The beautiful barrel room at Pontet Canet. It smelled wonderful
This is where they load the grapes into the wooden vats from the top, so it's gentler on the grapes
The wooden vats. This is very unusual, they are usually stainless steel. Even Jill hadn't seen it and she's seen everything! (She's delusional and hallucinates often)
Our trusty stead, the Ka!!
Bad news bears..
This haunts me.
That girl had way too much wine.
Egads, we're driving in France!5 May 2010
What a brilliant adventrous day here in Bordeaux!! "What do you wanna do today Jill?" "Oh I dunno, Andie, how about we rent a car and drive around France looking for wine?" Sheer brilliance.
Heh. Well we rented a carand inteded to drive to St-Emilion but decided to go to the Medoc region after a slight detour left us on the complete opposite side of Bordeaux that we needed to be on. The first stop was a chateau we didn't know even had a tasting room, but we just barged in with our N. American baravado demanding some sips. I think it was called Chateau Merye or something. Left with a lovely bottle of '05 Optima.
Next stop was the town of Paulliac, or something to that effect. Tourist info closed so we took the opportunity to grab lunch and get Jill proficient with a manual transmission. Mom, I now know how you felt all those times driving with me in those eary years. I now have seven more gray hairs, Jill counted.
Got the low down on the wineries in the area once the tourist office was owned and booked a tour with Chateau Pontet Canet, a really fancy winery. Drove around the area looking at gorgeous vineyards and chateaua and stoppers at La Haye for a tour and a
Tasting. Couldn't leave empty handed, of course.
Pontet Canet was gorgeous! It's a Grand Cru Classe winery, which means it's special. They use horses and everything! Huge oak vats instead of stainless steel; it was beautiful. Had a special private tour and everything. They had a really neat basement barrel room with this locked room of super old wines. From the 60s and stuff! Very cool. I'll get some photos on of the place.
So driving back to Bordeaux was seamless (Jill was driving, taking the roundabouts on two wheels, testing the Ka's top heaviness..) but once back in the city it was a bit scary. I took over and had to negotiate the roads back to our hotel and then on to the train station. But I did get to park like a Frenchie - two wheels up on the curb. There was barely any car on the road; I was awesome and I was very proud of myself.
Did I tell you about the fantastic Italian restaurant we found on the first night in Bordeaux? OH MY GOODNESS, SOOO GOOD. We went twice. First time, I had the special, penne with broccoli and a word we couldn't translate. Turned out to be cured ham, DROOL. It was incredible. Jill had the margarita pizza, of course she did, and it was delicious. With spicy olive oil drizzled on it, ah! Second time was even better. I had a big ass salad and Jill had the ultima pizza. It really was ultimate, it had huge curls of parmesan, proscuitto, and large leaves of some herb.. It was to die for. I wanted to go back the next day but was a bit embarrassed to go so often. It's called Regazzi's. Check it out.
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