Wednesday - winetasting

I should have finished yesterday's post by talking about the beautiful evening.  A silence seemed to settle in the valley to the point where I could hear a tennis ball being hit across the valley perhaps 800m away?  It was so far away that the sound of the hit arrived as the ball landed in the court on the other side of the net - but it was clear as a bell.  It was so peaceful & as the sun set it was great to sit outside soaking it up.

After enjoying the quiet for ages a loud mechanical/motor sound came from across the valley.  Who was invading my quiet space?  Actually it was a harvester come to reap a crop of corn across the valley, so I then had the pleasure of watching the reaping going on for about 40 minutes before the harvester headed off - job done.  

The valley is an interesting combination of so rurally quiet combined with real farm work - so nice & so different to being in a major city.

WEDNESDAY:
What did I say about there being no rain?  I work really early (5:30) so got up to read & wait for the daylight to arrive.  There was some discernable light about 7, but the valley was full of fog - which began to dissipate.  However by about 8:30 the fog was replaced by a light but steady rain.

But being the intrepid sort I am I was happy to brave the weather in the name of fresh croissants - Rhonda wanted to try one of those breakfast pastries filled with chocolate.  I think she just wanted to challenge my ability to ask the lovely woman in the shop for it in some comprehensible manner!  But I managed - sort of.

Given how tricky it is to navigate our hill I thought that while I was out I would also get some cash & fuel for the car - so a trip over to Lalinde nearby.  All went smoothly - and so over breakfast we sifted through the options that remain on our list & given the weather we decided on a trip to the Monbazillac chateau about 25 kms away to tour the chateau and taste some wines of the region.

We were feeling so confident of how to get there & a little mistrustful of our GPS (called Fifi - I will explain later) that we "winged it" most of the way.  The chateau was built in about 1550 & like all of the older buildings in this area has seen its fair share of skirmishes and challenges over its time - the English /French 100 years war, the wars of religion etc.  Today it is owned and operated by the wine makers cooperative that started in 1940.

Most impressive in this building are the cellars, where there is a preserved oven, stone sink & cool room, along with heaps of cooking implements and explanations.  There is also a great store of beautiful very yellow wines.

But the wines....  The Appellation for Monbazillac area is about botrytis affected whites - what at home are colloquially called "stickies" - see arguably Australia's best here.  This region produces both oaked and unoaked varieties & the grapes may include semillon, sauvignon blanc & sauvignon gris.

While there were other wines available to taste we thought it best to stick (no pun intended) to what they are famous for.  Talk about amazing stuff. It has all the right smells - orange blossom etc and a clean palette - like this wine should.  I didn't mind the oaked stuff - but it is a bit different, so we stuck to what wereally liked & ended up buying a bottle for Eu8,60 which in my opinion is about 90% as good as a $50 Noble One.

Oh I should add by now that the rain had disappeared but there was still a light mist which meant that the view from the chateau was a bit obscured - but still delightful.

We decided to do a loop on the way home so went via Issigeac & Beaumont.  Beaumont is a bastide town & really well preserved.  Worth the drive - then we took the road down from there to Couze.

We had been looking for a boulangerie (bakery) to grab bread for a light lunch as we had some ham, cheeses and tomatoes at home, but as per usual we were trying to do this in the sacred 12 - 2 down time when most places were closed. When driving at this time you almost feel like you're breaking curfew - while the traffic doesn't totally disappear it is certainly quite light as you see truck & others pulled off the side of the road having a long lunch.  Anyway - we drove back over to Lalinde & found one open so all sorted.

(I know these details are of little relevance to 99% of readers - but at least 50% of the purpose of this blog is actually our travel diary - so we will remember these details when we get home.  So sorry if reading how we procured our lunch is the level of detail that you don't need to hear!)

After a quiet afternoon we decided to visit another restaurant in the valley - Au Fil de L'eau. Just amazing food and super service.  Between our poor French & their equally almost non-existent English we made our way through the night.  What a sensational range of flavours, textures and quality - including all sorts of additional tastes provided that were not ordered or charged for.  Best meal of the trip so far - in a little village in the back blocks of rural France.  We both agreed that we'd love to take this place home.

And so, after a beautiful meal it was a climb up the hill to home & sleep for another day tomorrow.

Fifi - we knew we needed a GPS & the Hertz people struggled a bit with our description - seemingly GPS is not the generic French term.  But when I said Tom Tom (a ubiquitous brand of GPS) they got it.  When we started off our GPS (not a Tom Tom branded one but the Mercedes built in one) was a woman with impeccable English (of course).  So when someone is talking to you - constantly - they need a name.  And so we had to give her a name - given the Tom Tom repeat name & being in France it ended up being Fifi - not all that funny - but it kept us amused every time we talked back to her!