Let’s Wine a Little

We mentioned that the house below us was in the throws of major roof work and we awoke to the workmen hoisting beams into place for the new roof.

After they had the beams in place they brought in a ceiling material - a drywall styrofoam combo - that neatly slotted into place beneath the beams. I’m liking these French building materials. After watching progress below us, we headed off to Rasteau to taste wine.


This was Brigitte’s first experience with wine tasting before noon but she adapted.

Next stop was Seguret. We actually set out here to find mailing tubes for posters and did succeed with some limitations - like size and length. Today there was an artist painting a section of the old village - was this a tourist plant? Am I getting totally cynical?

To further complete our wine tasting experience, we headed to Domaine Mourchon for their Wednesday English tour of the vineyards. Upon arrival, the tractors were dumping their grapes and sure enough, Walter was out there helping with the sorting.

Today’s picking was Syrah grapes and Walter gave us grapes to taste, which were very sweet and sticky while later we tasted the juice of the grapes and we found them equally sweet! Other than a Spanish couple with their two small children, the oldest of which I very quickly scared off - maybe I’m a little loud - this was pretty much a private tour.

We took the walk up to the upper Grenache vineyard and admired the 60 year old vines, intermingled with much younger ones, ate the grapes and checked out the views included Ventoux in the clouds and Walter’s house just below us.

Hugo, Walter’s son-in-law led the tour today and continued to take us into the bowels of the winery with their oak barrels. He emphasized that the oak is used, not to taste oak instead of grapes, but to allow the wine to breath as it matured. They use oak sparingly.

We finished the tour with Walter in the tasting room and walked away with wine and Walter’s wife’s products, including a confit de grenache which we used with our duck dinner tonight. WOW! The day wound down with cards, which Dawn, ungraciously continues to win. Enough said.