Today I slept in until eleven. It
was very glorious. I woke up and took a quick shower and scarfed down a banana
and some apple sauce and a roll before packing up my laptop and heading to Book
in Bar to work on my paper. I texted Cassandra and invited her to join me and
she did. It was nice to have her there even if we didn’t really talk very much
but it was nice to have the company. I finished my paper so that is good and
I’m glad to have it out of the way. We stayed there for a good three hours. We
ordered two iced chocolate banana smoothies which were very delicious and came
with a speculoos cookie! I had been wanting to try them and I discovered that
they are the same as the like gingerbread cookies that you get on airplanes in
the morning with coffee. THEY ARE SO GOOD! Cassandra says that they are a Dutch food. But man are they good. I liked
Book in Bar. It is an American bookstore and would be nice to go one day and
just sit and read a good book. I am at the park in Game of Thrones that I have
been waiting for. Though am I horrible that I wish it had been more gruesome?
Maybe. But I have to read the whole Brothers Karamazov for my literature class
so I doubt I would have time to read the fourth even if I had it. Maybe I will
buy it for the plane… But knowing my luck I would leave it on the plane again…
I am so bad with leaving things on planes…
But after I finished my paper
Cassandra and I went to find some food. It was about 1:30 and our wine tasting
with the school wasn’t until 4. We ran over to Monoprix so I could see if they
had those delicious cookies and they did for super cheap and in the pack they
were separated in little packets of two! Perfect!
We went to a pasta place that
Cassandra knew. It was really good and not very expensive either! It was pretty
good. I would go back except that I am not a very big pasta person. Once in a
while is fine but I just get sick of it too easily and we usually have it for
dinner at least once if not twice a week so that is enough for me. But it was
good for today. The lady who made it was also very nice which is sometimes hit
and miss as an American. Sometimes they act like they can’t understand you even
when you say things perfectly or are more rude, but other times they are very
nice and helpful. We were eating outside at a table when a couple walked by
trying to figure out how to get to the Tourism Office which was really on the
opposite side of town. They were speaking English so Cassandra and I helped
them get straightened out before we left on our way. We stopped at a pastry
shop close to the school that we know so that I could but an éclair for my dad.
Well for me. It was very delicious :-)
The filling was really light and it was super good. You can be sufficiently
jealous dad.
We went back to the school and hung
out in the cave for a bit while Cassandra worked on her papers and I longingly
looked for cheap flights for next weekend to anywhere. I didn’t really find
anything. Pretty soon it was time to go and have our wine tasting upstairs in
the other building. We went and as soon as you got to the third floor you could
definitely smell there was wine. We walked in and were the first ones there.
There were thirty place settings with 4 glasses of different wines as well as
pretzels and cookies. We took a seat in the back so that it would be easier for
other people to come in. We tried four wines today, one white wine, one rose,
and two different red wines. They are all from the Provence region where I am
so that was cool. I learned that the Provence region is the largest region in
the world for producing Rosé wines.
One of the professors here works in
the wine industry so she taught us exactly how to swirl it and what to look for
in tasting wines and how to smell for different flavors. I learned a lot of
things such as that for each region there are only certain kinds of grapes that
you are allowed to grow. There are a lot of strict rules for each region (AC)
and the regions are pretty small. One of the common rules is that you have to
mix grape varieties in wine here. You can’t just say I am going to use just
Grenache grapes to make a wine, you have to have a mixture of different kinds.
I also learned that in the Roman times people in France couldn’t make wine
because The romans didn’t want anyone else growing grapes to make wine because
then they could charge a lot of money for it. Now days you can’t plant more
vineyards in Italy as it is illegal because there are already so many. It is
almost the same in France but you can make vineyards that are pre-existing
bigger. I also learned that it takes three years from when you plant the vines
and get grapes until you get grapes that are able and good enough to make wine.
Interesting!
The first wine that we tried was
the white which was Chateau de Fontcreuse 2012 from the Cassis AC. It was good
(I thought all of them were good in their own way). It tasted like sort of
apple/peach/florally. It was dry and had a moderate acidity. The Second was a Rosé which
everyone agreed was not as good as other rosés that we have had here. It was
Domaine d’eole 2012 from the Coteaux d’Aix en Provence AC. It was made from
Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, and Mourvedre grapes. I learned that Rosés get their
color from red grapes that are allowed to ferment with their skins on for only
between 12 and 24 hours. Then they skin them and ferment them the rest of the
way before making them into wine. It was also a dry wine (all of them are
today) and it tasted like rhaspberry/watermelon/floral/berrys. It is supposed
to be served COLD and more cold than the white.
The third wine that we had was a
Domaine de Bastide, Malcare 2010 from the Coteaux d’Aix en Provence AC. This
one was probably my favorite but mostly everyone else did not like it. We
learned that when you look at a red wine if the edge of the wine looks clearish
it is a newer wine but the more brown that it looks the older the wine. It was
very dry and tasted kind of peppery to me. The general concensus was that it
tasted like nutmeg or gingerbread but I thought it tasted like black pepper. We
also learned how to taste for tanons. The way you do this is you put some of
the wine under your upper lip and let it sit there for like fifteen seconds.
After that it sort of feels like the wine dried out all your skin and it kind
of burned. We learned that you can get rid of that by drinking the wine with
some sort of fatty meat or with salt, and for vegetarians eggplant.The last wine was a Domaine Castell
Reynoard 2012 from the Bandol AC. In this region they have to use at least 50%
or more of the Mourvedre grapes in their wine. And unfortunately this is one of
the varieties that you either really like or really don’t. It was definitely
different but I didn’t mind it. I couldn’t really pick out any flavors because
it was really well harmonized. It smelled like chocolate and black cherry. We
learned that the chocolate smell means that it was aged in oak barrels. It was
really smooth and very dry again. We tried the tanons and even they were much
calmer than with the other red wine.
I liked them all and even learned
an interesting fact that wine coolers are only important if you are going to
save the wine to age. But that 98% of wine in the US is consumed within 48
hours of purchase! Wow! I guess we really are a very consumerist country! After
the wine tasting I stayed around to help clean and put away all the wine
glasses. I had nothing to do and saw that it was going to take a while so I
decided I should stay a bit. After that was done I came home and started
reading. After a while Beebow came in and started laying on the bed with me. That was pretty cool. We did that for a while
and then pretty soon Madame came home and we had dinner. She made asalad with
tuna, tomatoes, and avocado, along wirth red peppers, olives and cucumbers. It
was all I could do to try and eat it. I would use the red peppers and cucumbers
to try and cover up the other tastes but eventually I couldn’t do it anymore
and started picking out tomatoes and some of the tuna. Madame asked if I liked
tuna and I told her not really and she said oh well next time I will make it
with chicken. YAY. But I still wanted to eat it. I got ¾ of the way through
before I started picking which I think was pretty impressive. We had water
which was A-Okay with me after so much wine.
Then we started watching
MasterChef. They were cooking these big lobster things and Madame told me
that’s what she made on the Yacht when she worked for that guy and he took her
out on his yacht one day. She says they are really good. One guy was cooking
something and madame asked what it was and I said a chili and she thought I
said Chenille and looked at me really weird and then about twenty seconds later
was like OH Chili! And I was like yeah isn’t that also the French word for it
and she said yes but I thought you said Chenille which when I looked it up was
Caterpiller. We laughed at that and I said I hope it isn’t a caterpillar he
would have to be pretty big! It was funny. We were watching that when suddenly
the tv went out. Apparently there is a storm tonight! It is really cool! Lots
of lightening about every ten seconds. When they get rain here it is usually in
the form of a storm and happens at night but then in the morning is beautiful
again. But the storm is pretty sweet. I like it. Lots of thunder too!
Kelan invited me to go with him,
Julia, and Lauren tomorrow to Cassis so I hope it is nice! We are meeting
tomorrow at 8;30 in the morning so no more sleeping in until Tuesday for me but
such is the life! I hope that I will be able to post this tonight but I doubt
it with the storm. But I will try! Bon nuit!
Girl who has very similar characteristics to Cassidy:
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