The Beaune Wine Cellar

The Beaune Wine Cellar

    At the gate was a slight and aged man, who guided us into the recesses of the fertile French earth; a burrow carved beneath fields of twisting vines.  As he led us down the stairs, the air became dank and cool. 

    The walls appeared as if they wore freshly painted coats of ashen butter.  Above us, bare light bulbs, hastily strung, ran in a line that drew us deeper.  Faint sounds of an accordion could be heard; regional Muzac, I thought to myself.  On the walls and fixtures were draped cobwebs; wispy blankets of gray, dripping downward, lightly swaying. 

    We walked alongside seemingly endless rows of dusty wooden casks, small and large and in-between, filled with fermenting grapes; laid on their sides, one on top of another, precariously. 

    Suddenly, the mold and mildew penetrated my sinuses; pain striking within my temples and I had to stop.  I turned around, walked back to the kindly man, bid him adieu and climbed up toward the sunlight, escaping to the aromatic French air, to sample the liquid fruits of his labor, and a Tylenol.