France
Baume-les-Messieurs
An ancient abbey below three converging cliffs where waterfalls run over moss into caves.
Three valleys converge on the village like stone funnels, the cliffs closing in until the sky overhead narrows to a strip. Baume-les-Messieurs, in France's Jura, sits at the junction — an abbey founded in the sixth century at the bottom of a limestone bowl, tufa waterfalls dropping over moss at the head of the valley, caves in the cliff behind them and the Jura rising on every side.
Baume lies on the floor of a reculée, the blind valley that is the Jura's own landform, where the rivers have eaten back into the plateau and left a canyon closed by cliffs on three sides. The abbey at the bottom is among the oldest monastic sites in the region, founded around 540, and it was from here that Bernon and his monks set out in 910 to found Cluny, the most powerful abbey in medieval Europe; the church keeps a Flemish altarpiece, and the abbey buildings are lived in still. Three marked walks lead through the village and up the valley to the Cascades des Tufs, where the water spills over shelves of mossy limestone into green pools, and on to the Grottes de Baume in the cliff above, a cave system open by guided visit in season. The vineyards on the plateau make vin jaune, the Jura's yellow wine, aged under its veil of yeast for more than six years, and Comté comes from the cheese cellars in the hills.
Solo
The walk up the reculée to the Cascades des Tufs and on into the caves is a progression from open valley to enclosed dark — the landscape contracts around you. The abbey below adds fifteen centuries of monastic history to the geology.
Couple
The reculée compresses drama — three cliff walls, waterfalls, caves and an ancient abbey — into a single valley. Taste vin jaune at a Jura cellar door and its sherry-like depth adds a flavour as singular as the landscape.
- Three cliff walls converge on the village like a stone funnel — the enclosure makes its own light and acoustics.
- The Cascades des Tufs spill over moss-covered limestone into green pools, and the caves in the cliff open by guided visit in season.
- The abbey was founded around 540 — the monks who founded Cluny set out from here — and it still stands at the bottom of the valley.
- Vin jaune from the Jura vineyards above is aged more than six years under a veil of yeast — the sherry-like result is singular.
Comté aged long in the Jura cellars — nutty, crystalline, with a caramel depth — cut thick at a village table.
Vin jaune — the Jura's yellow wine, aged under its veil of yeast for more than six years — with the Comté, the classic pairing.
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