Wineries

When in France, a trip to the actual wineries is a must at some point, so while my roommate and I were in the southwestern part of the country, we decided to stop by a few places and check out the wine. I’m not a big red drinker, and we were in red country, but I decided if I was going to drink red wine, I might as well drink some of the best. We got a map from the local tourist office in St. Emilion and a list of the wineries that were open and were able to take people who didn’t have reservations and we set off into the French country side.
The first place we came to was right outside of St. Emilion and didn’t need reservations so we stopped and rang the bell. The guy came out and told us he’d be with us in a couple of minutes. While we were waiting, a couple from the most-western part of France showed up. They had a reservation so got some very specialized attention. By that I mean the owner talked to them the whole time and barely even bothered to make eye contact with us. He told us about his small winery and how he didn’t try to compete with the marketing operations of the bigger ones. The lady asked 100,000 questions and we took a tour of the wine cave which was about 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. It wasn’t exactly a huge place. Forty minutes after we started the tour we began moving to the wine bar where the wine was actually going to be tasted. He pulled out the first bottle and talked for 5 minutes. Then the lady asked a question and he talked for 5 more minutes. Finally he opened the bottle and poured the couple their glasses, we were getting excited as ours were in the row next. Then the lady asked another question. Ugh. As a true Frenchman, this guy gave 3 parts to every answer. He first gave you his answer, then said “that is to say…” and gave you another version of the answer, then ended the response with an example of what he was talking about. ENOUGH already. Pour me some wine! We tried 4 different big reds and of course progressed to the most expensive bottle, which turned out to be 40 euro. Right. Moving on.
The next winery we stumbled upon that didn’t need reservations, we came in a bit late to the tour, but the man was nice enough to let us join the 12 people already there. The man giving the tour was nearing 80 and I think had a permanently stained red mouth from all the wine he has drunk through the years. He told us there were actually 4 senses you use when tasting wine instead of the three normally regarded ones of taste, smell and sight. For him, the sound of the bottle being uncorked was also very important. I should have known at that point that this was going to be interesting. The session ended up being more of an example how to taste wine than the actual tasting of the wine. This man went all out. He was taking a sip of the wine and taking 3 deep breaths before swallowing it. He was halting his breathing mid breath, he was using his hand to summon the oxygen from his feet to his palate, he chewed, he spat, he called cats while the wine was in his mouth. I honestly have no idea how the other 12 people in the group kept a straight face. I had to turn around twice to laugh because I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. At one point he encouraged everyone to follow his lead, which ended with spitting the wine in the vat. He invited everyone to try it with the warning: “Be discreet, not all of us can be champions at spitting” uh huh.
The big reveal came when he showed us the kind of wine we had drank 1/2 ounce of: a 2007. He then gave us pamphlets on his other wines and asked us what we’d like to buy. Unfortunately for him, we didn’t think the wine was purchase worthy, especially after we only drank ½ ounce of it. So we were on our way.
We came to the decision that the best next step was to drive to the next town, buy a bottle of wine and drink it. Sometimes you just have to do things yourself.