Monsieur is very serious about his wines
We began the day with a tour of the Chartrons district of Bordeaux city. This is the riverfront where the wine merchants had their warehouses. Back in the days before wine was bottled at the chateaux, the wine merchants did the bottling at their warehouses.
We were taught to taste wine properly—grip the glass by the foot, sniff the still wine, swirl, sniff again and finally roll a small mouthful across the tongue to see which tastebuds respond. It was fun. And who can complain about three or four good gulps of wine before lunch?
After a lunch at a cafe in town, we boarded a bus along with 50 other people and headed out to Medoc to visit some wineries. It was rather boring, to be truthful, though the countryside was pretty and we did learn more about the wine production process. We visited chateaux in two different appleations producing different classes of wine.
The best part of the afternoon was the tasting at Chateau Kiriwan.
