St. Émilion, France
We are in prime-time red wine country! Bordeaux wine has some serious standards for their wine making, and it was really fun to soak up all the wine knowledge! Our Airbnb host used to work in the wine industry, so he taught us all sorts of things before we even got there. The city of Saint Émilion is very old and the Romans were the first to plant vineyards in this region in the 2nd century!
It was a cloudy, rainy, 65 degree day when we biked through the hilly vineyards of the wine country. We found it slightly inconvenient, but still had a great time exploring the countryside. The landscape is a beautiful one- very lush, hilly, and lined with hundreds of vineyards.
This is a canelé, a French pastry, very specific to the region we were staying in. It is only made from egg yolks, sugar, milk, flour, and/or rum and vanilla. Egg whites are used in the wine making process to remove the tannin particles (harsh taste) which makes the wine more round and sippable. With all the excess yolks, they decided to make this amazing treat!
We went to the tourist office to see which wineries were open for visitors. They gave us 3 different names of wineries that were varying distances from the town. We went to the first place, and no one seemed to be there for the tour. So after biking through the rain we happened upon this beautiful cháteau. It was not on the list of open wineries, but we went in regardless to get a break from the rain. Since we are lucky sometimes, they had a tour in English within a half hour! We biked into St. Émilion and had a an awesome panini sandwich with frites! Then biked back to this winery for some knowledge of the age-old art of wine making!
The wine will be in these barrels for a few years before it is bottled. Every winery is different in how long they store the wine in the barrels, ranging from 2-3 years. The barrels need to be new, straight from the cooperage (that’s the barrel making place). French oak is the better choice as it imparts less taste into the wine, whereas American oak has a more distinct flavor. They also make barrels from 800 year old trees from the oldest forest in France, but those barrels are $2000! The regular, old run of the mill barrels are $800. Of course, the wine is going to be way more expensive from the older growth trees.
This is a tasting table, it is backlit to see the color of the wine. In this region of France, red wine is the specialty. In order to taste all the components of the wine, you usually swirl, smell, then sip and you can spit the hourglass containers if you are driving!
This is the “foot” of a grape vine. As you can see the main trunk is much larger than the actual shoot of the plant, this is called grafting. The previous vine was well established in the soil, and can sometimes be as deep as 10 m (30 ft), therefore they take a new growth shoot of a new variety of grape and place it in the “foot”. The new grapevine is as old as the original “foot”. Within a few years, the vine will produce grapes for wine!
A newer vine is considered second rate wine, but a more matured vine is first wine (which is about 20 years old). They have a life expectancy too, and it’s close to 120 years… so a really long time of producing grapes! But, all of these stipulations are from the Bordeaux vines. This is not how all wines are classified, but probably why Bordeaux has such a good reputation in the wine world.
We got out of the countryside of St Émilion and into the town of Bordeaux! This is the Place de la Bourse, or the Royal Palace. In the front of the palace, there was a mirror water feature that turns into a cloud of mist every hour or so. It was a nice way to relax and do some people watching (it’s our favorite pastime)!
This is St. Andre Cathedral, unfortunately, we arrived at 5:02 pm and the door was already closed, as it closed at 5pm. We really did not find too much to do in Bordeaux, but we wandered the streets and then headed back to our airbnb that evening!
