In addition to being the gastronomic capital of France, Lyon also sits directly between two French wine regions -- Beaujolais to the north, and the Rhone (specifically the Northern Rhone) to the south. Not wanting the have to choose between them, of course we booked two half-day tours!
Our first tour was to the Beaujolais area, and we were lucky enough not only to have the tour company's owner, Julie (pronounce TZUH-lie) as our guilde, but there was only one other person -- a soccer-obsessed Brit -- on our tour.
As our regular readers know, France has insane rules for its various wine regions. In order to call a wine a Beaujolais, it must either be 100% chardonnay (white) or 100% gamay (red). Other grapes are grown in the region, and we tried wine made from them, but those wines cannot be labeled Beaujolais, and are considered "table wine" even though the quality can be very high.
For our first stop on the tour, we simply took a break on a hillside among the vines where Julie broke out both a red and white Beaujolais. As we sipped, she gave us details about the region and its wines. Note the short stumpy looking vines shown, these are Gamay vines which stay close to the ground.
Next, we visited an organic winery, Domaine des Prevelieres, run by two brothers from the Morel family. We started with a discussion about their farming process. For example, notice the foliage at my feet in the following picture. They use this to nourish the soil so they can avoid using any type of chemicals or fertilizers. During this time, the brothers' two dogs, one of whom we were amused to learn is named Obama, were running free through the vineyard (no idea how we failed to get a picture of the dogs, but we definitely enjoyed petting them).
Then, after a quick tour of their winemaking process, it was time to taste. The winemaker brother who led our tour seemed to like us (he pretended not to speak a lot of English, but we think he knew more than he let on), and since we were such a small group he ended up opening a couple of wines that were not originally part of the tasting.
We started with a very good Viogner, then moved on to the Beaujolais (2 white and 2 red) before finishing with a wine made from gamaret grapes. We had never heard of this grape before, which is not surprising since there are only about 500 acres planted in the entire world (ironically, in Geneva we ended up drinking a gamaret/syrah blend). We enjoyed our tasting so much, we bought three bottles, which we continue to drag around Europe on our journeys.
The next day, we took a tour with Julie to the Northern Rhone, which included cheese as well as wine. Unfortunately, this time there were 15 of us (two vans worth) so it was definitely less personal.
First, we stopped for an introduction to the region among some vines in the Cote Rotie area, which are almost entirely on steep hills overlooking the Rhone river. Cote Rotie means roasted hill -- the steepness and sun/wind exposure definitely give meaning to the idea of how "terroir" shapes a wine.
Then, we had a quick tour of a cheese farm including "meeting" the goats that provide the milk for the cheese before we tasted a couple of wines with three of the cheeses from the farm. Really it was one cheese at three different levels of aging, and it was so interesting to see how the cheese changes in texture and taste over time.
Finally, it was off to a winery where we tried a number of Northern Rhone wines, both red (syrah) and white (viogner, marsanne and roussanne) along with a variety of cheeses. It was a nice tasting, and we certainly enjoyed the inclusion of cheese tasting, but it was not as fun as the small group of the day before. The tour did confirm that Americans are back to traveling as we met people from DC, Florida, Oregon, and Seattle.
As usual, we very much enjoyed wine tasting in France as we continue to learn about its wide, wide variety of regions.
Hasta pronto,
Jeff and Shana
No comments:
Post a Comment