The Route des Grands Crus above Pommard and Volnay

South of Beaune the D973 runs along the foot of the slope and a dozen small tracks climb straight up it into the vineyards of Pommard and Volnay. Park at the bottom of one, walk two hundred metres and you are inside the picture: rows converging uphill, low stone walls, a cross or a cabotte hut on the skyline, and the plain of the Saône opening out behind you.

The light does the work here. The slope faces east and south-east, so sunrise puts warm light straight down the rows and evening puts the sun behind the ridge, which gives a softer, cooler frame with the vines in shade and the plain still lit. Both work; sunrise has nobody in it. Midday flattens the whole thing and is worth skipping.

Season changes the subject completely. November to April is bare wood and brown earth — graphic, but not what most couples imagine. Green is in by June. The pull is the last ten days of September into mid-October, when the leaves turn and the harvest is running, tractors on the tracks and pickers in the rows.

Every parcel here is privately owned and worked. Stay on the tracks and headlands, do not walk between the vines, and keep well clear during harvest — a session that gets in the way of a picking crew will be asked to move, politely and firmly.