un verre du rouge, s'il vous plait.

Sunday (Feb 21) I went on a smaller excursion to some caves around the area. Unlike Saturday, though, I was more on my own for this one. There was a huge group from Kyoto and a group from another US university that stayed pretty cliqued up the whole time, so I just kept to myself.

All in all, this was not the most fanastic trip I've ever taken, but it was kind of cool to see a different kind of achitecture. We first stopped at an old farming village, which was abandoned around the 1930s and has been refurbished to look like it used to. The caves served as stables, bedrooms, kitchens, etc. There were also storage areas, and instead of hen houses, the chickens roosted in niches carved into the rock. Above the caves were the fields that they tended to.

It's not letting me upload any photos right now...the Mont St. Michel post might have overloaded it. But the album is here if you want to see the photos.

Next we went to the winery of Langlois-Chateau, which actually does a very tasty rosé that Sara and I had a week or two ago. This one was cooler...the guide gave us a lesson on how exactly wine is made. He says that all you need are the grapes; there is no need to add anything (i.e., sugar) if you're doing it right. Both white grapes and black grapes have "white" juice, but it is the skins of the black grapes that add color to the varieties of red wine. The longer the skins are allowed to break down into the juice, the more tannin is released from the skins. The tannin is what is "good" for the heart. So, 3-4 hours gives us rosé, about a day gives us a medium red color, and 2-3 days gives us the deep, dark reds that have the most tannin. (I think these are the correct numbers...but basically longer stewing time = darker color = more heart-healthy compounds)

Then the wine is drained from the vats and put into bottles with bottle caps, not corks, then they are stored in the caves for at least TWO YEARS. The guide showed us the storage area...walls and walls of dust-covered bottles. Before he even mentioned it, I noticed a whitish sediment sitting at the bottom of the bottles. (It shows up in some of the photos) Over the course of storage, that sediment builds up and of course has to be removed before they are sold. After the two years (or more) of storage, the bottles are turned on their ends so that the sediment can slide down to the mouth of the bottle. They are put on these huge machines that look like cubes and are rotated a quarter turn every day for two weeks. At the end, the tops are taken off, the sediment scraped out, corks put in, and labels slapped on. Hopefully some wine person isn't reading this and going "NO, THERE'S MORE TO IT THAN THAT!" and I'm sure there is; he probably gave us an abridged version.

Then we had a wine tasting of four different wines: a white, a rosé, a red, and a red that had the consistency and fizziness of champagne. Our guide said that, in short, it is champagne, but because it's not made in the region of Champagne, France, they can't call it champage. But aren't there American champagnes? I didn't ask...wikipedia will tell me all I need to know.

In the end, I bought a bottle of the fizzy red, which is sweeter than reds I've had. I haven't opened it yet because once I pop the cork out, I can't put it back in. Plus, I don't really know how to even open it (it's got the champagne knobby thing), so Sara is going to have to do it for me, haha. I smell a movie night in our future...perhaps Mad Men? I would think that True Blood and french champagne wouldn't mix too well.

So this makes two posts in one day...I think I'm going to take a nap now. I wish my bed and pillow were more comfortable. And that three blankets and two sheets would keep me warm. I think I just miss my big american comforter. Oh well: Spring approacheth anyways.