A Palate Pleasing Journey Abroad

Shelly and Tim Marshall seized the moment and said yes when an out-of-the-blue opportunity to join a group excursion to France presented itself in late August. 

It’s a decision that produced treasured memories, said Shelly Marshall, her excitement still apparent more than a month later. She and her husband were among the 24 travelers who took part in Gastronomique Tours’ trip to the world-renowned Burgundy wine region. 

The nine-day-long culinary jaunt was planned, organized, and led by Denis and Lisa Meurgue, well-known restaurateurs on the island. Their eatery, the Old Marco landmark, Bistro Soleil, closed last November after 15 years in operation. The building where it was located was found to be structurally unsound and repairs were not viable. 

“It was wonderful,” Shelly Marshall said of the trip. “It was once in a lifetime, something that we'll never forget. And we came home with 24 new friends. That was the best part.”

The Meurgues have been conducting the annual tours to share the food, wine, and culture of France, Denis Meurgue’s home country, with others since 2003. Over the years, they’ve journeyed to such places as Champagne-Alsace, the Loire Valley, Bordeaux, Provence and last year, Avignon, a city in the country’s southeast.

It was happenstance that led to the Marshalls taking their first trip to France.

“We actually did not originally plan on going on the tour,” explained Shelly Marshall. “My cousin and her husband had been planning on going for about a year. But they had a family emergency and were unable to go, so we were blessed with the trip. We had about a week to prepare. We found out on a Sunday, and we left on the following Monday.”

From September 3rd to September 11th, they and their fellow travelers sampled the countryside, classic architecture, food, wines, unique features, and life in general in the region known as “Bourgogne” in French. 

From their base in Dijon, Burgundy’s capital, they departed daily to enjoy activities that included guided tours of some of the many historic buildings in the area. Among them was the Chateau du Clos Vougeot. Situated amidst Burgundy’s vineyards, the chateau was originally a wine farm built in the 12th Century by Cistercian monks.

The itinerary also included:

• Vineyard visits and wine tastings.
• Group meals.
• A chef-led French cooking class.
• Exploring Dijon's Les Halles covered food market, its Old Town section, and other nearby historic sights. 
• Visits to art and automotive museums.
• A tour and tasting at Dijon mustard maker Moutarderie Fallot, where they also tried their hand making mustard.
• Touring an escargot farm where snails are bred to provide this delicacy.

An Orion, Illinois resident who grew up on a farm, Shelly Marshall found the escargot farm to be of particular interest, as well as a surprise. 

“I never in a million years even dreamed there was such thing as a snail farm,” she said. “It was fun to learn a little bit about that and be able to come home and educate my dad, who found it really interesting, as well.”

She can now boast of having sampled escargot for the first time. 

“It was good,” she said. “I don't think there was one thing we didn't try as far as food goes. Everything they put in front of us, we tried. That's the point of a gastronomy tour, right?

Like the Marshalls, the tour marked their first time traveling to France for Tom and Kristina O’Brien of Fiddler’s Creek.

“We've been visiting Marco for years and got to know Denis when they owned Bistro Soleil,” said Tom O’Brien. “We used to go there all the time. There were always pictures on the walls of the trips that they’d done over the years, and we said, ‘We’ve just got to do that one of these years.’ So, we and some friends decided this was the year to try it.”

He said he and his wife and their friends, Marco Islanders Joe and Nikki Paplaczyk, were thrilled with the experience. 

“Every day, there were multiple things to do,” said Tom O’Brien. “You're visiting wineries and doing tastings, and you're going to a nice lunch, or you're going to see the sites we went to this year. They had a planned-out itinerary. They work with local companies to make sure that we have transportation and it just it's so well run. They do a great job.”

Lisa Meurgue said half of this year’s participants were repeat customers, most of them people she and her husband knew from their Bistro Soleil days. 

“Everyone told us what a wonderful time they had again,” she said. “I mean when you have half the people who've been with you before, that speaks volumes.”

She cited two highlights of this year’s tour, one being getting to see one of the world’s most expensive bottles of wine, the Romanée Conti, while visiting that winery. A wine tasting was part of the tour, but a sampling of the highly prized vintage was not included. 

The other highlight was an amusing prank masterminded by tour participant Steve Camposano that included the enthusiastic participation of his fellow travelers. 

Denis Meurgue is a devotee of rugby, a sport that he used to play. In fact, he and his wife attended this year’s Summer Olympics, where they saw France capture the gold medal in rugby. 

Knowing this, Camposano surfed ‘the net’ to find and purchase hats bearing France’s national colors of blue, white, and red and adorned with the country’s national symbol, the rooster, commonly worn at the national team’s games by French rugby fans. He brought the hats on the trip and on the sly, passed them out to the other tour participants to carry out a surprise reveal at the Meurgue’s expense. 

“One day, when Denis and I got back on the bus where we sit in the front, they started chanting ‘Allez les Bleus, a chant that they sing for rugby,” Lisa Meurgue recalled with a chuckle. “When we turned around, they were all wearing these crazy French chicken hats, and unbeknownst to us, (Camposano) had been teaching them to say ‘Allez les Bleus.’

The phrase was chanted by French national team fans throughout the Olympics. In English, it means "Go Blues" because blue is the national team’s traditional uniform color. 

While the Meurgues no longer have their restaurant, they are still involved in offering chef Denis’ creations to the public. The couple is a regular presence at the Marco Island Farmers Market, which starts November 15, as well as the Third Street South Farmer's Market held on Saturday mornings in Naples. 

“Even though it was a heart-wrenching thing that happened to us, you’ve got to make lemonade out of lemons, right,” said Lisa Meurgue. “It's not a bad thing. It allows us more freedom to go to France. I mean, you work so hard your entire life and then you don't get to enjoy it. So, we are enjoying life.”

For more information about Gastronomique Tours, please visit gastronomiquetours.com or email Lisa at Gastronomiquetours@gmail.com