Throw Back Thursday: Road Trip Part 1

When I was studying abroad over the fall, I hardly blogged. I look back on all of my photos and think of all of the great memories that I made and thought to myself "I should have blogged about it". I decided that since I didn't do it at the time, that I would start making throw back thursday blog posts to talk about all of my adventures and especially the food that impacted them.

My first throw back thursday post is about my road trip to Bordeaux. In October, my University had a week off from classes. Six of my friends, that I met in Paris, and I decided to rent a car and drive to Bordeaux to do wine tasting. Simone, Kristine, Mads, and Isabella are from Denmark, Mikolaj is from Poland and Alexandra is from Sweden. We all squeezed into a tiny car and left Paris early on a Sunday to make it midday in Bordeaux that afternoon.

The car ride was pretty standard. We ate, slept, talked and sang. When we arrived that afternoon, we immediately went to our place where we were going to spend the next two days in. The place that we rented was through Airbnb and it was absolutely amazing. We were all used to living in a tiny room in Paris so when we saw that we were going to be staying in a house, in the center of Bordeaux, with a huge kitchen and living room, we were psyched!

Our first order of business was to look for somewhere to eat. We decided to head into the center of Bordeaux by the water to search for a restaurant. As we were walking through the center, two of my friends spotted a tiny market that was selling fresh oysters and wine. We decided that we had to stop to eat some oysters before we could head any further. We sat down with a plate of freshly chucked oysters, lemon wedges, and devoured them in less then a minute. After, we found a small restaurant to eat a quick meal and plan what we were going to do for the rest of the day.

Our next order of business was to find wine. Since it was a Sunday, many of the supermarkets and specialty markets were closed. We asked our waiter where we could buy some bottles and he said that there was a festival near where we were that was celebrating the release of the "Beaujolaid Nouveau" or the "new wine". The festival was packed with people eating, drinking new wine and walking around. After drinking a couple of glasses of wine and wandering around, we finally located a shop that sold wine and bought a couple of bottles to bring home.

After going back home, relaxing and opening up a bottle of wine, it was already time for dinner. We had asked earlier about dinner recommendations and the locals told us to go to this seafood restaurant in town. We headed over late that evening and luckily found a table to fit all of us.

The restaurant was amazing. I shared two meals with another friend so that we both could try two different dishes. We had langoustine and scallops. The langoustine was by far my favorite! I rarely have them and the way they prepared them was perfect. They grilled the langoustine, which made it smokey, which contrasted perfectly with the sweet meat inside. Langoustine isn't the prettiest and easiest dish to eat but it is so worth the work. 

The next day was the day that I was looking forward to the most, wine tasting in Saint-Émilion. Saint-Émilion is located northeast of Bordeaux and has some of the most amazing red wines you will ever taste. My friend Simone, who is an even bigger foodie then I am, arranged for us to have a private wine tasting tour at one of the small vineyards in the region.

When we first arrived at the vineyard, Chateau Puy-Razac, we were greeted by the sommelier and his two apprentices. We began by getting a tour of the vineyard and hearing about the story of the family who owned it. We then headed over to where the grapes are stored in and the sommelier began to explain to us the process of making wine. I was lucky to be fluent in French because the sommelier only spoke in French and none of my friends knew the language. I ended up being the translator for the rest of the day but I learned a lot about wine. 

During the tour, we learned all about what types of grapes they use for the wine, how they cultivate their grapes, the fermentation process and my favorite, how to taste the wine. We ended up trying around 6 different years of wine, the oldest being 1993, all of which were amazing. The one that we all loved the most was their 2009 bottle. We decided that before we leave, we would buy six bottles. 

At the end of our tour, the sommelier had to leave to go look after another one of his properties and the two apprentices were nice enough to take us around the city of Saint-Émilion. They walked us through the beautiful paths and showed us the church, explaining to us the history of Saint-Émilion the whole while. I have never seen a more beautiful city in my life. 

Saint-Émilion is basically an entire city on a hill. The buildings are all made of stone and built somewhat on a slant and the roads are very narrow and steep, making it feel very ancient and mysterious. As you get to the top, you can see an entire view of the city. From afar you can see the beautiful vineyards that produce some of the most amazing wines and right below are all the ancient homes that were built in the prehistoric times. It's absolutely breathtaking! 

Before our new friends left, they recommended a place for us to eat at that was a favorite among the locals. They surely weren't steering us wrong. I had one of the most amazing starters that I have ever eaten before. It was foie gras, but what was so special about it was that it wasn't just any old foie gras, it was a tasting of foie gras with infusions of different flavors.

There was vanilla foie gras, foie gras with spicey sausage, foie gras with sea salt and foie gras with black pepper. My favorite and probably the most interesting with the Crème brûlée foie gras. It was slightly sweet and creamy and the burned sugar on top gave a fantastic crunch. It was out of this world.

After lunch, we went to our second wine tasting. We decided to go to a larger vineyard in Saint-Émilion called Chateau Haut Sarpe. The vineyard was very different from the first one, this one had a castle and had many more acres of land to produce more grapes.

This particular vineyard only made Grand Cru wines which literally means great growth. This means that the vineyard produces a higher quality wine. 

The tour was fairly similar to the first one and I was again the translator for the whole group. We didn't get as many perks as the first wine tour though, we only were allowed to taste one Grand Cru wine and we had to pay €5, but it was a great experience nevertheless. What I learned though is that if you call a smaller vineyard and ask for a private tour, they usually will give it to you for free and you end up trying more years of wine. This allows your to find a wine that you really like and buy a couple of bottles to go home with. 

 For our final evening, we decided that instead of going out, that we would cook a nice meal and drink the wine that we purchased from the vineyards we visited. After dropping off the rest of the group at the apartment, Simone and I went to the supermarket to shop for our ingredients. We purchased a variety of cheeses with nuts and baguette and we decided that we would make roasted chicken with pommes frites and salad.

We set up the cheeses on the living room table, opened a few bottles of wine and got cooking. For the cheeses we picked a gruyere, a brie, and an aged goat cheese. We also had fig jam, olives, hummus and nuts.

For our main meal, we made roasted chicken and pommes frites. We all ended up eating way more cheese and bread before our actual meal so by the time we sat down for dinner, all of us were full. We did manage to make space in our stomachs though and enjoyed our final meal together. 

The next morning, still very full from the night before, we packed our things and left for our next part of our road trip, Portsal.