Vineyard Visit and Wine Tasting

Last Wednesday I had an “animation” (workshop) near Bourgouil, France. Jenny, Devlin, and I accompanied Fleurette to a workshop where we would help her explain the differences between the US and UK. We talked about the holidays from both countries perspectives and taught songs to French teachers who are hoping to become certified to teach English next year.

After the “animation” we all headed to the winery of one of the teachers who had signed up for the session. She was gracious enough to offer all of us (other teachers included too) a visit of her husband’s winery, vineyard, and cave…as well as lunch for a small fee of 10 Euros.

When we arrived at the winery we went into the packaging and labeling area. We saw how their four types of wine were labeled and boxed. Afterwards, we went into the area where the wine was actually made and sat fermenting in huge stainless steel containers. There we had a mini tasting of a rosé and a red. 

The morning/afternoon ended with a visit to their cave where they store their personal wine and also let some of their wines age. The oldest bottles were from 1997 I believe and completely covered with mold. In the cave there was also an open area where we had lunch (featuring a yummy dessert special to the Bourgouil area) and sat by a warm fire.

This wine visit and tasting was much better than Jenny, Miriam, and my visit to Vouvray!

Another Wonderful Sunday Afternoon

This past Sunday I spent most of my day with Chantal and François. I arrived at the home around 10AM so we could begin preparing our lunch. Chantal had shown a lot of interest in learning how to make egg rolls and spring rolls, so we spent part of our day making them.

The day before we went to Paris Store (Asian Supermarket) to get some of the necessary ingredients. We started with the egg rolls. We made pork egg rolls filled with ginger, garlic, bokchoy, and carrots. They were quite good! The spring rolls were filled with vermicelli, cilantro, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, and bean sprouts. In my opinion, they were not as good as the egg rolls, but still yummy.

For lunch we ate our homemade creations. We started with the spring rolls and then had the egg rolls. We ate the egg rolls differently than in the States. We wrapped each egg roll with a mint leaf and some lettuce; it was like a slightly different take on the chicken lettuce wrap concept and very good. Afterwards, I had some homemade yogurt. Chantal and François make their own yogurt about every other day! They showed me how it was done and it is surprisingly very simple (if you have the machine). All you need is powdered milk, regular milk, and a yogurt from your previous batch…you mix all of that together and then put it into a warming machine for 8-hours. After yogurt, we had homemade compote of apples, prunes, and rum; it was like applesauce on steroids! All in all, lunch was very delicious!

We concluded lunch with some tea before heading out. François took Chantal and I around Tours and showed us the old Roman wall and told us about the founding of Tours. It was very interesting and cool to see how the Roman wall weaves through Tours. François explained the characteristics of a Roman wall (thin layers of red bricks sandwiching uniformly-shaped grayish stones…all mortared together with a red-ish brick-like mortar). When we returned back to their home, François showed me a map of Tours and where the wall is in relation to everything else. He also explained how the two former Roman towns of Tours combined to create modern-day Tours.

I left Chantal and François’ around 4:30PM and headed to The Pale. I met up with some Anglophones to watch some of the Scotland v. England rugby match. I stayed for about a half and hour before Emma and I head to the movies to see “127 Hours”. The movie was well done and definitely made me feel as if I was there. All I could say after leaving the movie was, “I do not think I could EVER cut off my own arm!”

Well, that is all for now. I am off to Barcelona this weekend to visit mi Hermana!

-ALEX