Rings And Things

Yesterday was a pretty spectacular day. We started by getting up first thing and meeting our guide, Dewey Markham, Jr., who took us to three very special wineries. It took about 40 minutes to get out to the first one and we arrived early which gave us plenty of time to talk which was needed. Understanding Bordeaux wine classification is something we had always found perplexing but he made it really easy to piece together. If you ever come to this area, look him up. Even if we hadn't gotten engaged yesterday, the day would have been one of my best. Thank you Dewey!

The first winery was called Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande. It is a beautiful place and had a fantastic property. Our guide there took us through and explained the wine making process and what they did. Much of it we had heard before in Napa Valley and Mendoza but it was nice to get a refresher. That said, making Bordeaux wine seems like a far more complex, hands on, labour intensive process than we've ever had explained before.
While we were walking through the property, Ryan was especially happy to find a barrel that had been specially designed by Louis Vuitton for the owners. All I can say is thank god it wasn't for sale. I can picture him trying to figure out whether to check it as a bag or ship it, and which piece of furniture we'd have to get rid of in the livingroom.
We had a bit of time before our booking at the next chateau so we stopped at a wine store. None of the wineries sell their wine at the property. You can only get the bottles at stores or from brokers. We knew some of them were expensive but there were also some really reasonable prices. To give you an idea, the wines we tasted at the first winery were around 10 Euros and the other was 75 Euros ($15.75 and $118). Before we walked in I didn't realize just how ridiculous things could get. 2000 was a good year for wine as was 2005. Take a look at one of the bottles we found in there. If you do the conversion, it's $6,600 per bottle. Totally insane. We could only get two.
You would never guess, but unless you are a top tier winery, it is a struggle to make a lot of money. Many of the wineries are owned by other companies so that if they have a bad year, they've got money from something else to pump into the property. The next one we went to was owned by Chanel and was called Chateau Rauzan-Segla. Again, another really stunning place. After we finished our tasting, our guide showed us one last tower we could climb for a panoramic view of the property.
As soon as we got up there, Mr. "Marriage is the Kiss of Death" starts pulling rings out of his pocket. Now, to give you a bit of background... we've been together for 5 years and around Christmas time this last year I was thinking seriously of proposing to Ryan on this trip. I started throwing out things like "You might want to be prepared for something special when we have our picnic at the Eiffel Tower." This led to him getting all snippy and saying things like "I HATE surprises. Just don't." Super romantic, no? Turns out he was overcompensating because he was in the middle of planning the same thing and had bought us rings already.

It turns out that other guests are never allowed up in that tower. While we were on the rest of the tour, they had put a bottle of Champagne and two flutes up there so we could celebrate. I was totally stunned. Even though he had planned it, I think Ryan might have been as well. Cue two blubbering messes on top of a tower in the middle of Bordeaux. Here's a picture that Dewey took of us from down below (he thinks of everything !)
After this, we went to our final chateau which was supposed to be the highlight. I'm afraid the thunder had been stolen already but it was still spectacular. There is a lot of history here at Chateau Margaux and we got a special tour throughout the property, thanks to the great relationships our wine guide had with some of the people there.
It's really hard to phathom just how much wine these properties stored at one time. Once bottled, 4 barrell equals 100 cases of wine. Crazy.

There are so many other things that we could tell you about, like the restaurant where you crawl down a tiny sprial staircase to the cellar where you weave through a maze of wine on your own and bring up whichever bottle you'd like to have with dinner, but we need to go check out some more wineries in a different region today. Thanks for all your well wishes. XO.