Wine & Cheese in the Châtillonnais

There are parts of France where the food and the wine feel like a coincidence. The Châtillonnais is not one of them. The limestone plateau that gives the local Chardonnay its cool mineral edge is the same landscape that produces the grass the cows graze on, the milk that becomes Époisses, and the cellars where Crémant spends its second fermentation in the dark. It all belongs together — and spending a few days here, it starts to feel obvious.

Crémant & Époisses: start here

If you try nothing else from this region, try these two together. Crémant de Bourgogne is Burgundy's sparkling wine — made by the traditional method, dry and fine-bubbled, from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Aligoté grown on the slopes around Châtillon-sur-Seine. It is one of France's most consistently undervalued pleasures, and the Châtillonnais is its home. A good bottle costs a fraction of Champagne and loses nothing in the comparison.

Époisses is a washed-rind cheese from the village of the same name, about 40 km south of Puits. It is pungent, deeply savoury, and when properly ripe has a spoonable interior the colour of burnt amber. Napoleon is said to have loved it. It was famously described as the king of all cheeses by Brillat-Savarin, who knew what he was talking about. Against a cold glass of Crémant, the contrast — salt and funk against clean persistent bubble — is one of the better things you can eat in Burgundy.

The still wines

The Châtillonnais produces still reds and whites under the Bourgogne appellation — Chardonnay on limestone, Pinot Noir on the clay-limestone slopes. They won't rival the grand crus of the Côte de Nuits, nor should they: they're wines for the table, made for food, honest and fairly priced. A white Châtillonnais Chardonnay alongside a young Comté or a slice of jambon persillé — the parslied ham terrine that is as Burgundian as it gets — is exactly the kind of lunch this part of France does well.

For those wanting to go further, the Côte de Nuits — Gevrey-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges — is about an hour south. Chablis, all steely Chardonnay and oyster-shell minerality, is ninety minutes northwest. Both are easy day trips; both reward a visit to a domaine rather than simply a shop. We can suggest who to contact and what to ask for.

Markets: where to buy

The best way to eat well in this part of Burgundy is to shop like a local. Châtillon-sur-Seine has a Saturday morning market where you'll find local cheeses, charcuterie, seasonal vegetables and — if you time it right — a cheese stall whose Époisses is worth building a picnic around. Montbard market runs on Friday mornings and is worth combining with a visit to Fontenay Abbey nearby. Semur-en-Auxois has its Thursday market in the old town, surrounded by enough medieval stonework to make the shopping feel like a minor occasion.

For cheese specifically, don't miss the Fromagerie du Coin in Châtillon-sur-Seine — a proper fromagerie with an excellent selection of regional and French cheeses, including Époisses at exactly the right stage of ripeness. It's the kind of shop that makes you want to reorganise your entire afternoon around a picnic. For Époisses at source, the Berthaut dairy in the village of Époisses itself welcomes visitors — buy it a day or two before you plan to eat it and let it come fully to room temperature before serving.

Where to eat

We keep a short, honest list of restaurants we'd actually send friends to — not every option in the region, just the ones worth the journey. Ask us when you arrive and we'll point you in the right direction based on what you're looking for: a long Sunday lunch, a simple weekday plat du jour, or somewhere worth dressing up for.