Day 19: Caves of Saumur

Today began with a brief, two hour lesson on viticulture and the culture of wine making. It was somewhat interesting to hear about the entire process of wine making from start to finish, but surprisingly, I found myself overwhelmed with boredom as the instructor went into great depths about the chemistry (CHEmistry, as he pronounced each and every time) of wine making. After the lesson, we had two hours to scramble to the cafeteria downtown to eat lunch, which consisted of bland noodles, carrots, and a white fish. I usually grab a loaf of bread to eat because it's the only thing that has consistent taste in that cafeteria. We headed back quickly and loaded onto the charter bus to head out to our wine tour at Saumur, a small town that is known for it's Saumur cooperative and industrialized wine production. We arrived at the cooperative in the countryside and immediately began our tour. We began our tour with the newer and more modern part of the facility with modern equipment. It was quite impressive seeing the massive cisterns, holding tanks, presses, and the systematic network that linked them all. It was quite clean and all crafted with stainless steel. After this tour, we headed to the older part of the winery, which was located underground in a complex network of caves. As we entered the caves, I was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of mold and wine. It was quite dark, damp, and cold. It seemed like we took ten flights of stairs down into the caves and arrived at the bottom where various wooden boxes were lined along the cave walls, filled to the top with dusted wine bottles ready to be cleaned and labeled. The tour lasted about two hours, of which we was the entire wine making process from start to finish, "following the grape" the entire way. The caves were equipped with natural cooling for the wine, a bottling room, a processing room, storage room, etc. I was quite impressed because these facilities were very modern and industrialized, unlike many of the other companies we've seen thus far. After the tour, we climbed back up to the wine store on top of the caves. Here, we had quite a long wine tasting and tasted about 15 different wines! I found that my favorite were the oak wines; those wines that are hand picked and aged in oak barrels. The tour was great, and it was probably the best wine tasting I've had yet!