Back to France part 3: St. Emilion

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Finally, we are on the last leg of our trip (back) to France!

No trip to Bordeaux is complete without a visit to one of the thousands of vineyards and wine chateaus in the surrounding wine-making regions. This time, I chose St. Emilion, a small town – also a World Heritage site – some 30 kilometres outside of Bordeaux. St. Emilion is known for its high quality wine, and as the Bordeaux tourist office offered a half-day wine-tasting trip to this charming little place (same program as the one I went to in November last year), my friend and I gladly signed up for it.

Bilingual guide is a bonus, as it is always nice to know about the place you’re visiting rather than just seeing the pretty sights. For these tours, very elaborate explanations were given on the vineyards and the wine-making process, from growing the grapes to soil type to harvesting to fermentation to aging to post-production. Lots of nifty information for wine fanatics!

I’ll keep this entry short and simple. A lot of the actual wine-related stuff has been explained in an earlier trip to Blaye and Bourg, so take a look if you’re interested!

Arriving at the vineyard in St. Emilion. I actually forgot to note the name of this chateau…my bad. The colour of the vines was very different than what I saw in November, obviously due to the different season and stage of wine-making. The vast sea of green was very pleasant to the eyes, but also notice the giant dark cloud that encircled above me. Rain was approaching!