Bordeaux

Following out trip to Barcelona, we returned to London for a few days and then promptly got back on a plane and headed down to Bordeaux, France.

Bordeaux at night

As I’m sure you're all aware, Bordeaux is famous for its fantastic wines and most people visit this region of France purely for the wine tasting- and taste wine we did! I would say that the city of Bordeaux itself is completely skipable. While it did have some very nice parks in which you can sit and enjoy a fabulous picnic of French wine, cheese and bread (all of the best things about France), the city is otherwise not very interesting. I think most people just use the city as a home base for wine tasting- and rightly so! Just 15 minutes out of the city you find yourself in the heart of wine country. Vineyards and sunflower-filled fields span as far as the eye can see.

French picnic: Baguette, Brie, Jambon and Wine

We drove from Bordeaux to St. Emilion stopping at a few of the most famous vineyards along the way. They were so famous, that they didn’t let ordinary people like us in to taste the wine! Only wine experts and the super-rich allowed.

Chateau Cheval Blanc: Owned by the Louis Vuitton empire and too fancy to let us in!

Bottles of Petrus wine go for about 5,000 euro a bottle (about $7,000)

I adored St. Emilion, despite the fact that it was packed with tourists. A small mountain of a town, it is topped by a historic Catholic church and contains tiny, winding, cobble-stoned streets lined with shops and cafes all the way down to the surrounding vineyards. The St. Emilion region is said to have some of the best wine in the world.

The countryside as seen from the top of St. Emilion
Me, St. Emilion

St. Emilion's winding streets

We spent an all-too-short hour or so in St. Emilion, just enough time to grab a sandwich and gawk at the rustic beauty, before heading on to château Clos de Madeline to do some wine tasting. We were greeted by the very friendly and exuberant owner who led our tasting, taught us the proper way to taste wine (“you must first warm it up in your hand, smell, swirl 6 times, smell, taste, swirl again”), taught us about the wine aging process and how to decant wine properly if you are trying to drink wine while it is “too young.” Our conversation often revolved around the effect of Global Warming on the French wine industry-something the château owner was very concerned about. He informed us that they were testing vines from the center of Africa to incorporate into their crop- as these vines would be more able to withstand the heat. He also informed us that some British wine-lovers are already beginning to plant vineyards on the southern coast of Great Britain, with the expectation that the weather will be the perfect temperature there in 10-20 years for wine. He told us, and I quote: “French people drinking British wine? Never! It will be world war three!!”

The Chateau owner

The countryside of Bordeaux was beautiful and the people extremely friendly- I would highly recommend a wine-tasting excursion here if you ever get the chance. Be forewarned, however, that unlike my wine-tasting experiences in California, vineyards truly expect you to buy wine after the tasting!! In fact, if you didn’t purchase wine after the tasting, they charged you 10 euro. This is understandable to me in the long run, but could become very expensive if you visited lots of châteauxs!!

After our visit to Clos de Madeline, we headed onto Pamplona, Spain for the San Fermin festival (aka Running of the Bulls) and the next leg of our journey!