Yesterday I was tired and hungry, so I don't think I made justice to this beautiful region. I was also looking at the northern portion of the region of Médoc, where the towns are tiny clusters around the church, apparently without shops, bakeries, or places to stop and have a glass of wine. I presume most of the people live in the vineyards, their chateaux (there are some really impressive and luxurious residences here), or the more sensible buildings where the grapes are processed and the wine is made. The combination of vineyards and chateaux make for a lovely countryside, which I have been able to explore at my leisure by the simple process of getting lost.
There are myriads of narrow country roads, in some instances with black top but in most just covered with gravel, not for my biking pleasure but for the movement of the funny tractors they use here. They are skinny and have very tall wheels, so they can ride astride a row of grapevines and cover the adjacent one to the left and the one to the right with extensions, so one tractor pass is enough to trim or spray three rows at a time. The trimming uses cutting wheels that take any leaves that are sticking out of the row, so each row ends with a very skinny profile and with the growing grape bunches exposed to the glorious sun. Of course many baby grapes die in the process, but the growers are going for quality and not quantity here. Besides, by keeping the rows skinny and uniform, they will be able to harvest the grapes mechanically, saving themselves enormously in labor and cost. The same gawky tractors are right now spraying some type of sulfur mixture, to keep the grapes from moulding. So these wines have sulfites, but are otherwise grown with an eye toward being ecologically benign. For example, they don't spray herbicides or pesticides, instead trying to maintain a cover vegetation that can host lady bugs, spiders, and carnivorous grass hoppers to keep the bad bugs in check.
The vineyards are not irrigated (except for three years while they are getting started). In fact, irrigation is forbidden by the winegrowers associations that seem to regulate every aspect of the business. The idea is that grape vines have to be tough, reach deep in the soil to find their water, and in this way "develop their character". For example, the cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot grapes like rocky soils and develop quite strong flavors, whereas the merlot grapes like sandy soils and thus develop a more subdued flavor. I already mentioned that wine is made out of each of the varieties of grapes (with the varietal wines on any given region being pretty much the same), and the real art of making good wine comes when the Vigneron or wine master blends different varietal wines, in proportions developed by experimentation, tradition, or the mental image the Vigneron develops about how this mixture will age into a great wine in one or two years. To assure the consistency (but not equality) of wines produced in a region, the Vignerons of a region form a council that reviews the individual formulas, and approves them or modifies them to safegard the good name of the region.
About regions, these are the famous regions de appellation contrôlée that are so jealously guarded by the French. Médoc is a region, and so are Haut Médoc, Pauillac, ..., Saint Julien, and Bordeaux. Wait! Bordeaux is quite far, so why is it included in the list?. Turns out that the silty sand soils of the lowlands surrounding the estuary, and the maritime climate, make wines produced in this areas more akin to Bordeaux wines than to Médoc wines, so they have been granted the permission to call themselves Bordeaux wines. I stopped at a beautiful domain, a short distance from Saint Julien, and in the same sandy gravel soils, but they were on the other side of the creek, so they could not use the Saint Julien appellation and had to use the Haut Médoc appellation. I am sure there is a lot of history behind the regions, but I will note, as a geologist, that the region has been gently uplifted in the not so distant geologic past, and I think one can distinguish three formations: An older fluvial sand (where the typical terroir of the Médoc is found) that is overlain by a fluvial gravelly sand with lots of quartz pebbles (where the typical terroir of the Haut-Médoc, Saint Julien, Pauillac and other of the local regions is found), and finally the recent silty sand of the estuary (where, as I already mentioned is where the Bordeaux terroir is found). Kind of fun to speculate about this relation between geology and wine, although I am sure the œnologues of France might look at my hypothesis with desdain.
The estuary region was occupied by the Romans, who left behind them the archaeologic site of Brion, which I found by pure serendipiti. One can see the remains of the forum, the temple, a couple of houses and an ally, and a quarry where millstones of different sizes were shaped. The Roman mills were operated by slaves, and in French were called moulin à sang or blood mills. I think I might from now call my bike my Moulin à Sang to stress the fact that it travels under strict human power.
My other archaeological visit was to Fort Médoc, a fort built in 1690 on the left bank of the estuary to protect the regional capital, Bordeaux, from the depredations of the bad guys. There were in fact three forts: Fort Médoc on the west bank, Fort Pâté on a silty island in the middle of the estuary, and the Citadelle de Blaye on the east bank. They were all three in a line, and if any bad guys tried to navigate either of the channels they would be showered by cannon fire from the fort in the bank and the fort in the island.
I got back home at a
good time, because I plan to take advantage of my beautiful lodging and its
swimming pool. My turn to be a bum!
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