Saint-Emilion

Because we simply had not yet exhausted our thirst for wine yet, Jess, Kate and I decided to do a little more wine adventuring around Bordeaux. On the way to their friends' wedding we took leisurely drive through the country and stopped at a tasting room in Graves on the way. We learned a little bit about the white wines from Aquitane and gawked at the hugest bottle of wine I've ever seen. I have no idea how huge it was, but it must have been at least twice the size of a magnum. I can't believe I haven't seen one in the states--it was totally supersized.

The next day I picked up the girls again after a long night of French-style partying (a five hour dinner followed by dancing til 6 am) and we took an hour's drive to the picturesque town of Saint-Emilion. The city evolved from the lonley hermitage of a monk, to a community of small religious community and lately to one of the most expensive wine regions in France. The grand cru vineyards that surround the stone village are perfectly manicured and pristine. We started with a tour of the old hermitage and moved on to the catacombs and finally the underground cathedral. According to our guide, the massive underground chapel was originally a natural cave, but thanks to the thousands of years of use as a stone quarry for the village, the space eventually became so vast that it was appropriated for religious use. It was might impressive. Especially when you returned above ground to see that sitting right on top of this massive hole in the ground is an equally massive bell tower made from a monolith...that's right, a steeple made from one giant hunk of stone, sitting on top of a huge underground dome. I tried not to think about it too hard, otherwise I might have started hyperventillating about the amount of time I had spent down there.

The town itself is quite charming, but definitely means business. All you can find are high end wine shops and fancy restaurants. So we went with the flow and took a self-guided tour of some extensive wine cellars and ducked into a couple of shops to taste the fancy wine.




For dinner we found a little restaurant overlooking the city and had some delicious tartine (the French version of bruschetta).

The next morning the ladies flew back to NYC and I returned to work in the vines at Brandeau. The countdown for my return to the States has begun...

L'Omlette Geante (a.k.a. the giant omlette)

There are certain experiences that you cannot have without the following combination: lots of time, little inhibition and loads of wine. Case in point, yesterday my fellow WWOOFers and I went in search of a giant omelette in Libourne. We saw a sign a couple weeks back promising an omelette with 3011 eggs. This simple quest blossomed into a grand adventure. Let's start at the beginning.

Any great day must begin with a great outfit. Eddy led the way with his fabulous red feathered cap and Elly joined in with an amazing fur one that necessitated a photo shoot for posterity. Somehow she managed look like an old Russian woman, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off. It really did set the tone for the day.

Our first stop was the beautiful, beautiful town of Saint Emilion. I'd heard a lot about how perfect and lovely it was, but it didn't really register until we arrived. It has lovely cobbled streets, a great view of the surrounding valley and lots of charming shops. It also happens to be in a grand cru appellation, which means that the wine from there is extraordinarily expensive ($500 a bottle and up), so the townsfolk have got some bucks to beautify the place. We stopped in to take a peek and have a coffee on our way to the omelette geante.

We drove on to Libourne and tried to find the omelette, which turned out to be much more challenging than we had thought. We assumed that such an amazing culinary feat would be prominently displayed in the center of town, the pride of Libourne. Not so. First we were guided to a dog show in a park, then to a track meet/swap meet in the stadium, finally to a botanical garden, all to no avail. No one seemed to know where the omelette was located. Eventually we followed the trail of some small, out of date signs found ourselves at what was basically the coolest block party ever. Situated in a courtyard for some low-income apartment buildings was the promised omlette. There was an emcee doing karaoke, a huge rummage sale, cheap booze, face painting and lots of colorful area residents. My favorite was a couple of French greasers in leather jackets; I'd swear that the fella was Hugh Jackman's twin. Clearly, we were the only folks in attendance who did not live in that neighborhood.


We did our part to fit in and contribute to the local economy by purchasing bottle after bottle of the 2 euro wine, pilfering through the rummage sale and buying some real gems (a gold sequin purse, a spindle, leather pants, a killer nautical sweater, etc.), and dancing with some men in berets. All in all, I think we blended seamlessly into the crowd.


Let me tell you about the star attraction: 3011 eggs, five men stirring, countless old ladies dicing, slicing and serving, and hundreds of full, happy people. It was an overwhelmingly successful production. The emcee serenaded the men circling the omelette pan, an old dude stoked the fire with old grape vines. It was magic.






Here I will introduce you to Ana. She's a fellow WWOOFer from Chateau Brandeau and seriously might be one of the more amusingly photogenic people I've ever known. Let's just scroll through this little collection for a moment...




And that pictorially sums up how the omelette festival progressed.

And this was the result...we went to Bordeaux, rode a carousel, danced in the street at a cafe, and I fell asleep on the sidewalk from too much wine.

And apparently this is the face that I make after too much wine...