Les Sources de Vougeot

Burgundy has a secret applause, and it is gloriously silly. Everyone raises their hands to head height and twirls them like little lanterns, while singing a string of syllables that mean absolutely nothing, la la, la la la la, la la lère, before the room erupts in applause. It is called the ban bourguignon. It breaks out at weddings and harvest suppers, and at the grand banquets of the Clos de Vougeot, where the wine brotherhood sings it in robes of scarlet and gold. It looks absurd. That is rather the idea.

It needs saying, because Burgundy has a reputation for solemnity. Its vineyards were mapped by the monks of Cîteaux, men who rose in the dark, worked in silence and noticed that one plot of land tasted different from the next. Their abbots lived a short way from the Clos, in a moated priory at Gilly-lès-Cîteaux, and that priory is now Les Sources de Vougeot. Guests still arrive over a stone bridge into a courtyard with a church in it, and for a moment, everyone lowers their voice.

The moment does not last. Alice and Jérôme Tourbier, who restored the place, have let the la la lère in through the back door. The old priory kitchen is now the lobby, with a fireplace big enough to stand in, and the bar is upholstered in deep green velvet. The old mill on the river Vouge has even become a house of its own, with the water chattering past the window.

Even the monks' cellar has changed its tune. The vaults where they kept their wine now hold the spa, and two pools lie between the stone columns, lit low and perfectly still. Floating there, where the barrels once rested, is a pleasure the brothers would have owned up to at the next day's chapter of faults, and quietly hoped to repeat.

Dinner turns up the volume. Julien Martin runs both kitchens, the intimate Clos de la Tour and the livelier Auberge des Cîteaux with its courtyard terrace, while the wine bar pours the Côte de Nuits by the glass. A few glasses in, the monks' careful map of Burgundy becomes a great deal easier to read, and rather more fun.

This is a lively house of nearly fifty rooms, newly reopened and happy to welcome children and dogs, so it is no silent retreat. Only one side of the priory has a lift, and the old stone stairs show no mercy to heavy suitcases. The famous villages need a car or a bicycle. Les Sources de Vougeot is for wine lovers who take Burgundy seriously, but not themselves.

For centuries this house kept the silence of the monks. It has not entirely forgotten how. But if anything is going to break that silence now, late in the evening, it will be a table of happy strangers with their hands in the air, twirling, singing nonsense, and starting to clap.