Day 74...Bordeaux Region, red wine oh my! - 8th September

Got up, ate an omelette downstairs at a café (no grocer for fruit or yoghurt to be found). Packed our stuff into the car and drove to the Tic. We had planned to drive down through the Bordeaux region. I had been informed that the wineries do not open to the public but I was determined to try and find a list that did. So there! No luck though. So I booked a tour with the Tic who do the only windery tours of the Bordeaux region. It was at 1.30 and went till 6, so we drove all the way back to our hotel and booked another night, and had to unpack all our stuff again! What a waste of time!

We did some shopping for some snacks and get this ---- FINALLY found a tube! For our stupid Berlin painting. Hooray! We can now roll our Berlin painting up and post it. I’ve been looking like a right tool and getting stared at by everyone by walking around Europe with a big backpack and carrying a huge painting of guys drinking beer.

We wandered the stores and ate a baguette until we got to go on the tour. It was a large bus, with about 50 people and done in both English and French. Mainly old dudes, but a few young couples like us as well. For some reason, I passed out on the bus and Nate nearly did as well, before we arrived at our first winery. It was called Chateau La Tour Blanche. (for some reason in France, every castle is called a Chateau except in the Bordeaux region. There, a winery is called a Chateau even though its not a castle. Idiots).

The gave us a long…..long history on the company (mind you, this has to be done in two languages as well, so it takes extra long) then took us to the vineyards. They talked about soil and clouds and other stuff while we all stood and baked in the sun, shuffled our feet and picked our noses. The winery makes a really sweet white, so they actually let the grapes rot to maximize the sugars. It is aided by the fact that the river nearby is really cold and creates a mist every morning which wets the grapes. Then they get baked in the sun during the day ( I was starting to feel like a baked grape). They then took us around the field, then the fermenting room then the barrels of wine. They were pretty in-depth with every process that happened with them so I’m sure its interesting for a wine connoisseur. I just wanted to drink some wine dammit! After all these long winded speeches, the eventually gave us a taste. I took mine outside and enjoyed the gardens. As I sipped my incredibly sweet white wine (most like a desert wine really, or sherry), I mused on the irony of going to a white wine maker in the midst of a red wine region. (Bordeaux is famed for its reds).

Struck up a conversation with some old boring Aussies and Americans till we got hustled back on the bus. We chatted about old Steve Irwin, and also about Peter Brock who I discovered had died that day as well, via internet. One Aussie guy was biking around France, and didn’t realize Mont meant mountain. He got stuck up one, and the wind was so strong he was blown off the road, and rescued by some guys in a van!

The surrounding area was very sunny with mild sweeping hills, and what looked like a church or village in the distance. The second winery was a red and white winery, called Chateau Beau Site. They did the same thing with the history and the field and vats etc. We tasted both the white and red, which tasted a little under developed for us. It was cool though, to be standing in a field of vines, clutching a glass of red. Very cool. The lady that ran the winery had taken over from her dad who died. Whipped from the sun, she looked as old as her mum!

We can appreciate now why B ordeaux wineries aren’t open to the public. There are so many of them (5000) that you can’t be sure who will come in and when. And particularly for us, the tour was the only way to get in to see them. We didn’t want to be stared at by a person who didn’t speak English, holding a bottle of wine in their hand expecting you to buy it.

It was done very different to Oz style. While extensive in their info, it was mainly a lot of speeches and people being bored, picking their bums and staring into space in the hot sun. And only a small taste of one wine at the end. In Oz – bugger the vineyards! They pour all their wines for you with a “cop that! What do you think of that eh?” attitude. So it’s a tasting (and tipsy) fun experience in Oz. Bordeaux needs some change around here…I am not one for a lesson in viticulture. I’m not complaining, its just an observation on an interesting cultural difference. Plus I wanted to get pissed.

Our tour came to an amusing end where we got dropped off back at 6.30pm and our tour lady was rabbiting on about how healthy wine is for you, and that there are 167 elements in it from the periodic table. Hmmmm. We were feeling hot and sticky from the bus, so we went home and showered. Then we went out and worked on the internet for 3 hours! It was followed by a simple dinner near our hotel. There was a really fat black cat sitting in a pot plant. He was really cute and unfussed by everything. I was surprised to find out that he was a customers cat, as when she finished her meal, she came up and stuck him in her backpack! I couldn’t imagine Bernie doing that with Jet! Hee hee (luv ya Bernie!) Also, there was some altercation between customer and waiter, and resulted in a shoving match! If I got shoved by a waiter, I would be out of there, but after things got sorted out, the customers got stuck into cake and icecream. Most odd.

Bed around midnight.