About wine and wine-making, to be precise.
As mentioned in my previous post, my sister and I spent a long weekend with friends in a small village called Saint Amour Bellevue, in the French country side, where the Beaujolais wine is made.
On the Saturday, our friends took us to the Hameau Duboeuf, a theme park about wine, its history, how it is made and how it has formed the region and its inhabitants. Their website is here, and you can look at it in English, German or French.
It was a glorious day, and the first thing we saw after our short drive from Saint Amour to the Hameau was this beautiful old steam engine at the station that had once been specifically built for the wine-makers to facilitate transport to and from this region:
Inside the large entrance area, I was impressed by how immaculately clean and with a lot of polished brass gleaming in constrast to the elegant dark green colour theme everything was, such as this old ice-cream selling trolley:
We then started our tour of the museum, but I only took a few pictures in there:
The exhibition was interesting - and would have been even more interesting to a true wine lover, which I am not, I'm afraid; I hardly ever drink any wine and can't tell the difference between a "good" and a less good wine at all. Of course I can say I like the taste of this one and not the taste of that one, but that's about it; you could probably put the most expensive wine in front of me and I would not appreciate it because it wouldn't be sweet enough for my more cocktail-used palate :-) For meals, I much prefer drinking just water, and for fun (as you know if you have been reading my blog for a while), cocktails and sparkling wine / champagne are my drinks.
So, after looking at many, many instruments (some of them looking very dangerous and war-like) used in vineyards, rows and rows of barrels, animated parts of the exhibition (all very nicely done, and four-year-old H behaved incredibly well throughout, although I am sure she must have been quite bored at times), we left the Hameau and went across the road to the garden and vineyard part of the museum.
I liked this part very much and would have loved to take a peek inside the gypsy caravan, but it was not possible.
My sister and I were both naive enough to think that the roses were planted at the end of the vineyards for beauty and pleasure - but of course, in agriculture, nothing is done without a good reason, and we learnt that the roses were put there as an indicator for any illness or a pest the vines may have, since they are the first to show the signs, and then the vintners can act on that.
Come back tomorrow for a stroll through Saint Amour with me!
It looks as if they have really made a good attraction out of their vineyard. Most vineyard tours I have been on have rather bored me, because, like you, I don't seem able to get my palate around what is a "good" and a "bad" wine. But you learned a lot here. I don't suppose it matters what the reasons are for the roses, it's wonderful to have them.
ReplyDeleteYes, the roses made it look a lot nicer with their splashes of colour at the end of each row of vines. It is not done over here; we do have a lot of vineyards in this part of Germany, but ours are mainly on steep slopes of hills, sometimes terraced with low drystone walls in between.
DeleteI shall start by saying that I love wine. One reason is that it is within my taste ability (I lost much of my ability to taste some years ago and can now only taste specific things properly). The first time I ever had a proper wine tasting was in Berlin where our friends had a huge cellar. That first tasting was of twelve German red wines which was, in itself, quite a feat to put together because Germany is not noted for its red wines. Living as I do in Hawkes Bay in New Zealand every visitor wants to visit some of our more famous wineries so I've been to a few over the years. Good wine? Bad wine? Yes there are good and bad wines but I would suggest that that is a very different thing from the wines that we may like or dislike. I have my likes and dislikes and some of my dislikes over the years have been at odds with the 'experts'. Do I care? No. Because - which is what you were saying Jenny - I likes what I likes!
ReplyDeleteThe area where I live has many, many vineyards, most of them producing red wine. Württemberg is probably most famous for its Trollinger, certainly not a wine to everyone's taste, but it sells well enough around here, I believe.
DeleteA friend of mine once went to a tasting that combined wines with chocolates... now THAT would have been something for me, too :-)
One of the odd things that I remember about my travels through Germany was the Franconian Wines and the fact that those wines were the only ones allowed to use a Bocksbeutel. I should add that although I am usually a red wine drinker (sometimes even one mouthful of white wine can give me a severe headache) I love German white wines as a light drink. They seem to be less available in the UK now and tend to be expensive.
DeleteThis looks so fun to visit. My son would like the steam engine, I know. I like wine, but like you (or so you say) don't know much about it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember your recent post about Andy and the steam engine :-)
DeleteOh yes, the rose may be there for that reason, but you can't tell me that they don't appreciate the beauty of them, after all, they are in France!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful photos!
It's nice when something that is useful is also beautiful, isn't it :-)
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