Throughout history Vézelay has charmed artists, poets and kings. It was from this medieval castle, now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that the knights embarked on the second and third crusades... At L’Espérance, a former café and grocery store in the middle of the vineyards, Marc Meneau is leading another crusade: a taste mission. This self-taught chef discovered the art of cooking in books and then went on to develop his own sense of inventiveness. His oysters in a salty aspic, his shellfish and caviar tureen and his “Marie-Antoinette-Sofia Coppola” strawberry dessert all testify to this. The Chef’s other battle is to defend traditional winemaking techniques and to protect the local vines from the phylloxera pest that ravaged them in the past.