10.13.09
Posted in Hollidays, Friends, Route du Vin at 8:58 pm by tesstess
Same procedure as last year? Same procedure as every year, James!
Just after the wine guide “Guide Hachette” came out in the shops Anthony read it in detail, together with another guide “Gault Millau” and some older versions of guides, and then composed a schedule for our yearly wine trip.
This year the selected regions were Jura and Alsace. We met up Philippe and Gaelle in the train station in Lyon where they arrived with the train from Paris, Friday noon, and then we warmed up with a first wine producer in the afternoon. In the evening Elodie, a friend living in Geneve, met up to spend the weekend in Jura with us.
Jura is a beautiful region, we didn’t know it before so it was a true pleasure to discover it together.
The previous years I have enjoyed our wine trips (Bourgogne, Bourgogne, Bourdeaux), but it’s first now that I really can start to enjoy and understand more the wines. So, what’s special then for the wines of Jura. First of all, they have a specific variety of grapes called Savagnin. With these raisins they make white dry wine a with smell of nuts (valnöt). They have several different ways to make the wine, giving different kinds of wine.
The most spectacular preparation is for the ‘Vin Jaune’, the yellow wine, which is kept in wooden barrels for 6 years and 3 months and they don’t add any wine to compensate for the evaporation. When the wine is ready to drink it rests 62% of the original volume (we know that because they chose the size of the bottle to represent what’s left of one liter). What keeps the wine from oxidation is a kind of mushroom which forms a layer on top, this also gives the yellow wine a very special taste and smell. Not everyone likes it. We found it all five quite difficult to like in the beginning, but then after some days one after the other started to get used to it and some started to even like it a lot.
They also do ‘vin de paille’: ‘Straw Wine’ where the grapes are dried to concentrate the juice. The result is a very sweet wine. miam miam.
For the red wines of Jura the specific types are Pulsar and Trosseau. Light wines in both color and taste. I didn’t find them exceptional, but it’s always interesting to try new things.
The two first nights we stayed in a bed&breakfast in a farm. An enormous building, built up from scratch, new and fresh inside. The old house had burnt down, but they kept a bit the style with the big roof, sometimes nearly bigger than the house itself. We got a room with a mezzanine, and above the bed it’s 7 meters up to the ceiling. Saturday evening we ate at the farm with the owners and some other guests. They had prepared a famous dish called ‘poulet au vin jaune’, it’s chicken cooked with the yellow wine.
Sunday we had a day off, moving from Jura to Alsace. The weatherforcast for each day was showing bad weather coming up, but even if there was some drops of rain some days, all days turned out to be really nice and we could even have a picnic in the grass.
Specialities from Jura. Of course we opened a bottle of wine as well!
Vacation!
We moved on to Alsace and spent the following three nights in a bed&breakfast close to Kaysersberg. The nights there was a engagement present from Anthonys parents and a more charming house is hard to find. Decorated to perfection.
Relaxing in front of the house with view on the hills and forests.
I rarley slept in a room as beautiful as this one. The sheets were ‘Lin du Voges’ and so
soft that I didn’t want to leave the bed in the morning.
Even common room and kitchen followed the same standard. The paintings were real, and
the table decoration were different each of the three mornings we ate there.
After the restaurants in the evenings we stopped on the way home in the forest or on a
hill to feel the nature and the moonlight.
Have a look at those pictures taken in almost complete darkness. Amazing that the camera rebuilt the green of the grass and the blue in the sky!
One afternoon Sophie made us company, a childhood friend of Anthony and Vincent, her boyfriend.
We visited 7 wine producers in Alsace. I think I’ll skip the details here, I can just say that there was so much good wine there! Two of the producers who will stay most in my memory was Mr Pierre Frick, using biodynamism, planning the harvest after the moon, and using no additions to the wine other than a very restricted quantity of sulfur for the white wine. It’s a bit in to produce ecological wine, but this man did not follow any trends, he’s been doing it for 15 years.
The second place I’ll remember is the one on the photo above. The owner who also made the degustation for us opened bottels for us to taste for nearly 200 euros! They will use them also for other groups, but it’s a good thing to be there when the bottle is just opened. At some places we tasted wine opened four days ago, and it changes it’s smell and taste a lot in that time. Anthony said that the wines he tasted in this place were some of the best wines he’s ever tasted in his life!
I’ll finish off my story with some pictures with a true alsacian feeling:
10.05.08
Posted in Hollidays, Friends, Route du Vin at 10:05 pm by tesstess
This year it was time to get to know Bordeaux. Me and Anthony took one week vacation, borrowed the car of Sebastien and set out on a loong drive, friday after work, all the way to Cahors where we stayed two nights. We visited some producers around there, very good wine, not too expensive. And very nice people, me and Anthony really loved this region, we want to move there, it’s just that there are no jobs for us.
It’s hard not to fall in love with this place.
This is how to appriciate good wine!
Anthony, picking chestnuts directly from the tree. All this region is completely full of these trees, just like olive trees back where we live.
We went swimming in the river, extremely cold, but very funny. It wasn’t planned so we went in completely naked. Believing that noone could see us.
We went on a walk to see the roads next to the river where the animals were dragging the boats some hundred years ago, until they built the railway. An artist had made sculptures in the wall.
We took the car on to one of the most sweet villages we’ve ever seen: “St Circque La Pauppie”. Medieveal village without cars, and with this splendid view:
They even had binoculars up there on the cliff. With which you got a good view on the river. And one of the places you could see… was our beach where we had gone in swimming… Imagine the children seeing us, calling out to their parents “mama, mama, look, there are people in the water, and they are naked!”.
Here is Cahors, a village surrounded by the river.
We visited the famous market, bought some fruits, tea and newbaked bread. We would give a lot to live close enough to this market to be able to buy our vegetables there each week. Then we went up on the hill next to the village and ate a picknick in the sun with the crazy beautiful view of the village.
The comming days we spent without wine where we visited the region. One of Anthonys best freinds, Philippe, and his girlfriend Gaelle came down from Paris on the monday to visit with us.
We visited medieval villages, ate good food and had a really nice time together.
Three nights we stayed in this wonderful farm. They produce their own products, we ate one evening there and it was delicious. In the morning you see them take out the birds. We took a morning swim in the covered swimming pool, what a feeling.
Cayaking down the Dordogne. So calm, a little bit of current so that the paddeling itself was easy, five impressive castles along the shores, and then a nice picnick with wine from Cahors, cheese from Roccamadour and terrine from the farm where we stayed.
The second part of the week we went on to Bordeaux. Here we catched Seb, coming with the train from Antibes.
Five happy wine-lovers.
We visited the three wine areas of Bordeaux: Le Medoc, Le Libournais and Les Graves.
In the middle we changed bed & breakfast, charging Sebs car with all the wine and five people. It was completely full, we had wine everywhere and we had to go slowly. It was funny to see the face of the owners in the new place. We asked if we could put our wine somewhere (to not carry it up the stairs to our rooms), and he said yes, no problem, but when he saw the quantity… their hallway was almost blocked by wine.
I’ll finish with some food pictures. It’s really one of the best things with this region, the food. A lot of food, cheap compared to where we live, and so delicious. The best one I ate is ont the top left. It’s not the best looking one though. It’s fish with crumble of hazel nutts on top, and then foi gras (gåslever) and potatoes at the side.
That’s it for this year. Our both wine fridges are overfull, the economy below zero and us already looking forward to the ‘route du vin’ of next year. We think it will be Alsace.
05.08.08
Posted in Pearls, Friends at 8:53 am by tesstess
Imagine 8 girls in a room. It doesn’t only sound wonderful in the ears of a guy, but also in my ears, at least when you combine it with millions of pearls.
It is nice to be a software engineering girl most of the time, but when it comes to girl friends it’s not the perfect job. And Amadeus not the perfect place to find them. I’ve been looking for shopping friends for two years now! So I made up my mind and invited all girls I know about to a pearl day at my place. Anthony was away skiing.
During the week we went on lunchtime to buy pearls for our saturday creations.
We ate lunch in the garden, and then we installed us around a double livingroom table.
Alice had a huge amount of pearls and was as busy as all the others.
I think about half of us didn’t do peals before, but lots of funny creations came out of the day. In total I think we were pearling six hours. It was not as much talk as ‘normal’ girl dinners: too much concentration.
In the evening we made pastasallad. It was hard to make room for it on the table.
I love this view of the table completely overfull of pearls. And on the left we have some of the creations of the day.
Posted in Hollidays, Beach, Friends at 8:29 am by tesstess
Now this was over a month ago, but it’s time to get up to date with the blog again.
Two weeks after Barcelona I drove to Montpellier, it took just a bit more than 3 hours to get there. On the way I managed to miss the exit for Ikea in Toulon where I wanted to exchange a lamp, but that’s another story.
My first impression of the city was a big flowery tram. I had stopped for red light under a bridge when suddenly the big flower-power worm crosses the road just infront of me, I had to laugh out loud!
We spent the weekend in a very relaxed mode, first visiting the center on saturday, and we went to Ikea to eat a luxurious swedish dinner, and to change my lamp. Finally.
We enjoyed the sun and the beach all sunday.
(Kat and Vera)
And then of course lots of girl talk the night in between!