Bordeaux, France

Next stop, wine country!  Although the weather wasn't the best and we were there during the offseason, Bordeaux still offered us plenty of wine to taste!  We arrived in Bordeaux on Friday afternoon and took a bus out to the region of St. Emilion, a medieval town in the Southwest region of France.  St. Emilion was founded in the 8th Century by a monk, Emilion who settled in a hermitage carved into the rock which became the monolithic church.  Other monks followed Emilion and started up the commerical wine business in the area.  We stayed at the Chateau de Mole which is in the Puiseguin-St. Emilion region and run by a lovely woman called, Maryline.  We decided to take a tour of St. Emilion and visited the Monolithic Church, Bell Tower and of course stopped for vino along the way.  The town is small and picture perfect - cobblestone, lamp posts and winding streets.  We ate at Restaurant Le Tertre that evening for dinner and Matt even tried the duck fois gras (which he loved!). 

Our first stop on Saturday was Chateau Beaurang.  This was a small winery that is run by a daughter and her parents.  All 3 of them live on the property.  She showed us how they make wine and that they use mostly merlot and cabernet franc grapes since that's what grows the most in the area.  We did a wine tasting in a room full of barrels.  We were told each barrel holds about 300 bottles of wine...so of course we had to purchase 2 or 3 bottles! 

Next stop was Chateau Fonplegade which was a much bigger operation.  An American couple run and live at the chateau and we had the pleasure of meeting the woman.  Let's just say they've done well in the wine industry - her jewlery was UNBELIEVABLE! A young French woman showed us around the property then took us into the barrel room which was very modern. We did a tasting here as well and really enjoyed their wine!

We loved Chateau de Mole but realized we hadn't tasted their wine so we did the only thing we could - a wine tasting at 10am on Sunday!  Maryline showed us around the small chateau and even joined us for the tasting.  We left quickly after the tasting so we could go check out the city of Bordeaux. We took the afternoon to walk around the city and checked out places like the Place de la Bourse, St. Andre's Cathedral (built in 1096!) and Rue St. Catherine. 

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