Cooking Fresh Organic Vegetables And Burgundy Wine

For a chef, there is no greater pleasure than picking and then cooking organically grown vegetables straight from the earth, warm from the sun. Pairing vegetable recipes with Burgundy wine adds to that pleasure. Good food is at the heart of life at Domaine de Cromey, our beautiful Burgundy Manor House that sits among the vines in a peaceful vale to the south of Beaune. Steeped in over four hundred years of history, things here remain traditional and in tune with nature. Visitors to Cromey experience the wine and food of this wonderful region in the hands of Dennis and Ellie, their chefs and kitchen and wine staff. Many of the recipes are from her own cookbook, using vegetables from Cromey’s potager. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s simply a vegetable and/or fruit plot, sometimes in an ornamental design, often with the crops protected by beautiful flowers and herbs. It’s attractive, functional, and does wonders to maintain local flora and fauna.  

Cooking vegetables with Burgundy wine is one of the great pleasures of life; here we explore just a few of the best vegetable-based dishes from the potager to discover and make for yourself. We also offer our suggestions of which Burgundy wines to pair some of them with.  

The Best Vegetable Recipes Paired with Burgundy Wine  

There can be few more quintessentially French dishes than a good onion soup. It’s great as a starter, (and often as a late-night snack at French weddings, too). Ellie’s recipe includes an array of ingredients to make the richest, sweetest soup, including adding wine from Bouzeron to the mix. And when we look for a wine from this exceptional village, we often turn to Julien Cruchandeau, a pioneer of Bouzeron wine. Try his Bouzeron 'Massale'; with its confit apple acidity, honey and cinnamon spices it gives this soup an extra depth, or you could go for his Aligoté 'Le Village'  too.   Both of these wines are made with the Aligote grape.

Ellie’s cookbook also includes a special soup made from blood peaches and served as a savory accompaniment to meats. Not too sweet, with a slightly bitter edge, Warm Vine Peach Soup with Irancy Wine has a unique cooking quality. For wine, look for a Gabin and Felix Richoux Irancy - you’ll want a cup of the wine in with the soup, and the rest to savour from a glass. The village of Irancy itself is famous for another fruit – black cherries – and Richoux’s wines have a backdrop of that cherry flavor running right through them.   

Cooking vegetables and Burgundy wine together is successful because of the synergy that the flavors have with one another. Whether it’s sweetness, bitterness, spiciness or richness, there’s a Burgundy wine pairing for every dish from the potager. Whether the wine is used in the dish, or is enjoyed alongside it, it adds a hidden extra dimension you may not have been aware of before, and turns a good dish into a great one. And it doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming – many of the vegetable dishes we cook with Burgundy wine are simple to make, and once you’ve learned a few simple steps you’ll be able to impress your house guests the next time you throw a party.  

The Time is Ripe… 

It’s worth giving some thought to the time of year you want to make a dish and what ingredients will be readily available in your garden or local store. You want the very freshest produce, and that will vary from month to month. For example, Ellie has a recipe for Garden Vegetable Ragoût with Garlic & Crispy Ham. She likes to make this salad in June, because this is when new potatoes, green beans, artichokes and fresh spinach are at their best and are on her favorite vegetable stalls in local markets (and of course, growing in the organic potager garden at the Domaine de Cromey).  

Likewise with her Pickled Red Cabbage and Cherry Salad – it’s good all on its own, but when cherries are fresh and in season they really take this dish to the next level.  

Let Vegetable Flowers Blossom in Your Burgundy Cooking with Wine

Ellie doesn’t just know how to grow and cook vegetables, though – she also knows how to use their flowers in her cooking too. You may not know it, but the flowers of the zucchini plant can be made into a wonderful summery dish - Gratin of Zucchini Flowers. Though still a bit of a curiosity in much of France, throughout Italy zucchini flowers are abundant for much of the year, and turn up in some ingenious preparations. At the Domaine de Cromey, they make exotic and delicate dishes for the lucky guests. 

The flowers (especially the larger male ones) should be harvested in a special way that Ellie explains in her book; her secret is to pick them in the morning when they haven’t yet fully opened, and while they are still crisp and have not yet begun to wilt. Keep a good long stem on them (which is also edible) and check inside for any bees or bugs, both of which love these blossoms. The stamen and pistil (inner parts) of the flowers are all perfectly safe to eat too. Inside these delicious little flowers, Ellie stuffs mozzarella cheese, anchovies, tomato and basil, and bakes them in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes.  

Relax in the Bosom of Burgundy – as Our Guests 

Of course, if you’d rather we did the cooking and you focussed on relaxing in the bosom of Burgundy as our guests, then the Domaine de Cromey is waiting to welcome you with open arms. We host traditional house parties where groups of ten or twelve friends come together to live it up in Burgundy. We also host “Mix and Meet” parties for individual couples come to meet other like-minded folk and make memories to last a lifetime.  In 2024, we opened 7 weeks to Mix & Meet weeks due to their popularity for smaller groups, often one or two couples.

As the guests of hosts Dennis and Ellie, you’ll get to experience the best of Burgundy gastronomy, just as nature intended it – with organic soil, cover crops and raised beds – and definitely no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. You can also take a stroll around our vineyard! It’s one of the areas of Cromey we’re most proud of. We wanted to use these seven acres of prime terroir – known as Clos de Chateau – because there’s really nothing quite like drinking wine on the land it was grown on. The vineyard, like all of the land of the Domaine is completely free of chemical treatments and has been for generations.

But if you fancy a more active day, perhaps seeing a few sights further afield, then you’ll be ideally placed to do just that. We often host cyclists, and we work with professional cycling and nature guides who can advise on itineraries and show you where the action is. High-quality bikes of every calibre are available for rent from our professional partners in the region. There are more than 2,900km of breath-taking cycle routes to discover in Burgundy, and they can take you to some of your favorite vineyards, to historic castles and courtyards, along lazy canals, and onward to picture-postcard cafes and restaurants.  

Elden Selection’s Burgundy Wine Club offers members the chance to find out more about the wines of Burgundy, sending four shipments per year. Members also receive invitations to member-only virtual events in the US; 2 specially selected wine glasses; tasting notes; and the chance to win a stay at Domaine de Cromey. And to read more about the producers, appellations and terroir of the Burgundy Wine Region, visit the Domaine de Cromey blog.