Wine Trip

[JimCook]

After spending two weeks and more than 2,400 km driving travelling from the bottom of Spain up into Bordeaux, France and then back to Madrid before returning home, many interesting sights were to be had. Here are a couple of the pictures from that trip.


This is a picture of the Maison du Vin (central wine bar, if you will) in Bordeaux. This is where we headed on the first evening arriving in Bordeaux. The selection of wine represented different areas of the Bordeaux region and the prices were between 2.50 Euro and 8 Euro per glass, with each glass being a 150mL pour. Of the seven or so wines we tasted between our group, only the Sauternes seemed to catch my fancy.

The next two pictures are of the state of the vines in Medoc. We were relatively far north into this part of Bordeaux, although these pictures were taken along the side of the road near our visit to the Chateau Lynch-Bages. I wanted to get shots of vines and trellising for our home wine growers here. I do not know specifically which types of grapes these are, although they are very likely Cabernet Sauvignon. It seems that vines are ripped out after 40 or so years, at least in Medoc, and are considered young vines until 15 years of age.

- Jim

 

[JimCook]

Down in Margaux in the southern part of the Medoc (left bank) section of Bordeaux, here are some more vine/vineyard pictures. Again, I do not know the specific grape although they are likely Cabernet Sauvignon. Most of the terrain in Medoc was very flat, so there didn't seem to be much opportunity for hillside grapes here. The wines made by these Medoc Chateaus are generally very tannic from the Cab. The wineries we attended were pouring 2001 vintages which had mellowed a bit.

- Jim

 

[JimCook]

On our trip to St. Emilion the next day, the landscape had more hills - not necessarily the mountainous terrain that can be found in Napa or Sonoma, but it was definitely more hilly than Medoc. The wines here, being made from a dominant percentage of Merlot, were smoother younger and seemed to exhibit more fruit characteristics.




Here's a picture of the bottom area of one of the wine stores we entered (St. Emilion has more wine stores in one town that I've seen anywhere else - literally one after another). I liked this store as the steward (taller gentleman in the back) was very helpful and freely discussed the wine he had to offer. This picture is where the more rare (expensive) wines were stored.

And here is a picture ofvines in Pomerolfor you home growers. It's very likely Merlot.

- Jim

 

[JimCook]

The chateaus in Bordeaux change just like the wine compositions. Medoc chateaus tend to be more castle like with huge looming estates while the St. Emilion chateaus were more like houses. In a way, this reminds me a bit of the difference in tasting rooms between Napa and Sonoma, although it isn't always the case there. Here's an example of a Medoc wine chateau, for example...

And that picture doesn't take into scope the garden, statues, flowered vine covered walkway, private canal, tasting room and visitor's house. I'm sure you get the picture.


For those that like old bottles, here are two pictures from the basement area of the wine store pictured above. Note the age on the brownish Sauternes bottle (1899 if it doesn't come through in the picture).

- Jim

 

[JimCook]

When visiting the Chateau Lynch-Bages in Medoc, we took a tour through their facilities. The most illuminating part of this tour compared to California wineries was the museum-like quality of looking at how things were done to scale 100 years ago, for example. While the wineries have all modernized their production, some left old production areas intact to show where they came from. For the more modern look, here's one third of the tank setup at Chateau Lynch-Bages...

The tanks used a direct vacuum pump feed through a nice tube system right from the crusher/destemmer which was built into the floor. The trucks could back up and just about dump the grapes into a small holding pit that used a corkscrew like mechanism to gently move the grape bunches toward the destemmer and then the crusher.


One of the aisles of one of the barrel rooms at Chateau Lynch-Bages looked like this...

The entire floor in this room was tile, by the way, and the smell of medium toast French oak was a breath of fresh air upon entering the chamber.


- Jim

 

[JimCook]

The town of St. Emilion was rather tiny and as mentioned earlier, there were wine stores galore here. The whole town pretty much shut down by 7:00 PM except for some restaurants, however. And let me tell you - when 7:00 PM struck, it literally shut down - people just disappeared. Here's a picture looking down over part of St. Emilion, which was a very quaint and cool little place.

The city of Bordeaux itself was very neat and had a nice feel to it. The trams that ran looked state-of-the-art and the building facades were generally French 19th century, if I remember correctly. Here is a picture of the Opera building near the city center.

And here's a typical street in Bordeaux, depending on where you are walking to give a perspective of the type of architecture found there.

And then to top things off, in what is the ultimate economization of space, advertisement cylinders contain a special surpise inside...

Yes, it's a toilet. And not just any public toilet - it's a pay-to-use not portable toilet. We walked by this particular ad two other times without noticing the toilet part. If you really have to go, it's about 0.10-0.20 Euro, although that helps assure a certain level of cleanliness, I am told. No, I did not partake - the toilets in the restaurants worked very well for us.


- Jim

 

[fivebk]

Jim, Thanks for sharing your trip with all of us. To some of us ( like me ) A trip like that will most likely only be a wish. I hope you had a great time and had some great wines.

BOB

 

[xanxer82]

Thanks for sharing your trip with us. Hope you had a wonderful time. By the looks of it you did.

 

[AlFulchino]

all i can say is oh my goodness...just beautiful thank you for sharing

 

[Runningwolf]

Jim....Awesome, what else can I say. Looks like you had a blast. Do I detect you got plenty of pictures for new wine labels?

 

[grapeman]

Just checking in for a minute here mid afternoon. I got a special surprise finding your pictures. I will comment further later after I'm done work for the day.

 

[Joanie]

I could move to France in a heartbeat! I'd even learn French! Great Pics, Jim!!

 

[rrawhide]

What a special treat for you and for us to share. Thanx a bunch and were you able to bring back any special wines? How were the bottle prices?
Glad you had fun and came back safe.

rrawhide

 

[JimCook]

I did bring back three bottles, although I packed a six-pack shipper in one suitcase. For my tastes, the wines of Medoc did not have enough flavor and were very tannic, even when aged for eight+ years. I tasted some wines of St. Emilion that were better for me but the Pomerol wines held my attention the most for the dry red wines I experienced. It is important to note that with each of the bottles that I had purchased, I was recommended to sit them down for a decade or more. I can't guarantee that I'll do that, but it certainly is a little bit more of a negative. Many of the Medoc wines for sale were 50 Euro or more a bottle although there weresome for less as well. The Grand Cru Classe St. Emilion/Pomerol wines were generally around 25 Euro and higher per bottle. Given those prices, I would rather have a bottle of Aalto from Spain at 23 Euro or so, but it's a different style of wine. Much like French food, the flavorings in their wines tend to be rather subtle over in Bordeaux. Since I'm sure there are people reading this that greatly enjoy Bordeaux wine, do note that I am disclaiming that these are simply my opinions based on my palate.


I held back a lot on the pictures - I took more than 300 on the trip overall, although I only put relatively wine related shots here. One of the friends we went with took around 1,000, if I'm not mistaken, but I don't have access to those yet.


I tasted a wide variety of wines during the length of the trip, from a Tio Pepe Fino (a dry white sherry made from a Palomino grape - very musky/skunky kind of flavor, really) to a mix of a carbonated beverage like Sprite mixed with a red wine to different Bordeaux wines and red wines from Rioja and Ribera del Duero in Spain.


The VAT in France on alcohol was 19.6%, which helps to explain why the bottles that are accessible here aren't a direct conversion from euros to dollars. I was informed about shipping, but it was only for a case and cost 120 Euro, so it only made sense with a purchase of around 50 Euro bottles. I didn't want to drop that much, especially since I didn't find anything that demanded I buy bottles in quantity.


I really enjoyed the city of Bordeaux well more than the wines there. The people were nice as well. We attended a market on the river Garonne on Sunday that was neat. Believe or not, the pizza in the city was generally excellent. It was the thinnest pizza I've ever seen - I tried one with an egg on it, although I didn't take a picture of that one. I also tried the Bordeaux specialty dessert called caneles (pronounced can-ee-lees). As it turned out, egg whites used to be used for fining the Bordeaux wines and the resultant product was a whole bunch of egg yolks. The local folk figured out how to make in essence a small doughy cake with the egg yolks and it became a Bordeaux-only treat.


On the day we went to Medoc, we had lunch at a Chateau (non-memorable wine; very memorable food) and we were introduced to French-style eating. The lunch took three hours. If you're ever starving in France, don't sit down anywhere to eat or you won't make it. That lunch was pricey, but as my Spanish friend told me (and as Mila and I personally experienced), you get what you pay for in France when it comes to food. Unlike the United States where we seem to have a very large variety of different food types around us, there is not the same kind of culinary diversity in Spain and Bordeaux. However, in Bordeaux, if you spent 20 Euro per person on a dinner compared to 40 Euro, for instance, there will be a marked and notable positive difference. The display of the food wherever we went was very artful and was assembled with pride. This was one of the great points of the Bordeaux trip.


- Jim

 

[grapeman]

I would love to seeall those pictures Jim. Let us know if you get them in a gallery somewhere so we can check more out-even the food.


I am ammazed at the spacing and size of those vines. What are they about a meter apart each way? You will be bending to pick grapes there. Probably why my French ancestors were all so short- they stooped over to pick the grapes so long they developed short legs so they could jsut stand there and pick two to three feet off the ground.


To think right now people taste my wine for free and I can't even sell them a bottle or case if they like it! I would like to say- Well you liked my $7.00 sample of wine and you would like to buy a case of it for $500. Will that be cash or card?

 

[Wade E]

Great pics and thanks for sharing. those thick vine roots are pretty impressive.

 

[Waldo]

Awesome, thanks for sharing

 

[JimCook]

I would love to seeall those pictures Jim. Let us know if you get them in a gallery somewhere so we can check more out-even the food.

I will get them in some kind of gallery format, likely as a page on my website. My hope is to accomplish this over the weekend, but we'll see how much I can get done. All of the vine pictures that I had are already posted, but there are a lot of cool shots in the different cities we visited.

I am ammazed at the spacing and size of those vines. What are they about a meter apart each way? You will be bending to pick grapes there. Probably why my French ancestors were all so short- they stooped over to pick the grapes so long they developed short legs so they could jsut stand there and pick two to three feet off the ground.

You're quite correct - the vines seem to be placed in a roughlymeter-wide setup along a single row with what looked like less than a meter between rows. Very often, there was just a single wire for the trellis and it was at times around half a meter off the ground. It was very rare, but toward St. Emilion I did see some vines with the bottom wire of a trellis set up at roughly one meter. Most of the vines were setup with this low, single-wire arrangement. Some had a double wire setup one above another with the top wire sitting in around a meter or a little more off the ground. All these measurements are approximations, but I was standing right with the vines to get some kind of scope. My first comment upon seeing the vines compared to those that I had seen in California were how low they seemed to the ground.


Even in Spain when we were driving up, the vines were setup very low to the ground (not many trellis setups in Spain of the vineyards we drove by). I don't know if this is to help with some kind of moisture management or what, but I wouldn't want to be the guy on his hands and knees picking them. The soil in Medoc was all gravel, while the soil in St. Emilion was more of a dirt/clay soil. I don't know if the gravel came across in the pictures I posted here (reduced for posting size limitations), but the stone size ranged from pea gravel to half-dollar sized little rocks.

To think right now people taste my wine for free and I can't even sell them a bottle or case if they like it! I would like to say- Well you liked my $7.00 sample of wine and you would like to buy a case of it for $500.

I want to clarify here because wine was offered for sale at the chateaus as well as wine stores. First, in the Maison du Vin, it was essentially a wine bar used to help promote some Bordeaux wines. The 150 mL pours from this wine bar were on average between 2.50 and 5.00 Euro a piece, with one or two wines pouring around 8.00 Euro. There was no wine for sale at this location.


Next, there were the wines poured at the chateaus. At Chateau Lynch-Bages (Medoc), the current-release wine that was for sale was 50+ Euro/bottle. There was an 8 Euro per person tour/tasting fee and the tour lasted just over an hour. Depending on the vintage, previous vintages seemed to be priced between 40 and 250+ Euro/bottle. At the chateau in Margaux (Medoc - I can't remember the name off the top of my head right now), we did not pay a tasting fee that I recall and the wine was again around 50 Euro/bottle, give or take.


We attended a winery in Pomerol (St. Emilion) and their single wine was selling for 23 Euro. At the wine shops in St. Emilion, there was no charge for tasting the wines they had open in the shops we attended and bottles were available from a range of prices covering on average 12 - 100+ Euro/bottle just like in wine shops in the U.S. In one of the wine shops, a bottle of 1982 Petrus was listed for 5,000 Euro. It was in the wine shops that shipping to the United States was offered, which if I was to be dropping a large amount of money on wine, could be worthwhile assuming the same wine was not available in the states.


Are you only able to sell the wine that was produced after you secured your commercial license for alcohol sale or is that still in process?


- Jim

 

[grapeman]

The process is still ongoing. Yes you can only sell wine made after aquiring thew license. That doesn't stop me from offering free samples to visitors to help promote the impending opening. It may not be the same vintage, but a lot of people have no idea what to expect from these grapes and are usually pleasantly surprised.

 

[Brent2489]

Jim,Awesome pix. Isn't digital film great!
I can just imagine the smells from the rooms there!