After we said goodbye to the last retreat guests on Sunday I was still feeling really ill and there were well publicized fires burning in Bordeaux which is where I had planned my birthday trip. However, by the time I traveled on Wednesday I felt ‘good enough’ and the fires were being contained. (Thanks to everyone for your concerns for my safety. I did talk with the tour operator to get the scoop on what was really happening.)
I am so glad that I was able to rally to make the trip happen, it was SPECTACULAR! On Wednesday I drove 4 hours west and arrived around 5pm. You better believe that I blasted the AC in that rental car the entire way. I stayed at the Hotel Indigo in the Chatrons area, which is a very walkable neighborhood right on the river. When I arrived it was well into the 90s of the next heat wave, and I luxuriated in the quietude of my air conditioned hotel room.
Thursday was the hottest day of the week, topping out at 106. I luckily had a ticket to visit the wine museum and a wine tasting (Cite du Vin). It is a multi-sensory experience museum with a lot of visual arts, cool ways to display information, smells, videos and interactive ways to learn. The tasting went through the four seasons in Bordeaux and had a pairing for each wine. I spent several hours after the tasting learning about Bordeaux and wines around the world. I had lunch at the panoramic restaurant and then a glass of wine at the 8th floor observatory. By the time I left it was way too hot to walk back to my hotel, so I found a movie theater and saw the Odyssey in the air conditioning. In total, I walked 7.7 miles!
Friday I was still not feeling 100% after getting sick the week prior (and maybe I overdid it a little). I spent most of my birthday napping and relaxing. I did venture out of my room for a spritz on the terrace bar at my hotel and to grab a birthday treat. I was unaware until this trip that one of my favorite French bakery items originated in Bordeaux! The cannelé is a small, cylindrical French pastry with a fluted exterior and a slight depression at the top. It has a dark, thick, caramelized crust and a soft, tender, custard-like interior, usually flavored with rum and vanilla. The story is that because parts of eggs were used in the clarification of wine, the leftovers were given to nuns who combined them with flour, sugar and butter to create these little gems to feed the poor.
Saturday’s wine tour was a full day with a picnic lunch where we visited two of my favorite areas: Medoc and St Emillion. It was a small group of three of us + guide. The couple were from Adelaide, Australia and on their honeymoon for 5 weeks in Europe. We drove an hour to the village of St Emillion and had the town practically to ourselves on an unusually quiet morning. That made for some great pictures of this scenic little town. In the middle of town we went to a wine shop that specialized in Bordeaux wines for our first tasting. They had bottles going back to the 1920s, some with burned labels because they had been fished out of the rubble of war debris. We were taught about the Pomerol area that has no classifications for their wine but somehow demands some of the highest prices – there were bottles in the shop that were over 6K Euro!
We drove into the rolling countryside of the right bank for our second stop – Chateau Palais Cardinal. Our host was a lovely English gentleman who had been at the winery 7 years. We got an insider look at the harvest, vinification room, and barrel room(s). I did not know that it was possible to use cement vaults for wine fermentation and they have a whole room devoted to the process. We had a great tasting and got to choose a bottle to have with our lunch among the vines.
We drove another hour to the left bank to visit Medoc, specifically Margaux. Chateau Dauzac has been a winery since 1855 and is under it’s 6th or 7th owner. The scenery is much different on this side of the river – flat as far as the eye can see. This soil in this area is where Cabernet Sauvignon grapes like to grow, whereas the right bank is more friendly to Merlot grapes. This chateau has innovated part of the wine making process and shared it with other wineries in the Margaux area because they work in partnership with one another. We learned that all chateaus are supposed to have a library with all wines/vintages ever created by them – this is part of what gives the chateau a value and helps to determines its sale price. However, one of the past owners (an insurance company) did not know that and started drinking their way through the library. They did NOT get to the 27-liter 2016 bottle that would retail for 50k Euros. There were nine of these bottles produced for a specific buyer and the one in the library is the last one remaining.
Our last stop was pink! Chateau Siran has an artist create a label for one of their bottles each year since 1980 (pausing between 2006 – 2019) which really bucks the traditional labels used in Bordeaux. Here we got to enter the vault that goes down to the wine cellar where the library of bottles is kept. It was a much different experience than looking at these old bottles from behind glass.
Needless to say, I had had enough wine for the day and when I got back to the hotel room I passed out! You might notice there is not a lot of restaurant details here – I didn’t eat much on this trip, unfortunately. I am lucky enough to have access to amazing French food at the chateau, so two nights I found myself at an Italian wood fired pizza place right on the river that was friendly, had an easy menu and a good cold glass of rose. I met a lovely couple from Michigan who were on a Viking river cruise to chat with.
Sunday I took a walk to the part of town I hadn’t seen yet and to get my birthday Starbucks. But the birthday coupon is not valid outside of the US! Booo Starbucks. I had a nice walk and a late check out to enjoy my air conditioning a little longer. The drive back to the town where we pick people up at the train station was pretty painless. Grace was picking up our newest volunteer around the same time, so I hitched a ride back to the chateau with them.
And here it is, Monday again. We are prepping the chateau for the arrival of guests tomorrow and doing a bunch of projects. The next group is a collaboration where they created a lot of their own schedule and they are bringing a yoga teacher. I will attempt to make myself useful in other ways – there are three pick ups Tuesday and wine and thermal excursions during the week. It will be nice to have a lighter week because we have just one more week without guests before the final stretch of four retreats back to back!
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