Visite des Caves

Since we love travelling and we like booze, we ended up doing a lot of tasting tours on various countries that we’ve visited. Although the practices may differ from country to country and producer to producer, the basics remain the same. A typical tasting tour normally involves a ride in some beautiful countryside, listening to information about the producer and the product which could be entertaining / interesting / extremely boring depending on your guide, and finally the tasting so that you can understand what the fuss is all about.  Since good alcohol and good food goes hand in hand, as an added benefit, generally there’s a lovely restaurant or a pub around. Add the occasional cute village or art gallery and you might be in for a real treat.

Below are some of our tastings that were worth remembering.

Champagne, France

Lagerfeld recreated the bol-sein for Dom Perignon , using Claudia Schiffer as inspiration

Who doesn’t like a glass of champagne? It’s the perfect drink for a celebration or at the start of an evening. It goes wonderfully with fresh strawberries and sometimes the mere sight of a flute of champagne can evoke mouthfuls of hidden delights.

But tasting the bubbly in Champagne, its original home in France is not just sipping from a couple of different bottles, it can even border on a holly experience.

First of all, you have to remember that the prestigious word champagne can only be used for the sparkling wine produced at the Champagne region in Northern France. All the other producers must use names such as Cremant (elsewhere in France), Prosecco (in Italy), or Sparkling Wine (in US) to brand their produce.  Every producer in Champagne repeats this at least twice, so that we can all appreciate:

• Champagne was originally produced by monks .The most well known of them is Dom Perignon , a 17^th cc Benedictine monk who had redefined the champagne making process and had his name given to Moet & Chandon’s prestige cuvee. He’s famously quoted as calling to his brothers one day ‘Come quickly! I’m tasting the stars.’
• Champagne was the favourite drink of gods like Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte. Marie Antoinette enjoyed sipping her favourite bubbly from bol-sein, a cup modelled after her own breasts.
• The producers of the Champagne region are blessed to be making this heavenly drink worthy of royalty and they’re doing a huge favour by allowing mere mortals like us to drink it.

The caves at Mumm

Well, they are correct on all accounts but some of them just overkill while delivering the message.

Having said that, tasting is a great experience in Champagne and every major house tries to add a twist to make the experience even more attractive. The major estates are working or worked with artists like Lagerfeld, David Lynch and Andy Warhol to create images and objects to capture our imaginations as well as our taste buds. As a result, Moet & Chandon has great stories to tell ranging from Dom Perignon to Bonaparte; Mercier has the underground laser operated train; Veuve Clicquot has the designer goodies and Mumm has a great cellar and Formula 1.

After tasting champagne at a few of the great names, you can also visit a couple of the hundreds of small producers in the region who produce great champagne and anxious to introduce you to their world with very attractive prices.

Bordeaux, France

The vineyards of Medoc

In a typical wine tour at a chateau in Medoc, the guide first takes you the vineyards to talk about the soil and exact percentages of the different varieties of grapes and average ages of the vines. Then you move on to the Vat room where they explain how meticulously they clarify and mix the wines. Afterwards you continue to the cellars to learn about the precise age and origin of the barrels and the aging process. Finally when you find yourself in the tasting rooms, your head is bursting with all the information and you really need a drink.

Naturally after visiting a couple of Chateaux, we started to have very weird arguments with my husband, such as ‘No no, you never listen! It was 4% of Cabarnet Franc and 2% of Petit Verdot, not the other way around.’ Luckily, both of us were feeling quite happy from all the wine so the argument didn’t escalate to the best wine aging methods.

One of the main problems of wine tasting in Bordeaux is the other people wine tasting there. 

If you happened upon a Chinese or Japanese group (I say group because it seems they’re forbidden to travel alone), just step aside and wait for them to pass on. They would be extremely noisy and rude, and they have to take photographs of absolutely everything at least three times. If, in the process they block your path or step on your foot, tough luck. Luckily, they would not be interested in anything other than their cameras so they will not listen to their guides and move fast to the next photo opportunity.

If you share a tour with American wine enthusiasts, you might be in for a treat. I’m not talking about the average tourist or the true enthusiast. There’s another breed, rich and in-the-know, and they are a joy to watch from a distance. We recently shared a wine tour at a Grand Cru Chateau in Medoc with such a couple and they made my experience memorable. It was just us and them et bien-sure their own private wine expert. Poor guy.

Chateau Haut Brion - from inside

At the beginning of the tour, even before the expert of the chateau started her sermon on the precise age and varieties of the vines in this particular vineyard, one of them asked their expert about a recent article on Robert Parker’s web site on Bordeaux wines.  ‘Ah the web site’ replied the expert, giving us a knowing smile. Their continuing monologues were serving one purpose only, to show how much they know about ‘this wine stuff’.  In about two minutes later, the two French wine guides started to chat among themselves, my husband decided to imitate the Japanese with his camera and I was left to suffer and occasionally nod.

When we finally arrived at the tasting room, the woman asked the local guide why they were offering the wine in bottles instead of carafes.  Even before the guide could open her mouth (who would probably say ‘because this is not a restaurant, dumbo’), the husband commented rather rudely about his wife’s carafe addiction. Since I was the only one around, the woman went on explaining to me how she liked purchasing different styles of wine carafes and using them as decorative items in the house. Feeling slightly sorry for her, I told that I prefer serving reds in carafe as well. The husband then asked me:

'So you buy a different carafe every time you go to shopping?'

'Well, no.'

'Do you also put full carafes around the house, all filled with expensive wine from your husband’s personal cave ?'

' ...?'

#  

Bourgogne, France

One bunch out of a hundred

Since we had done the ‘Route des Chateaux’ very recently in Bordeaux, we decided to skip the ‘Route des Grand Crus’ in Bourgogne this time and decided to visit a wine cellar instead. We chose one of the biggest cellars of Beaune, the ‘Patriarch Pere et Fils’ which turned out to be a very different experience.  In exchange for 10 Euros per person, they gave us a couple of tasting cups and let us loose in the cellars. The Patriarch cellars turned out to be a 5-km long underground labyrinth filled with thousands of bottles around which we were free to wander without a guide. It was slightly thrilling to find our way in the dark maze of bottles, most of which were not even labelled.  We wondered if somebody was taking a bottle here and putting it there, just for fun.

When we finally found the tasting rooms, the experience got even more interesting.  We found out that they opened some bottles and put them on top of barrels in four or five different rooms which we were free to taste as we like. It was a refreshing experience to taste in the order and amount of our choosing, without an expert explaining how the wines were supposed to taste.

So we took our time and try not to drink all of the 15+ bottles left for our pleasure. Needless to say, we ended up getting drunk and buying more wine that we intended to, but we had a great time.

Hospice des Beaune

Another interesting thing in Beaune was the Hospices des Beaune, a 15^th century hospital and refuge for the poor and a beautifully crafted building. It offered treatment and comfort to the sick, elderly or the destitute non-stop from the Middle Ages to present day. Many rich people, including the Sun King himself, have made rich donations to the Hospice, farms, buildings and of course vineyards; therefore the Hospice started to produce it’s own wine, which is very good and highly prized.

The Hospice is also organizes an annual wine auction since early 18^th century, which is used to define the annual prices of the regional wines.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape, France

Sunset over Rhone

Chateauneuf-du-Pape is a lovely town surrounded by vineyards which produce some very good wines. There indeed is an old chateau, from which the little town – and the wine- get their names.

We’ve visited the town at a Sunday afternoon in late autumn and enjoyed an exceptional sunset over the Rhone valley. Afterwards we stopped at a small wine cellar for a bit of tasting and shopping and went to a bar for a bit more. Nice town, friendly people, good wine, a wonderful ending to an unforgettable weekend.

Napa Valley, California, USA

Couldn't resist putting this

First founded by the Italian and Swiss immigrants in early 1900s, Napa Valley today has become one of the most important wine growing regions in the world.  As in most things, when it comes to wine making the Americans are making their own rules and as a result they start to beat French and Italian wines in their own game in international competitions.

Years ago while driving around California, we’ve spent a day there visiting the Mondavi estate and listened to the tricks of wine tasting (you have to smell it before drinking!). There was also a rather lengthy comparison of New World Wines against Old World Wines, which sounded a bit like a preparation for WW3. We were quite young then and taking the tour with close friends, so it was a day of laughter and fun, accompanied with some decent wine and a picnic basket. I’m pretty sure their tours have improved in the meantime to catch up the quality of their wines.

Santorini, Greece

A typical wine tasting at Santorini

While spending a week in Santorini a few summers ago, we decided to visit one of the wine producers which turned out to be a very fun experience.  When it comes to wine tasting, the Greek have the rather admirable philosophy of ‘Cut the crap and let’s get drunk’.  They basically take your money, give you 3 or 4 very full glasses of wine with some crackers and invite you to drink them at the terrace. The wines were decent and the views from the terraces were breathtaking. We liked the experience so much; we did a lot of wine tasting at sunset on our way from the beach to the hotel.

Stellenbosch, South Africa

Africa is beautiful and the wine region of Stellenbosch was no exception. We spent an excellent day driving the Wine Root and stopping at the estates advised by our local friends. South African wines were shunned by the West because of the Apartheid and only in the last decade they started to become popular.  I loved their white wines, managing to be fruity and dry at the same time. The reds were also quite good with heavenly smells, but I’d pick a South African Sauvignon Blanc any day.

Wine tasting was a friendly affair, nothing pretentious, mostly about promoting their award winning wines rather than explaining the philosophy of the wine producer.  Most of the estates either have their own restaurants or offer picnic baskets with the wine of your choice in their lush gardens.  We opted for the second option and had a great picnic under the trees overlooking the beautiful countryside.  

Afterwards we spent some time in the town of Stellenbosch, which turned out to be a pretty little town with Cape/Dutch style buildings, art galleries and shops selling everything you don’t need but want to buy anyway.

                                               

Scotland

I started to drink whisky when I was nine or ten years old and it’s still one of my favourite drinks. My father owned a large collection of whisky & cognac that he obtained from all around the world and as a curious kid who was always looking for mischief I started to have my private tasting tours to his whiskey cabinet at a very early age. I was mainly tasting from the small bottles that were given as presents and filling them with tea afterwards so I didn’t go into a lot of trouble but I developed a taste for great whisky and learned the differences between a blended whisky and single malt.

My favourite method of whisky sampling in Scotland turned out to be finding a good bar with a friendly barman, preferably in a small village or town, and start ordering the local favourites. It would be a challenge to pronounce the brands like Dahlwhinnie or Bunnahabhain especially after a couple of rounds, but the pleasure of drinking those great malts will worth the effort.

Northern Ireland

Recently we visited Northern Ireland for a few days. A very friendly Irish barman (is there another kind?) told me that while the Scotch can produce some great whiskey some of the time, the Irish can do it all the time. He also told me that the Irish spell whiskey with an ‘e’ (the correct way) while the Scotch pronounce it as whisky (the poor way).  At least that’s what I gathered from his accent.  A few days later we visited the Jameson distillery to learn about why it’s triple distilled (I still have no clue) and to taste some of their great samples.

With all due respect to my friend the Irish barman, I still prefer to drink Scotch malt and order a Guinness at an Irish pub.

Belgium

Abbeye Notre Dame d' Orval

It’s impossible to live in Belgium and not to enjoy beer. There are over 450 different types of local beers, most of them served in their own special glasses which are supposed to enhance the flavour of the particular beer for which they’re designed. My personal favourites are the Trappist beers that are produced by the Trappist monks at monasteries and abbeys. There are six monasteries in Belgium which are producing this special beer, together with cheese and other local products. I prefer Orval and Westvleteren among others.

The Westvleteren 12 is regularly rated as one of the best beers in the world. It’s extremely good but almost impossible to find, there’s even a black market for it.  Drinking Westvleteren beer is truly a unique experience for two reasons; it tastes great and it’s very difficult to buy. It is brewed by a tiny abbey named St. Sixtus of Westvleteren, some 150 km outside Brussels.  The abbey makes only three kinds of beer (the 12, 8 and 6, the names are corresponding to the alcohol percentages – yep, Belgium beer is strong stuff!) and in miniscule quantities.

So why didn’t you hear about it before? The problem is the supply. The monks are producing beer only 72 days a year and sell it either directly to individual buyers or at the visitor centre just outside the abbey. Buying the beer directly from the abbey is almost as difficult as, say, going to heaven. They only sell their beer two days a month by reservation only and in limited amounts (two cases per car). Or you can always drive up to the Visitor Centre, which in fact is a huge bar in the middle of nowhere and order as much as you can drink. As bars go, it’s not too bad and always crowded. In the little shop inside the bar you can even purchase beer by the bottle, although the 12 is rarely on sale.

The monks of St. Sixtus are not interested in increasing the revenue or winning awards, because a- the money they earn is enough to cover the annual expenses of the abbey and b- their patron saint St. Benedict advises against greed and teaches humility.  In this capitalist era, they somehow manage to keep their faith as strong as the beer that they produce.

One thing I enjoy more than drinking these wonderful drinks is to share it with my loved ones. Whatever we choose to drink always tastes better than any Grand Cru accompanied with laughter or gossip or even tears, as long as I can share it with my family and friends.  

So this one is for you guys. Şerefe !