Thursday - wine tour

Thursday 13th September

Happy 80th Birthday Mum!!!  Sorry, now everyone knows you're 80 but you're looking good so it doesn't matter. I had a lovely birthday call with Mum this morning - very sad I can't be there with her right now, but know my family at home will treat her and look after her.

Today to celebrate Mum's birthday, the grown ups (and the rest of the adults) went on an amazing wine tour around St Emilion.  Such a pretty place and fantastic wine tours. We went to 3 chateaux and at each place they took us on a proper tour of the vineyard, the wine production areas and cellars, before giving us a tasting.

We went to Chateau Beau-Sejour Becot where we were taken underground to the limestone quarry tunnels - dating from the 10th century until quarry work stopped in the 19th century. Over 200km of tunnels lie under St Emilion and surrounds - where you can see the stone used in the beautiful buildings. When individual chateaux started using the tunnels for cellaring, they blocked off the links between the chateaux so wine wasn't stolen, but before that people could walked right to the centre of the village. 

The second winery was Chateau La Gaffeliere - owned now by a 79 year old Count - it's been in his family for over 400 years.  We laughed when the lady taking us on the tour told us the Count was quite the womaniser, and today owns 5 Bugatti cars (around $2,000,000 each)- one for each of his children. He keeps them in a grand garage with heating - the same luxury not extended to the offices of his workers! We told Peggy she only had to buy one more car for her 6 children. The winery name sounds pretty but is named after the leprosy hospital the chateau is built on. With all of the egg whites used in wine production the hospital nuns tried to find a use for the leftover egg yolks - they invented a cake called canales, and also macarons! A beautiful lunch in St Emilion, and our last stop at Chateau Fonplegad (fountain with much water - they had natural spring water cooling the wine rooms and flowing down the hills).  It is owned by an American family - very nice but a bit squeaky clean and new for this beautiful medieval town - a great contrast though. Now we're back at home and had a nanna nap before dinner and fireworks.