Meursault and the white-wine slope

Meursault is what Burgundy looks like when nobody is performing for visitors. Seven kilometres south-west of Beaune, it is a real village of stone houses, low gates opening on gravel courtyards, and a tall church spire tiled in the same coloured pattern as the Hospices roof. The town hall on the square, with its turrets and its arcaded ground floor, is the one obvious building; everything else is domestic and quiet.

The photography is in the transitions. Walk out of the last street and the vineyard begins immediately — the white-wine parcels of Meursault, Puligny and Chassagne running up the slope in long even rows. Gates, walls, plane trees and a stack of empty barrels against a wall do the middle ground; the spire gives the horizon a point.

Morning is best for the village itself, when the low sun comes down the lanes and there is nobody about. Evening belongs to the slope above, where the light goes long across the rows. In summer, the village genuinely empties in the middle of the day.

The cellars are private houses, not attractions: courtyards, gates and doorways are somebody's front garden. Photograph from the street, and if a door is open and a grower is working, ask — in Meursault the answer is often yes, but it is theirs to give.