Thursday, September 13, 2018

Today was a long day. Met up with Francois and the wine tour http://www.avignon-wine-tour.com and 9:00am, and off we went in his Peugeot van headed to Cairanne. After two morning tastings, a stop at a wine museum with interesting tactile and smell exercises, then a stop for lunch at a lovely restaurant with outdoor seating on the terrace. The tour had 6 others plus Francois, so 8 people total. A leisurely but delicious hour and half lunch ensued. Le Tourne au Verre.

Francois, who runs the wine tours has developed a six step tasting model, that is helpful for analyzing the wine. Basically start with a color analysis, a first smell, swirl it a second smell, Swirl, look at the legs, and then taste, taste again and then smell the empty glass after aerating it. I’ll post a photo of the procedure below. After lunch we headed to Gigondas, turns out to be a tiny village, but the scale of the vineyards all around is hard to comprehend. After some tasting at Gigondas, we then headed for Vacqueras, also a tiny place, but surrounded by what seem like endless fields of grapes. Temperatures were just under 100 deg. F, so pretty hot day. Back to Avignon at 5:30pm. I’ll post some pictures.