2019 - Loire Valley by Bicycle with Bob: Day 25: Wed 25 Sep

There were showers forecast for both the morning and afternoon and the odd light one eventuated. It stayed cool enough to keep the raincoat on for most of the day, 11 to 16 deg.

Walk: 14 km

Even though we weren’t riding anywhere we were still awake at the normal time, 0600h, and after the morning routine went for a fast walk to start the day. Had brekky in the hotel for a change; and probably overate a little, but when it’s all laid out in front of me, I find it hard to resist. I did restrict my intake to some cereal, fresh fruit, yoghurt, a baguette, and a croissant though. So not too bad.

We wanted to see the underground wine cellars, so we decided to book one small family-owned operation for the afternoon and one big conglomerate enterprise for the morning. Both involved tastings at the end. The big one was unescorted while the small one was fully supervised. Although I’m not drinking any alcohol at this time (health and other reasons) the smell of the big company’s wines did little for me, in fact they mostly smelt like German or Swiss cow barns. At the small winery the owner and tour guide (although having a healthy touch of French privilege and arrogance about him) enlightened us on the traditions and philosophy behind the French wine industry, the top end of the market anyway. It basically boils down to quality not quantity. The long names of the wines had confused me, but he explained all that too. There’s often four words, or more, in the name; it all relates to the region, the crush, (the first or premier is best) the district, the age of the wines, the type of grapes and then right down to the plot that the grapes were grown in. The average size of a plot is only 6.5 hectares, but overall, there’s 29,500 hectares (compared with just over 10,000 in the Barossa Valley) under wine grapes, mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. He said up front that he probably couldn’t sell us any of his wine as it’s all taken already. Mind you I guess if your pockets were deep enough, he wouldn’t hesitate. He also said that in his personal cellar he had wine going back to the early 1920s. Bob said all his wines were streets ahead of the others he’d tasted earlier. They were also very pleasant on the nose too.