Tuesday 10.19.2010

Bordeaux Wine Class


Our hotel, L’Hotel La Commanderie, seems to be a pretty good bargain for this little boutique city in wine country, but they do insult you with the extras. Ten euros for a croissant and coffee in the morning, and five euros for thirty minutes of Wi-fi ($15 an hour, Yikes!) seem stupid so we skip both. We pass on finding a patisserie and gobble our last walnut gateau from yesterday to hold us over until lunch.

We are hearing on the news this morning that because of the protests and riots, all the French refineries have been shut down and "thousands" of gas stations have been forced to close. Mary said she would prefer to take the car, find gas and browse a shopping center while John does the wine thing this morning. We compromise and both go for gas and John brings his electronic toys to occupy his time while Mary shops. We both will do wine this afternoon.


We find a gas station about 8 miles from St. Emilion and there are dozens of cars lined up to top off their tanks. John edges the car forward and moves from the long line into the station into an individual line for the pump ahead. As we’re next in line at the pump we see that this is a credit card only pump and we know that American cards will not work here. We’re basically screwed and will have to go back out and start over again. John tells Mary to head over to the shopping center and he will find her in an hour.

And here a miracle occurs. Mary gets out of the car, walks over to the guy finishing up on the other side of the pump, waves euros in his face and begs to use his credit card for our gas. Amazingly he agrees to this obvious fraud even though neither has any idea what the other is talking about. John wriggles the car around to the other side of the pump, the guy throws his credit card into the fray, we pump fifty-one euros worth of gas, Mary gives him fifty-five and a huge "merci beaucoup" and we’re off. We now have 800 kilometers worth of fuel, plenty to get us through the rest of the week and into Spain. What a turn of events! That’ll show the French strikers. Mary does shop for a while and John amuses himself with the computer and kindle.

We’re back to St. Emilion in time for lunch and are finally figuring out how to deal with this French meal thing. We have a cool but sunny outside table in the square at Amanda Canta where Mary has the “Saucisse Toulouse Plate” (sausages and fries) and John has a Galette, a buckwheat crepe folded up around the edges to form a shallow basket and filled with, in this case, ham, cheese and potatoes. Very tasty and just the right amount after last night’s extravaganza. The wine shops reopen after 2:00 so we take a break for a half hour, walk through some different streets, look at the big church and nose around the Maison du Vin, a sort of museum of wine that also has a local cooperative shop.

We spend the rest of the afternoon getting an education (and buzz) from the local wine sellers. We have always been comfortable with U.S. wines and have learned plenty about Aussie, Italian and South American wines. The French have always seemed too daunting. There are a few folks who are very patient with us and explain the grapes, the classifications of French wines, the wine regions and the individual vintages, all the while plying us with examples of the product we are discussing. One lady at the end of the day works us through five different wines, most of which we really like, and we think our palates are becoming educated. “We think” is the key part of that phrase. We buy a couple reasonably priced bottles and take the info to order more in the future. Maybe we can put together an order with some of our “wine pals” when we get home.


We got a nice dinner recommendation from our last wine person for Chez Pascal, a mostly-wine-bar a block from our hotel. Mary has the cold salmon platter and John has a very good bowl of beef stew with tons of sliced baguette on the side. This was a whole day in France without overeating.

It has rained while we were inside so the streets are wet. Again, we are the only people on the street as we take a pleasant walk looping through town. The street lamps are soft in the misty air and there is a smell of wood smoke which makes for a magical evening. We have gas in the car and plenty of food and wine in us so sleeping will come easy tonight.


Today’s weather: Sun and cool early with clouds and rain later. Low, 46, high 62