Bordeaux: Strikes, Facelifts and Wine

We’ve gone from sandals to sweaters and coats.  We experienced a train strike when departing from Toulouse and a national strike while in Bordeaux. One little striker was particularly cute.  Her enthusiasm resulted in bystanders in close proximity getting whacked.  There weren’t a lot of bystanders though – everyone seem to marching and singing something that sounded an awful lot like an Irish jig.

Some things in Bordeaux made little sense to us, like this tortoise (and baby) sculpture in one of the squares. She’s eating grapes and there is a little man sitting on each of their necks, also eating grapes.  If you google it, you get a lot of other, much better pics, but little in the line of explanation.

And check out these …  they made me think of rolls of wrapping paper, but they’re actually the painted columns inside a church.

 

 

 

 

Bordeaux was known as the Black City as it’s porous limestone buildings had turned black over the years. Recently the city underwent a major facelift and almost all the building exteriors have been cleaned. Here’s an example from one church that is currently undergoing the process. One has to wonder though, with pollution and climate change, how long the pristine look will last.     

 

Bordeaux also has an incredible above ground electric tram/metro system, that has only come into being in the past 10 years. It’s hard to understand how a city as old as Bordeaux can accomplish something so massive, while Ottawa never seems able to move beyond the blueprint stage when it comes to rapid transit.

Next topic - our wine tour on Wednesday was really interesting. The guide spoke of the differences in soil conditions/composition that make up the various regions.  In France, wine growers are not allowed to irrigate and so the combination of weather, grape variety and soil conditions can result in one region having a stellar year, while a neighbouring one does not. They had had trouble with the merlot grapes being burnt this summer at the vineyard we visited! The grapes are harvested over 9 days, in a single a month, with the cabernet sauvignon (which she described as being a very lazy grape that takes its time ripening), being last. The vineyard we went to in Pomerol (in occitan “Pomairòu”, see my Street Signs blog) uses retired people for picking … just an idea if anyone is interested.

We were surprised to learn that most of the vineyards are closed to the public, and the vast majority are now owned by conglomerates.  Petit-Village, where we went is owned by an insurance company. Another thing that I didn’t know is that the vineyards don’t manage their own exporting – the wine is sold on the futures market. In that way, they can remain focussed on their core business and have sufficient cash flow.   

From Pomerol we went to St Emilion, a walled medieval city (and also a major wine producing area).  The pic on the right is of the entrance to an underground church there. The downside of tours is that you’re not able to stop and see all the things that you’d like and we didn’t have time to go inside.  We’ll just have to go back.  But not in the summer; St Emilion has a population of about 150, and in summer sees 10,000/tourists/day!

We did have time to buy macaroons in St Emilion and they have a great story about how macaroons came into being.  Egg whites are used to clean the grape residue out of the wine barrels.  At 5 whites a barrel, that’s a lot of eggs, so a long time ago the priest looked to the nuns, who were known to be fine cooks, to come up with a recipe that would use the whites. The area also has an abundance of almonds and so voila … macaroons. They didn’t talk about what was done with the yolks, but I’m thinking crème caramel, crème brulée, and crème this and that.