The One City in France You Don’t Want To Miss | Beaune in Burgundy

This week, we are in a whirlwind adventure to Beaune, the heart of Burgundy's wine country. This is Romane Conti, the most expensive wine in the world, and I am going to try it. Ever wondered what it's like to wander through medieval streets, sample world-class wines, and soak up the charm of a French town in just one day? Well, buckle up, because you're about to find out. We met up in Paris with a few of our fans and got on a bullet train to meet up with our guides Jody and Steven in Dijon. Can we really experience the best of Beaune in just a few hours? Cheers, my darling. Oh, wow. And is it possible to get a taste of the most expensive Romane Conti wine in the world? We're about to find out. Allez, on y va. Now to get to Beaune, it's best to take the bullet train. Settle in your seat and watch the French countryside zip by. Gives you time to contemplate the important things in life, like which bottle of Grand Cru will be in corking first. Steven, our wine sherpa for this pilgrimage, knows his grapes. Forget the snobbery. This guy got dirt under his fingernails and a palate that could discern a vintage by its tannins alone. He'll guide us through the labyrinth of Burgundy with a wink and a wry smile, leaving us buzzed on knowledge and just the right amount of fermented grape juice. And if you're lucky to get there on a Saturday morning. This is by far the best. You'll get to visit our favorite fresh market in France. Everything about these things just looks and tastes amazing. Forget your sterile supermarket. This is Beaune's beating heart. For the record, they don't have this parade every Saturday. Mountains of glistening olives, mouth-watering pâté en croûte, and saucisson that would make a monk break his vows. Look at this saucisson. I'm telling you, it looks like a candy store for savory stuff. Vendors hawk their wares with the practice ease of a seasoned gambler. Their voices, a melodic hum against the backdrop of clinking glasses from the nearby cafes. Grab yourself a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, and get lost in a labyrinth of stalls. This ain't no tourist trap, folks. This is where the real Burgundy people come to play. Do you eat this every day in France? No, I can't eat this every day. Just try not to blow your entire wallet on truffle before you hit the vineyards. The clinking of champagne flutes, the soft murmur of a conversation, and some dude tickling the ivories in the corner. This ain't your dive piano bar hacking through Piano Man. This is some classy stuff. Makes you feel like Gatsby, even if you just blew your travel budget on that last bottle of bubbly. But hey, we're in Burgundy. That was so cool. Austin is a piano player. He wants to go in the piano industry. He found a live piano and we got to have a concert and a little cremon instead of champagne. We had a little bubbly. We had a little something. It's a little something. It was fabulous. So where are we going now? Now we're going over to the Hospice de Beaune to check that out. Come on. Over the last few years, Antoine and I have done a lot of traveling, like all around France and back and forth to the U.S. over 20 times. And there are some things that we never leave home without. We always have them in our bag, like this power pack, so my phone is always charged, or lots of other things. So we put a link in the description to our top essentials that we always have and check it out and see if there's things in there that you still need for your trip. Next stop before lunch, we visited the gorgeous Hospice de Beaune. You step through those massive wooden doors and it hits you. Centuries of suffering, faith, and the fleeting nature of life itself. Some of the, I would say, oldest people in Beaune, some are born here, or they get, when they were young, they get to come here. The courtyard, a heaven for peace once overflowing with the sick and dying. Sunlight streams through the gothic arches, illuminating the glazed tiles of colors that have witnessed unimaginable pain. Those beds, imagine the stories they could tell. Not all of them pretty, but there is a strange beauty here, a testament to human compassion in the face of oblivion. These are the hospital beds in the Hospice de Beaune, where they're bringing dignity to the people, the poor people who can't afford medical care, health care. I mean, you can see how lovely it is. I feel like I'm in a royal chamber. Yeah, one of the things that he was saying is, like, these people were so poor, they had never seen a bed. So just actually being in a bed was the part of the care that they were getting. In a bed like that? Like, really, this looks like a royal thing. It does. No wonder France came up with the health care they did. Makes you think, doesn't it? About what really matters. About that last bottle of Romain de Conti you've been saving. I wonder if Stephen is going to get me a glass of that coveted, super expensive wine. And now it's time for a lunch break. This ain't no dainty white tablecloth affair. We're talking elbows on the table, wine sloshing in our glass, and tapas after tapas of amazing stuff. We asked Stephen at the end of the table, the young man back there, if we could have, try some Romain de Conti. And he's been telling us that it's very expensive, and unless you have 1,500 bucks, it's not going to happen. But we're going to come back. Maybe a simple salad, just to pretend you give a damn about your arteries. The bone marrow croquette. Oh, wow. Look at the inside. The kind of place where the waiter knows your name, or at least pretends to, and refills your glass before you can even ask. This, my friends, is what lunch in Burgundy is all about. Cheers, my darling. Fueling up for the next round of a vineyard assault. Darling. Eight million dollar wine. Oh, yes. I am in heaven. Oh, yeah. It's fantastic. The best Romain de Conti I've ever had. If you want to take a day trip to another part of France, you could book a ticket yourself and hop on a train. Or what we recommend is that you hire a guide who is professional and can guide you through all the stuff so you can make the most out of your day. We put a link in the description below for people that we highly recommend who can handle the details so you can relax and enjoy your trip. So check it out. See if it's for you. Now, forget those stuffy tasting room with the hush whisper and the spit bucket of a Bordeaux castle. Here in Burgundy, we do things a little differently. Out in the vineyard, sun on your face, the hearty smell of vines clinging to your clothes. Oh, wow. Stephen, with a twinkle in his eye, pours you a glass of something that tastes like sunshine and regret. We're going to start with Savigny-les-Bonnes Fleur de Ghetto Monopole 2018. That would cost at least twice as that in the U.S., probably. Maybe, yeah. Yeah, two to three times that. We have shipping, importer, distributor, wine shop. In the shop and in the restaurant, you're talking about a $200 to $300 bottle of wine. Hopefully, you'll like it. These are good wines. They're from Burgundy. It's a Pinot Noir. Cheers. You swirl, you sniff, you slurp, and suddenly the world makes a little bit more sense. Or maybe it's just the tannins messing in your head. Who cares? You're in Burgundy, baby. Let it ride. Okay, so this time you're saying the grapes are so good, we're telling you exactly where they come from, what field, what vineyard. Okay. It's Allos-Coton, the village we're at at the moment. Okay, fine. But then it says what? 1ER Crewe, Premier Crewe. So we're in that top 10% again. Okay. And then it says the name of the vineyard plot underneath, Les Petites Lolières. Then the last one right at the top is, okay, the 1.2%, 1.5% of the best wines we make. It's called a Grand Crewe. And here, you don't have the name of the village, Allos-Coton, but the name of the vineyard plot. This is the top of the top of the top, the 1.2% of all the wines we make here. Cheers to wine education, amazing wine, and amazing cellar. I'm not going to say I'm drunk. I'm not drunk, but you ugly, and I'll be sober in the morning. So now we've weaseled our way into the inner sanctum, the Holy Grail of Pinot Noir, the Domaine de la Romaine Conti. Forget the tasting rooms. You're out amongst the vines, the legendary soil clinging to your boots. This is Romaine Conti, the most expensive wine in the world, right behind me. And I, I'm going to try it today. Stephen, right here, my brother from another mother, is going to get us to try it before the day is old. Right here, we're going to find it. Where are we going, Stephen? We're on a quest. We're going to find it. So what you have right here is you have expensive wine, right? What you have here is you have even more expensive wine. Well, that's what I want. Over there is super duper expensive. And here, baby, you and I can't afford this. How much a bottle right here? Between $15,000 and $20,000 when you find a good price. This is the nectar of the gods, liquid gold. And one thing's for sure, we can't afford that stuff. So we settle for another amazing Cepage Pouligny Montrachet and toast to the day Stephen will find us a bottle of that stuff to try. So we're right here on the wall of Romaine Conti, which is, well, the king of kings when it comes to wine, on a beautiful sunny day in the vineyards in Burgundy. And life is just darn beautiful. By now, we're all a little bit tipsy. Hell, we can practically hear the monks chanting in the fields. The sun dips below the horizon, casting long shadows across the rows. It's time to head back. A little bit wobbly on our feet. A silly grin plastered across our face. Burgundy, you took our hearts once again. There is no question we will be back soon. In this video, we shared about our day trip to Bonne in Burgundy. And next, I would watch this video about a day trip to Champagne or this one about a day trip to Mont Saint-Michel.