Spent the Easter weekend in Bordeaux.
At the airport at Bordeaux, when I got onto the shuttle bus, I had my usual dreaming-up-nightmare-scenarios. What if someone steals my bag before the driver closes the luggage hold? Or worse still - what if the driver forgets to close the luggage hold and drives off? And then my baggage would fall out and be crushed under the next vehicle. Fortunately none of these happened and I could worry about more onerous duties that lay ahead of me – which wine to chose etc. etc. etc.
Bordeaux is obviously well-known for its surrounding vineyards that produce some of the best vin rouge that France has to offer. The city lies on a bend of the river Garonne (which is surprisingly wide for a European river).
Bordeaux, also sometimes known as la belle au bois dormant (sleeping beauty), turned out to be pleasant - a neat and clean city with large tree-lined pedestrianised boulevards with neoclassical architecture and lots of lots of churches. A large part of the city is closed to vehicular traffic and on the first sunday of the month (when I happened to be there), the city centre is closed to all cars. So it is a great place to walk around and soak in the atmosphere - perfect weather, temperatures of 20C with gentle sunshine, also helped. It rained for a couple of hours almost every morning but the rest of the day would be gorgeous. I would have loved to simply close my eyes and just soak in the sun had I not been regularly disturbed by a pretty mademoiselle in a colourful dress cycling by (with a basket full of flowers) - and all this with a background aroma of strong coffee and freshly-baked pain - talk about cliches. But obviously I did not complain.
Usually, whilst travelling, I always look for an Indian restaurant, in this trip I ended up eating non-Indian at a rate far greater than my normal. The main reason being that of the three 'Indian' restaurants there, two were closed and I managed to eat only once at the third one. The rest of the meals I went French! But I am pleased to admit that I assiduously avoided les huitres (oysters) - to prevent a repeat of what Mr. Bean did in Mr. Bean's Holiday . One of the meals was at a rather pretentious restaurant where I was shit-scared of using the wrong fork or the wrong napkin. I could imagine the locals laughing at this uncivilised outsider. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I managed to eat the lamb steak without letting the meat fly out in all directions.
On another ocassion, I even tried that essentially (and only) French snack, the Croque Monsieur (grilled sandwich of molten cheese and ham). I am pleased to report that it was far more agreeable than what I imagined it to be. At the bar where I treated myself to this French institution, I was surrounded by what seemed to be a cast straight out of a 1950s movies - everyone was wearing trench coats and sunglasses (indoors!). And it was obvious that each one of them had spent far too much time on selecting their clothes, sunglasses, and fixing their hair. Vive La France!
One particular restaurant, Entrecote, really intrigued me. In the heart of Bordeaux, this place always had a queue of atleast 100-150 people in front of it. I enquired at the local tourist office about it (was too embarrassed to ask the people in the queue itself) and the lady there very brusquely told me “Oh it’s nothing. Just a restaurant,” she said with the usual turn of the French nose. On delving deeper I figured out that this was THE restaurant in Bordeaux to dine in. Despite (or rather, because?) of its reputation, they did not take reservations – that explained the queues!!! Its speciality is thinly sliced meat and frites. Being a fan of neither, I decided to give the 2-3 hour wait in the queue and headed elsewhere.
The local culinary speciality (apart from wine, that is) is a Canelé cake - invented in the 18th C by nuns (huh?), this run-and-vanilla cake has a crisp caramelised exterior (Yummm!). It is available/visible just about anywhere in Bordeaux and surrounding areas.
The city is in the Gironde Department which is part of the Aquitaine (remember Elf Aquitaine?) region. So from Bordeaux I also visited Cap Ferret and Arcachon that are close to the Atlantic coast and have lovely beaches. Cap Ferret, with its green pine trees and sandy beaches (a well-known hangout for surfers) has a beautiful red-and-white (cigarettes?) lighthouse.
Arcachon, reminiscent of the belle epoque, has opulent villas and beautiful beaches. Near Arcachon there is a rather incongruous sand dune Dune de Pyla which apparently is the largest (and highest) sand-dune in Europe. The 3 kms long dune is moving eastwards at a reasonably steady rate. From Arcachon I took the other French institution, the TGV to get back to Bordeaux. Sitting in a high speed train, I could not find any difference between it and the tortoise-like train I take between Edinburgh and Stirling to get to work. It is only when one looks outside that one realises that something is different - the trees and the houses pass by much faster (duh?). Otherwise nothing to give away that one is travelling in one of the fastest trains in the world.
Ok, onto the more interesting exports from Bordeaux onto tables the world over - there are more than 1000 sq.km. of wine-growing areas around Bordeaux - apparently 2/3rd of the Gironde department is covered with vineyerds (vignobles). Most people think that Bordeaux wine is all red - that is not true - apparently 20% of the wine produced here is white. Most of the grape varieties grown in this region are either Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, or Merlot. There are 57 appellations in Bordeaux (an appellation is a production area whose soil and micro climate impart distinctive characterstics on the wine which is produced there - sorry for this lecturesque sentence).
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pre-plan a stay at a Chateau (winery) so I had to resort to some of the countless tasting (degustation) tours that were available. I had hoped that these tours would help hone my non-existant oenological skills. On these tours we were given a lot of spiel about appellations, grand crus, cuvees, AOC etc. etc. etc. But the best part would be the saved for the tastings when all of us clueless tourists would very knowledgably hold the glass against the light, take a whiff (premier nez), then a shake and a whiff (deuxieme nez) and then the sip, followed by a nod of the head as if to approve. Ya right!
St. Emilion is one of the most prestigious vins rouges of Bordeaux. It is a pretty hilltop village with vineyards as far as the eye can see. The village has an intriguiging 11th century underground church that was dug into the ground (apparently the largest underground church in France). On our tour here there was a French gentleman who must have been atleast 90 years of age. He asked the most questions and was the one to screw his French nose the most disapprovingly when the discussion veered towards the modern-day non-cork cork. At first his questions and interjections seemed irritating but then we all slowly started to admire his spirit (bad pun?) of enquiry and sense of adventure (imagine being 90 and willing to travel alone!).
Well, that is the update from this trip. Next stop, Champagne?
PS: After all this, I probably still can’t differentiate between a wine with Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. Who cares as long as one can drink it!
