day 52 bordeaux

11 july 2009

started our wine tour at 9:30am at the tourist information office on cours de juillet and was first taken to the musee de vin et negoce, which was housed in the chartrons district which historically is the wine-commercial centre of bordeaux. the wine industry organized itself into wine estates, brokers, and wine merchants and eventually merchants began buying estates and building chateaux, just because they were that rich. sulphur was used to sterilize barrels such that theaging process could occur and by some weird law, wines from chateaux must be bottled there, and the label must have a picture of the chateau.

then onto the wine tasting, and andree also points out frontsac which is where her ancestors are from, within the bordeaux-ish area. her family's last name used to be gaussin before moving to canada (she is 19th generation). bordeaux also used to be simply an important por, trading in alot of different things, and it wasn't til later that wine was the specialty.

the buildings in bordeaux also used to be dirty as heck, but recently effort has gone in to clean... huge different. eglise st.louis (on rue notre dame!) has 2/3 cleaned, and 1/3 still dirty. then lunch time. wow. started with hot goat cheese dish, then confit de canard, followed by cheese buffet (150 types!) and tarte aux pommes and espresso... and wine...


then after we hopped on a full bus to go to some chateaux! andree and i were shushed by some aussie couple who was actually listening to catherine our tour guide. boooo....


hit up two chateaux (lanessan and giscours) the last one being "grand cru" class... in 1755 or something like that, 60 out of 8,000 or so estates were deemed of highest quality.


nusbaum licked mould for 20e from andree andi got a good pic smacking andree's bum with a cricket bat (KCC placard was there!)


as an example, chateau giscours had about 12.5M e in wine in their cellar that we were in... wow. on the tour we met cindy, rob and kelsey. after tour, we bought andree a rash guard for surfing and tried (but failed) to get the roxy sundress i foud yesterday (i should've just got it)


we met up with the tour friends and had dinner and drinks.


other:
- i think cindy is in the porn industry
- rob did a penguin impression to take kelsey and andree's mind off having to go to the washroom
- i gave nusbaum 5e to have another drink
- "terroir" the natural environment that dictates grape and wine quality