Wine Tasting in Pessac-Leognan

For inexperienced wine drinkers (like Kevin and me), the Bordeaux area can be overwhelming.  Unlike in Napa Valley, many chateaux in Bordeaux conduct visits by appointment only.  To help us sort everything out and give us an intro to wine tasting in the region, we hired Dewey Markham from DMJ Wineworks to give us a one-day tour.  He's an American by birth but has lived in Bordeaux and worked in the wine industry for over 20 years.  He teaches classes at the Ecole du Vin in town, and he also offers a variety of private tours.  It was nice to have our own "personal expert" who could answer all our questions.  (And we had a LOT of questions!)

Dewey had prearranged three chateaux visits and tastings.  It was eye-opening.  In Napa/Sonoma, Kevin and I just drove from winery to winery -- you pop into the tasting room, maybe pay a fee, try three or four wines, and head out to the next stop.  It was not like that here.  We spent more than an hour at each chateau, touring the vineyards, seeing the pressing equipment, walking through the barrel rooms, and then -- finally -- tasting the wine.  The nice part is that you basically receive a private tour of the winery, and you don't have to compete with other tourists for attention once you get to the tasting room.  The drawback is that the basic process is the same from one chateau to the next, so much of the information is repeated, especially if all the chateaux are in the same region/appellation.

Chateau Latour-Martillac

After Chateau Latour-Martillac, we went for lunch at the nearby Smith Haut Lafitte chateau complex. 

In addition to the winery, there is a five-star hotel, spa, and two restaurants.  We went to the more informal restaurant, La Table du Lavoir.  It was modeled after a 19th century wash-house.  It was a pretty spot, with a very nice lunch menu.

After lunch, we headed to Chateau Carbonnieux, which was once visited by Thomas Jefferson.  The basic winemaking explanation was the same, but the chateau owners' collection of antique French cars was a big hit with the gentlemen in our party.

Chateau Carbonnieux

Each of the chateaux we visited today are classed as a Grand Cru Classe of the Graves region.  This is a classification system that separates the elite wines from the rest of the field (although honestly we haven't met a wine we didn't like).  Each of the three chateaux is well-known for both its red and white wines, so there was something for everyone.  Definitely a good introduction to the vineyards of Bordeaux.

Chateau Bouscaut

Saint-Emilion

Although today was rainy, the four of us decided to explore some of the countryside around the Bordeaux area.  One of the more popular towns to visit is Saint-Emilion.

 

It's a charming town, with tile roofs, cobblestone streets, narrow passages, several cafes, and lots and lots of wine shops.  

The Saint-Emilion appelation is known for its Merlot wines.  Kevin and I enjoy drinking wine but don't really consider ourselves very knowledgeable.  For that reason, most of the time we stick to pretty inexpensive wines since we're not sure if we could tell the difference.  But at a wine bar in St. Emilion, they offered wines by the glass at varying price points.  We decided to put our palettes to the test.  First we ordered an 8-euro glass of a 1994 wine, to see if older wines tasted better than the ones we usually drink.  In this case, not really.  Then Kevin went all in and ordered the most expensive glass on the menu - the bottle sells for 130 euro but the glass was a modest 26.  When we ordered, the server gave us a small smile of approval and said "its VERY good".

The infamous bottle

Kevin was ready to take the Pepsi (er...St. Emilion) challenge.

Can YOU tell the difference?

And the result is that we both could definitely tell there was a difference between the two wines.  BUT...the more expensive wine didn't taste any better (to us, at least).  So at least now we know, and can continue to happily buy our cheapo wines without worrying that we are missing out on something spectacular. 

We opted not to buy from the "Prestige Menu".  1300 euro a bottle for a bottle of 2001 Lafite Rothschild...hmmm, that seems expensive.  (By the way, with everything from the hotel continental breakfasts, to the tolls and gas on the highway, to the 20 euro umbrella that we bought when it really began to pour..."that seems expensive" is quickly becoming our catchphrase for this trip.)  We did end up buying and enjoying a fantastic wine to bring home for dinner that night -- Emilio.  A real steal at about 4 euro a bottle!

Check out the rest of the wine list.  Yep, that seems expensive!

We do have a wine tour scheduled for this region in a week or so, and will have a chance to come back to the town to walk around some more.  Hopefully it will be sunny then, but even with all the rain we found this to be one of the prettiest towns we've seen in France.

Bordeaux, France

We got an early start on Wednesday from St. Malo and drove almost the entire way to Bordeaux in the pouring rain.  It was pretty exhausting and finally Kevin agreed to switch and let me drive.  I was very proud of myself, even though it's been years since I drove a stick shift, I didn't even stall once!  Although I did lose our toll road ticket at a rest stop, which ended up costing us a ten-euro fine at the toll booth when we got to Bordeaux.  Whoops.

Of course as soon as we neared Bordeaux the rain cleared up.  The plan was to meet up with our friends Renee and Don at their home exchange in Talence (a Bordeaux suburb), drive into town and return the rental car, then walk around and explore the city a little.  Things went *almost* according to plan, except that when we filled up the tank prior to returning, the pump shut off before it got past the "F" on the gauge (actually the "1".  For some reason "0" means empty and "1" means full...).  We didn't notice it until we were nearly at the Hertz return.  So returning the car took considerably more time than we thought since we then drove to two more gas stations looking for one that would accept our credit card to fill the last teensy bit of the tank to avoid the 60 euro fuel surcharge.

After all that hassle we were ready for a glass (or two!) of wine.  First stop: the Bar a Vin, a great place to order various Bordeaux wines by the glass.

Confession time: the prices were so good at the Bar a Vin that we actually have been there twice since we arrived.  For just a few euros you can relax at a table, order a plate of cheese or fois gras and sample some very nice wines.

Our friends Renee and Don

Thursday we went back into town and checked out the P'tit Train, which drives around town.

The fountain at the Place de Quinconces

Friday was a gorgeous day.  We all had a nice lunch at a brasserie in town, then walked up Sainte-Catherine street (the main shopping street in Bordeaux) to the Opera House to have a look around.

The interior of the theater was gorgeously lit, and all the surfaces seemed to glitter under the colorful lights.  It was very small, so I imagine any seat there would be a good one.

In addition to displaying costumes and set pieces from some of the recent shows, there were some weirdly interesting Alice-in-Wonderland themed displays.

Normandy Road Trip: Mont St. Michel and Saint-Malo

Today got off to an auspicious start -- as we were nearing Mont Saint Michel we realized that I had left my credit card back at the hotel in Bayeux. A swift wave of panic was followed by a reassuring phone call; the hotel still had the card.  Whew! At least we didn't have to report it lost or stolen. Stress level: Low to Medium.

The abbey of Mont Saint Michel is an impressive feat of medieval engineering. It was built on a rocky island about a half mile off the coast and heavily fortified to ward off invasion from the sea. In medieval times, pilgrims would wait for the tide to go out and walk across the sand to worship at the abbey. There is now a causeway (and a brand-new bridge) that allows you to walk to the abbey from the mainland without getting your feet wet.

Although it's a world heritage site run by the state, the abbey is also a place of worship.  We saw several nuns and members of the clergy going about their daily routine.

After touring through the abbey, we sat outside with a picnic lunch and enjoyed a view of the sea.  Stress level: Low.

From Mont Saint Michel, we drove to the town of Saint-Malo in Brittany.  The heart of Saint-Malo is a walled city center, called La Ville Intra-Muros.  This section of the town looks like something out of a storybook.  Thanks to the 12 meter (36 foot) tides, a huge beach stretches outward from the town ramparts.

Our hotel is located in the center of the Intra-Muros.  As we started following the GPS directions down the twisty one-way streets (there is not a single two-lane street inside the walls), the streets successively narrowed.  At one point we literally squeezed the car through the tables of a streetside cafe.  Several diners scowled at us, making us second-guess our directions...were we even on a street for cars????  It was at this point that the GPS lost its signal (thanks, fortified stone walls!) and we were left scratching our heads.  Stress level: Very High.

Kevin wisely decided to park even though we were blocking a street.  We asked around and found our hotel.  The lady at reception said "No problem, yes of course you are allowed to drive on the streets here".  She then provided a map to where we should park (just outside the city walls) and after plowing through more throngs of vacationers, we finally pulled into the lot and heaved a sigh of relief.  Stress level: not horrible, nothing a glass of wine couldn't fix.

This is the street our hotel is on.  See that archway down at the end of the street?  That's how cars exit the walled city (there's a similar entrance further down the wall).  It is just barely big enough for one car to fit through.

For dinner, we walked around the town looking for crepes.  We didn't have to look very hard, since every single restaurant in town seems to specialize in crepes.  We chose one near our hotel, and ordered the "formule" which is a 3-course meal with appetizer, main, and dessert.  The formule we ordered was listed as containing several specialties of the Brittany region.  First up, an appetizer of a galette (buckwheat crepe) topped with butter and a sausage link.  Not great, but not bad.  For the main course we had a choice between two kinds of crepes: I took the galette de sarrasin bretonnes au boudin noir, while Kevin got the galette with andouille de guéméné.  We didn't have a real clear idea of what was in them, but we thought, "when in Rome...", right?

Our plates arrived and it turns out that "boudin noir" is black pudding (aka blood sausage).  I had eaten it before but never in such copious quantities -- my crepe was pretty much a black pudding burrito!  If you've never seen it, blood sausage is very unattractive to look at.  How was I going to eat an entire plate full?  Ack.  Kevin's entree contained a normal-looking crepe topped with three huge cross-section slices of a foul-smelling sausage, and it was shaped into concentric circles which we puzzled over for a few minutes...did they flatten and roll the sausage to make it have so many layers?  Very weird. 

Eyes closed, I choked down a few bites of mine and Kevin attempted a first bite of his.  After chewing for a minute, he stopped and said simply "This is not...good."  He was able to hide one of the pieces under his salad, and did his best to eat around the rest.  After a little while, he just looked at me and said, "I can't.  I can't eat any more of this, it's the worst thing I've ever eaten.  Ever."  Now, Kevin is not a picky eater, so when he says this, you know it's bad.  I offered to switch but after taking one bite of his meal, I realized that my blood pudding crepe was like 100 times better tasting than what he had.  It was truly, truly vile.

We looked around the dining room and saw everyone finishing off all the food on their plates.  Another couple had both ordered the andouille and were chowing down with great gusto (They were locals, probably.  Or maybe they just didn't have tastebuds or a sense of smell).  Meanwhile, we sat there with nearly full plates trying to figure out how on earth we were going to get the waitress to take away the plates without offending the chef.  Stress level: through the roof.

Finally, after pushing the food around enough to make it look like we'd eaten, the waitress approached.  We did our best to look happy and told her it was all very good but that we were starting to get full and wanted to save room for dessert.  She bought our "crazy Americans" act and took away the offensive remains of the meal.  Thank god for dessert crepes, at least those tasted like we expected!

When we got back to the hotel, I googled what the heck "andouille de guéméné" is.  If you are easily grossed out, stop reading here.  Here's a link that explains it: Andouille de Guemene.  I love that the first sentence is "Brittany Andouille de Guémené is a pork speciality that may surprise your palate!"  Indeed.  It is basically the large intestines of a pig.  Several pigs, in fact.  The reason for all those concentric circles?  They stuff intestine after intestine inside each other (up to 25 of them).  And THEN, they dry it for 9 months before cooking it slowly in soup made with hay.  HAY!!!!  Just writing this paragraph makes me gag.  Stress level: still high.  Desire to ever eat anything again: very, very low.

Normandy Road Trip: Bayeux and Omaha Beach

Kevin's driving skills are doing a great job of getting us around in France.  I would like to claim that I have equally strong navigational skills but that would be misleading, since we are relying heavily on a GPS/map app Kevin downloaded to his phone.  So far it has only steered us wrong one time...but it does keep telling us that the speed limit on small country roads is the same as the highway.  We couldn't go that fast even if we wanted to, thanks to the numerous French camper vans on the roads.  Did I mention yet that August is when all of France seems to go on vacation?

The little town of Bayeux is famous for the Bayeux Tapestry - a long scroll of embroidered fabric dating to the 11th century.  In cartoon-like scenes it tells the story of William of Normandy's conquest of England in 1066.  It's irreverent, I know...but there is a scene where some knights are wading pants-less through a river and I couldn't help but think of the animated credits of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".  I can just imagine some old woman ("Man!  And I'm 37; I'm not old."), giggling uncontrollably as she spent hours embroidering these semi-nude knights.

The scenic Eure river runs right through the center of town, bordered by willow trees and beaucoup de geraniums.

Bayeux is also a great jumping-off point for exploring the D-Day beaches.  (Interestingly, in French "D-Day" translates to "Jour-J".)  We can tell we are in Normandy due to the proliferation of American (and British and Canadian) flags.  This was the window decor on someone's home in town:

British, Canadian, American and French flags

There is a moving memorial next to Omaha Beach at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.  Some of the placards and flowers along the base were "thank yous" from French schoolchildren.

The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer is where we really grasped the consequences of the war.  This cemetery overlooking Omaha beach is the final resting place for 9,387 U.S. soldiers.  I had tears in my eyes just seeing row after row of headstones.  Most had the soldier's name, rank, hometown, and date of death inscribed; some had only this solemn inscription: 

Normandy Road Trip: Rouen and Honfleur

Vieux Bassin in Honfleur

We are planning to meet and stay with friends in Bordeaux midweek.  Before we left, we discovered that it would actually be cheaper/easier to rent a car to get from Paris to Bordeaux than taking the train.  So this morning we went to Hertz (the only rental car place open on a Sunday in Paris) to pick up the car we had reserved for our trip.  We got through all the paperwork and the guy brought out the smallest car we'd ever seen.  Seriously.  Only one of our suitcase-sized backpacks would fit in the trunk (and it took up all the space).  The rental guy wisely suggested the next larger size and we wisely took his advice and got a Vauxhall Corsa.  Never heard of it?  Neither had we.  At least all our luggage fit in the back though.

Our first stop was the town of Rouen, home to the famous Cathedral - Claude Monet painted its facade in varying light conditions: at dawn, in morning sun, full daylight, evening sun and at sunset.  Funny I don't remember any painting being titled "View of Rouen Cathedral, overcast sky with facade blocked by large restoration scaffold".

Rouen is a very picturesque town; walking through the narrow streets is like taking a step back in time.

We had some time after lunch to check out the museum.  It was a nice change from yesterday -- at the Orsay museum, the Impressionist rooms were so packed it was hard to see some of the paintings.  But that wasn't a problem here at Rouen's Beaux-Arts museum.  We were often the only people in the room.

After Rouen, we drove to Honfleur, a port town right at the mouth of the Seine river.  It was a little stressful driving the car up some of the extremely narrow streets.  There were several times when the street was so narrow Kevin thought it was one-way...but nope, suddenly a car would approach and we'd have to carefully maneuver past each other.  It was a relief to finally find the hotel, park the car, and just walk around for the rest of the afternoon.  The boat basin in town is surrounded on three sides by cafes, restaurants, and shops.  We were surrounded by French tourists on holiday.  Aha!  So this is where all the Parisians disappear to in August.

Photosphere (click inside photo for 360-degree view)

Views: Honfleur, France by Kevin Salt

All the cafes were pretty packed but we managed to get a table just next to the water.  We just enjoyed our meal and beverages and watched as the boats came in via a tiny drawbridge.  A great way to unwind after a very long day!

One Day in Paris

If you had just one day in the city, what would you do?  We started our day at the Musee d'Orsay, which Kevin missed last time we were here.  The Impressionist rooms were very crowded, but the rest of the museum was pretty empty (maybe because tomorrow is free museum Sunday?) so we just enjoyed looking at everything at our own pace.  The museum itself is one of my favorite buildings -- I love the open exhibit space with the huge clock (a holdover from when the building used to be a train station).

For lunch we went to our old stomping grounds, Rue Montorgueil, where we discovered that all our favorite establishments (the crepe restaurant, the beef bourgignon restaurant, and the best bakery) were all on vacation for the first part of August.  Crap.  I love that the French have this great concept of lots of vacation time, but not when it impacts me personally.  Not to worry, we had a nice lunch (with escargots, even) and enjoyed sitting outside watching the bustle of Rue Montorgueil.

A little further away, "Paris Plages" was in full swing.  Every summer, the city sets up temporary beaches in different parts of Paris. When we walked by the Hotel de Ville, we saw several beach volleyball games in progress.  And along the Seine were the usual sun umbrellas and beach chairs.

After lunch, Kevin wanted to check out Notre Dame just "one more time" so that was next up.  Lots of people had the same idea.  The line to get in was pretty long, but moved fast.  Here is a photosphere Kevin made of the courtyard (you can use your mouse to see the 360 degree view): 

Views: Notre Dame, Paris by Kevin Salt

We didn't have any more "must-sees" on our list, since we'd mostly done everything we wanted to do (and more!) during the ten weeks we were here last time.  We bought a French SIM card and had some heavenly hot chocolate at Angelina.  We also managed to squeeze in a stop at a fruit vendor where I bought a few of my favorite fruits in the world - Reine Claudes (greengage plums).  I wish they sold these in grocery stores back home; they are so sweet and refreshing -- a perfect summer treat.