Label From Winery Visit
Large Bordeaux Vinyard
Today we drove to Geneva, turned in our rental car, and then took an extremely long train ride to the Western or Atlantic side of France to Bordeaux. To help pass the time and to surprise everyone who knows me, I passed the time reading a fictional biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti the famous Renaissance Architect, Sculptor, and Painter. Although it's only partially fiction, and yes, it's about a famous Architect so it's partially about building stuff, it's still classified as fiction, and it's not about computers. So it's important, because although I'm a voracious reader this is only the second fiction book I can ever remember reading.
Today we slept in and enjoyed an easy morning, before joining a bus tour of the local wine country. We toured most of the Medoc region, and got to visit two separate wineries for detailed tours. It was interesting to see that the French wine makers use a process involving egg whites to help separate sediment from their wine, where the California wine makers use modern filtering processes. It was also interesting to see how much of a production-oriented focus this region has compared to the Burgundy wine region. Here in Bordeaux the wineries are mostly corporate owned, the average vineyard is 100 acres, and the bottling and laboratory analysis work is all outsourced. This provides a surprising contrast to the little 5-acre family owned vineyard in Burgundy where two or three people do everything from growing the vines to bottling and labeling the finished product.
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Label From Winery Visit |
Large Bordeaux Vinyard |
Bordeaux Region Chateau |
Today is Sunday again, so lots of things are closed, and we were still tired from Friday's full day of traveling. So we stayed in the room catching up on writing, and planning how to make the move to our next destination. In the afternoon, we decided to brave the crowds and join in a local wine festival that is being held in the center of town along the bank of the Garonne River.
What a deal, for 60 French Franks ($8.50) per person we got a pass to sample ten wines from the wineries of the region. For an extra 20 Franks ($2.85) we bought a wonderful piece of cheese to help punctuate each glass of wine as we moved from region to region. We also got really nice ham sandwiches for 30 Franks ($4.28) each. All in all we ate well and drank eight spectacular glasses of wine all for about $15 per person. This sure beats the Taste-of-Colorado!
Dorothy At Wine Festival |
John Among Cases Of Wine |
In addition to slowly getting very drunk, we enjoyed walking around the different displays, and trying to find ways to buy French wine from the U.S. We think the reason we like French wine so much is because they don't add sulfates as preservatives. The French wines don't cause headaches, they don't give you indigestion, and they don't have the bite that even the mellowest wines in America have.
Dorothy And Dog Poster |
Barrel Cart |
It's strange to see how picky the French are about their food compared to Americans. We Americans buy factory created food without any idea of where it came from, or how it was produced. By contrast the French brand all of their food by the region that produced it and give it all quality rating that is upheld by local associations. It's not just wine that is strictly controlled and labeled by the region, the vineyards, and the winery, so are beef, bottled water, and cheese. This really leads to a better tasting food that you can't help but think is healthier. Maybe this is the real reason the French have a lower rate of cancer, even though it is on the increase in recent years.
At the end of the wine festival there was a huge fireworks display over the river. Although we had already called it a day, we had a perfect view from our hotel room. We also got to see the city go crazy honking their horns and generally making noise works because the French beat Italy in the Euro2000 Socker Cup. It was a lot of fun here in Bordeaux, but the pictures of Paris looked really crazy.
Somehow while enjoying all the wine in the Bordeaux region we forgot to unpack the bicycle. So today we head to Tours where we'll have to put the bike back together so we can visit the chateaux around tours.
Today is also my 36th birthday, but this year I doubt that I'll get a chance to blow anything up. I'm not sure where I'd find fireworks in France, and I really don't think a two-liter bottle of dry ice would make me popular with the local police.
Some think that at 36, I should figure out what I want to do when I grow up - but it's a lot more interesting to stick to being a big kid, fiddling with computers, and finding silly new adventures wherever I can. Although I've had 36 pretty successful years so far, there is still a lot to learn in this world, and I hope I still have a long way to go.