So this weekend proved to be the best weekend I've experienced so far in the 5 weeks I have been here. It was a whirlwind of a trip, only staying one night at a hotel. Saturday consisted of touring two Chateaus. First was Château de Chenonceau arguably the most famous chateau in the Loire. It was a little overcast that morning for Chenonceau, but it cleared up by the mid-morning for our next castle, Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire. We had an excellent photoshoot there atop an old tree stump with Kylie saying "Guys, I want you all to give you best Tyra impression! Smile with your eyes!"
That night, the whole group went to an upscale restaurant (courtesy of HCJYF) and our choice for the night was fish or pork fillet mignon. I chose the pork which was sauteed with local mushrooms (the Loire is known for their champignons) and served with a side of pureed turnips. Dessert was some sort of creme-fraiche with a dollop of lavender ice cream on top. Our table of eight girls managed to polish off 2 bottles of red and 2 bottles of white by the end of our meal. Not too shabby and that was certainly not the end of our wine splurge for the weekend...
On Sunday, we got on the bus very early and traveled into wine country. I had no idea the Loire was known for their wines, but there we were on another beautiful winery estate. Like our last wine tasting in Bordeaux, it was about 10:30 in the morning and I'm sure many of us -including myself- had the "been there, done that" kind of attitude.
Then, out from the fog, comes a disheveled, jolly-looking man with a huge never-seen-a-dentist-just-pull-it-out-with-pliers smile. He was the proprietor of the vineyard and reminded me SO MUCH of Tom Tower: the gestures, the silliness, the ridiculous comments ("I need all the pretty girls to give me a kiss before they go, it's a rule here"). And so apparently, on this vineyard, you need to work to get a taste of the wine. And that's what we did. He put us to work, "Action!" he would say and "Pas Problème!. Well, for some, it was a problem. We all had no idea we would actually be HARVESTING the grapes before our degustation, but like any other farm girl, I just jumped right into action.
The amusing part was watching the other kids do some hard-labor for an hour. There we the slackers, who kept on the job for a while then disappeared. This group included Professor Morgan, who was MIA after about 10 minutes. Those smoker-lungs are not the best for, well, anything, especially anything physical. There were the kids who actually HATED that they had to cut some grapes off the vine, ruining their new shoes in the dirt and mud. One kid started to call them "The Grapes of Wrath". Kylie quickly changed his statement to a more reasonable one of "The Grapes of Mild Inconvenience". And there was the group of surprises. Some kids who I was sure had never done one ounce of hard labor in their lives who were actually enjoying this task and were not half bad. In between the harvest we had a little taste in the fields, the first was a sweet white (I had two glasses of that) which was delicious and also a full-body, fruity red. *(note: if you want to start counting my wine-intake here's the time to do it) I have to say on the harvesting side of things, I was not perfect. I was getting into the rhythm, getting a little cocky, and bam! Nipped my pinky finger on the scissors.
After taking a blow to my farm-girl pride, we sat down for lunch outside on two long tables. One was for us and the other were for some other locals who were working in the fields with us as well. The meal started out like any other, with wine and bread. 1 glass of red down, then our guide for the weekend snatched a bottle of sparkling white which, he said, is cheaper than champagne but just as good. 2 glasses of that down before our main meal of Boeuf Bourguignon. All of a sudden, our our crazy proprietor disappears for a few minutes and returns with the biggest bottle of wine I have ever seen. Of course, the French have a name for this monstrosity. It is called a Balthazar. It is 12 LITERS OF WINE IN ONE BOTTLE. That's the equivalent of 16 standard wine bottles!! Are you kidding me? And, oh, did we make a dent in that bottle. After I thought there couldn't possibly be more, he brings out ANOTHER Balthazar behemoth, this one from a different year so, of course you had to have a glass or two...or three...
Alright, if you have been counting, I am in a goooood place right about now. And so what do the people of the Loire Valley do when there's good food and lots of wine?? Well, sing and dance of course! Our farmer brings out and ancient cassette player and this song starts to play. About 10 garden hoes were handed out to the girls and we proceeded to attempt to sing this song and make fools out of ourselves all for the sake of shits and giggles. I think a round of "This Land is Your Land" was sung as well...Go USA!...?
As our 3-hour long lunch came to an end, we peeled ourselves off the benches while simultaneously trying to recover from our wine comas and took a tour of the cave. This was an incredible underground wine cellar which was part natural and partially dug-out by hand. The cave was at least an acre, filled with hundreds of barrels and literally THOUSANDS of bottles. I left the vineyard feeling extremely content. I bought a nice bottle of a Mediun-body red Cabernet Franc called Les Galichets, which I was told we tried along the way...somewhere along the way...
