Bordeaux: A Badly Needed Wine Education.

Other than knowing I like to drink wine… There’s not much else I could say I knew about the stuff prior to visiting Bordeaux.

Sure, I have done wine tastings in a few cities. I know I prefer reds to whites. I know which reds I like more than others. But other than that, I knew nothing. I can’t say I really had a desire to know more. And to be honest, I still don’t. Though I am very grateful for getting the opportunity to learn more while in Bordeaux.

As part of our trip, Bail had wanted to tour the St. Emilion region. She knows way more about wines than I do, which is why I always defer to whatever she wants to drink. Because I know it will be very good.

Yes. I am lazy.

Anyway… As part of the guided tour through a few of the vineyards in the region, the first half of our day would be spent inside a Bordeaux apartment with others, learning about the region.  The aim was to teach us about the types of wines grown there, and how they are different from the other regions in France (Loire, Rhone, and Burgundy).

This meant tasting!!

And by “tasting”… I mean, “drinking!”

It started off with four empty glasses…

We learned about different types of varietals and how they differ. We even mixed varietals into the same container, and drank those.

I discovered that I am definitely more of a “Merlot” person over “Cabernet.” We did some of the tasting with food to see how the notes of a wine are carried by and react to the food.

Then we did a blind taste test.

We had to guess the region of each of the bottles just using the following:

• Color
• Smell
• Savor (Taste)

It paid off to take notes, as I ended up getting ALL the correct answers!

After all of this fun, we had a light lunch of salad (which, surprisingly, you cannot easily get at restaurants in France)… So Bail and I took large helpings of this, and a small piece of vegetable quiche.

Proper drinking food, right?

By early afternoon, we were ready to head out to St. Emilion…