of us at their stand, and asked for my email address. Two days later I got an email from her with the two photos.

Pintade Before Being Roasted

We then drove out of Sainte-Croix towards the village of Pelussin, where we found Le Potager d’Olivier, a small organic farm growing a number of kinds of vegetables, as well as mushrooms in their darkened cave.  We were given a tour of some of the vegetable plots, and shown the mushroom growing operation. They had several of their vegetables for sale, and since we needed some food items for the coming week, we picked up some things, including the first asparagus of the season.

After leaving Pelussin, we headed up towards the village of Chavannay, high above the Rhone River. We saw signs for numerous Northern Rhone wine producers, some of whom I was familiar with, but the only one that was participating in Ferme en Ferme was Vignobles Verzier. We stopped there, and were given a tasting by one of the winemakers. The wines were superb, and we bought several bottles, including a Condrieu (a white made entirely from Viognier), a Saint Joseph blanc (a Marsanne/Roussane blend), and a Saint Joseph rouge (all Syrah).

We then crossed the Rhone and headed towards Beaucroissant in the Isere departement, where we were going to be spending the next week at a gite (basically a restored farmhouse), with a stop in Chatte to check out two shops we had read about. One of them is a cooperative of local farmers, including vegetable, meat and cheese producers; the other is the retail store of the adjacent factory that makes raviolis that are a local specialty called Raviolis de Royans.  We bought a number of items at each store, the continued on to Beaucroissant.

We arrived in Beaucroissant in the late afternoon, and were greeted by the woman who runs the gite with her husband. They live next door to the gite, and the woman told us that the property was originally owned by her grandparents, and that she grew up in what is now the gite. She also told us that we were the first Americans to stay in the gite. A chance encounter later that afternoon made us wonder whether we were in fact the first Americans to have stayed anywhere in Beaucroissant. While we were walking back from the center of the village we met a man who was walking his very friendly dog. As he started to walk away he asked us where we were from. When we said “the United States,” he was taken aback, and said, in English, “the United States, and you’re staying in Beaucroissant? Why, do you have family here?” We told him no, we were just on vacation. He seemed surprised that a couple of Americans would be spending a week of their vacation in Beaucroissant.

That night we roasted the pintade we had bought earlier in the day at the farm in Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez, and drank the Ladoix red Burgundy we had bought on our excursion to the Cote d’Or last Tuesday.  With the pintade we had the asparagus from the vegetable farm we had visited that morning, and some of the potatoes from Ghislaine’s father.

On Sunday morning we drove to Morestel, about 45 minutes from here, for their weekly outdoor market.  It’s one of the largest and best markets in this part of France, and we had gone there last year when we stayed in the Bugey region. We had planned to just get a few things there, since we had quite a lot of food already, but everything looked so good that we wound up getting far too much.  We spent a fair amount of time walking through the market and throughout the center of town, and then drove back to Beaucroissant for lunch, which consisted of cheese (we have a lot of that) plus some olives and tapenade we had picked up in Morestel.

Fishmonger in Moretsel

In the late afternoon we took a short drive to the village of Virieu to visit the Chateau de Vireu. The chateau was originally a fortification built around the 12th century, and was later added on to in several stages and renovated about 100 years ago. Part of it now houses five families descended from the Virieu family line. An interesting part of the tour concerned the role that the Virieu family played in the French Resistance during World War II, including their efforts at hiding some families, including Jewish families, which earned them a commemorative award from Israel.

Chateau de Virieu

That night our dinner included a Saucisse Lyonnaise, a specialty of the nearby city of Lyon, which we had picked up in Morestel.  For the wine, I opened the Saint Joseph rouge from Vignoble Verzier, which was a great match for the sausage; not surprising, since Lyon and the St. Joseph wine region are so close.

Monday morning we headed off to the Savoie departement to visit some wineries. The first one was Domaine Grisard in Freterive, which we had visited last year and a couple of years before that.  We’ve both become big fans of Savoie wines, which can be difficult to find in the United States. One thing that’s interesting about Savoie wines is the number of indigenous grapes grown here, many of which are not grown anywhere else, and some of which had almost become extinct before being revived by some grape growers in the area.  Domaine Grisard has been a pioneer in keeping some of the ancient varieties alive, and they are also a pepiniste (fruit tree seller), selling grape vines to other vineyards.  We tried a number of their wines, and bought several of them.

After leaving Domaine Grisard we stopped at Domaine Philippe Grisard, another branch of the family.  We were given a spectacular tasting by Philippe himself, who poured us about a dozen different wines, including 4 or 5 different red Mondeuse Noire wines, and wines from the rare Mondeuse Blanche and Persan grape varieties. We had hoped to keep our purchases to a reasonable number, and had planned to visit a third winery afterward (down from the 5 I had originally planned to visit in this area), but the wines here were so good we bought 9 bottles (plus we were given 1 by Philippe), and cancelled our next planned visit.  Instead, we went to lunch at a restaurant on a small lake, La Carouge, which had been recommended to me by the wine writer Wink Lorch.  After lunch we took a walk around the lake, which has great views of the surrounding mountains.

Tasting Room at Domaine Philippe Grisard

Lac Carouge

On our drive back to Beaucroissant we took a route through the mountainous Chartreuse Park, rather than taking the fast autoroute that we had driven on in the morning. We passed through some charming villages and had some great views of the hills. We made one brief stop in Saint Laurent du Pont and took a stroll through the town. We then drove through the congested town of Voiron during rush hour, and eventually returned to Beaucroissant for aperitifs and then dinner.

Saint Laurent du Pont