Dallas told me once
that as part of their eternal damnation, those souls headed for Hell would have
to go through Atlanta International. Well, I now believe that those penitents
headed for Purgatory have to go, again and again, through the train station
Bordeaux-Saint Jean! Crowded, hot, poorly labeled, and without any help, the
penitent soul has to seek his way by elbowing others aside, going up and down
to different tracks until, by a last-moment divine grace, he stumbles unto the
right platform a minute short of departure. In other words, I did not have any
love for Bordeaux, and about zero interest in visiting it.
However, I met a
couple of Spaniards along El Camino, who praised Burdeos highly as their
favorite French city. Really? Well, maybe I should at least take a look, so after
the FlixBus from Pamplona left me at the train station, at 9h00, I decided to
spend the day checking things out. Of course I was starting with a big load of
prejudice and in the least appealing part of town, so I was particularly
critical of the trash on the ground and the dirty facades (the porous, creamy
limestone from which the city is built is fertile ground for the growth of
mold, so unless washed with a certain frequency, the old buildings look somber
and uninviting).
As I walked closer to
town, however, the streets became cleaner and more and more of the buildings
had a clean, creamy aspect to them. Once I reached the city center, I was
favorably impressed by the plazas, the churches, the monuments, and the happy
awakening of the city. I was planning on taking the tourist bus, which left
from the Tourism Office right in the center of town, and got there in time to
catch the first run of the day. It is not a hop on-hop off bus, unfortunately,
so it was going to give me a bird’s eye view of the different parts of the
city, and if I wanted to visit a specific point afterward I would have to take
the tram.
Burdigala was a Roman
city established ca. 700 BC, distinguished by its location along the left bank of
the Garonne river, and by a region where the soil and the maritime climate was
conducive to the planting of vineyards. Not much is left of the Roman city,
because the city has gone through many stages of expansion, but Bordeaux has
retained his great location as one of the prime ports of Europe (the industrial
port has since migrated downstream to the estuary of La Gironde, which has
allowed Bordeaux to develop their river front with many promenades, green
belts, and other types of recreational spaces). Sometime during the Middle Ages
the city was protected by a massive wall, of which only the imposing gates
remain. The trace of the walls is now followed by wide avenues in a modest
Parisian style. When Aquitaine was taken over by the Protestants, many Dutch
merchants moved to Bordeaux and built fancy residences, or combined residences
and wine cellars, along the waterfront. These areas have gone through many
stages of renewal, particularly after the French took back Aquitaine, and were
augmented by monumental civic architecture.
The one thing
Bordeaux did not have until relatively recently, was a bridge to cross La
Garonne, which is a silty river with treacherous sand banks. After being
frustrated in one of his campaigns Napoleon I had his engineers build the first
bridge, built on wood pilons pushed into the silty bottom. The bridge was not
completed until the early 1800’s, a few years after the death of Napoleon. So,
going back in history, that means that the right bank of the river developed in
a completely different way, largely as silos for the storage of grain and other
types of industrial activities. Most of that old industry has now disappeared,
leaving behind ghost complexes that are now being considered for demolition and
construction of new residential areas. One repurposed industrial complex that I
wish I had time to visit is called Darwin, and is a demonstration project for
all things ecologic.
After I completed my
tour I took tram B to La Cité du Vin, an ultramodern complex that, among
other things, hosts the Wine Museum. The building is “modern” and presumably
represents the swirling of wine inside a carafe. “Rare”, if you know what I
mean. But the museum is fabulous. At the start you collect a small device and
earphones, which you then use to tap into the different displays. To begin with
you embark on a flight over some of the most beautiful wine-producing portions
of the world, such as France, Italy, Germany, South Africa and southern Australia,
and then you get to listen to the experiences of wine growers from Santorini
(where the vines need to be nested to protect them from heavy winds), Georgia
(where some of the oldest grape varieties were domesticated and wine making
techniques have varied but little in 3,000 years), Chile, Napa Valley, Spain,
and France. Every region has its own challenges, and has developed its own
strategies to deal with these challenges. I have been lucky enough to have
visited these regions, so I was more and more drawn into the mistic of wine. The
major lessons is that the regional quality of a wine is strongly influenced by terroir
(the combination of soil type, soil slope, slope orientation, and
elevation/temperature), sunlight, rainfall, suitable varieties and, of course,
the ingenuity and knowledge of local growers and vignerons.
A good part of the
museum is devoted to the different ways in which wine is manufactured. First
step is, of course, the care of the vines. Turns out that in the Americas vines
are infected by an aphid, phylloxera, which sometime in the late 1800’s
early 1900’s jumped over the Atlantic and started devastating the European
vineyards. Some treatments have been developed, but what seems to have worked
best is to bring rootstock from America, which has developed resistance to phylloxera,
and grafting unto it the ancient European varieties. According to the display,
nowadays the majority of European vineyards are grafted in this way. Another
interesting “pest” is the fungus Botrytis cinerea, present in the
Sauterne region southwest of Bordeaux. This fungus develops over some of the
grapes, slowly eating at the skin of the grape, causing the grapes to lose some
of their moisture and shrivel up, concentrating the sugars and flavors in the
remaining juice. The resulting Sauterne wine is sweet thanks to the "noble
rot" caused by the fungus.
Then comes the
tending of the vines. In Europe irrigation is considered an insult to Mother
Nature and is forbidden by the wine associations, but in other parts of the
world it is the only way to keep a crop going. The grower then has to keep an
eye on biological pests and decide how to deal with them (pesticides or
bioecological measures), thin the fruit buds so the plant is not overloaded,
thin the leaves (both to delay maturation and to facilitate sun exposure) and,
when the moment is right, harvest the fruit.
There are many
different approaches to the mashing, pressing, and fermentation of the grapes,
and every variety has its own idiosyncrasies. Then comes storing, ageing, and
in many cases blending to achieve the wine that the vigneron has in mind.
Finally there is the degustation of the final product, and what I think was my
favorite part of the museum. How do you explain the kaleidoscope of texture,
aroma, taste, and color of good wine? The museum uses different materials to
show textures that could be attributed to a wine, such as soft, silky, rasping,
rough. It also has many glass bells with materials such as pencil shavings,
orange peels, leather, fruits, or flowers, where the beginner can squeeze a
small membrane to circulate air through the glass bell and get a whiff of what that
smell might be like in a wine (they even have a series of quizzes to encourage
the visitor to concentrate). I am excited about conducting some wine tastings
at home and trying some of these techniques!
All in all, I very much
enjoyed my visit to Bordeaux, but was also happy to finally make it back to
Bergerac. I have about 10 days left before I have to head back home, so from
here on every moment will be precious.