So...I have returned home.  Sadly I had to leave Bordeaux and all my lovely haunts, and of course, the wine.  Let's not forget the wine!

Whilst I was there, I ate at several cafés.  I had a variety of different meals, from simple crèpe au nutella, to fish. From sandwiches to hors d'oeuvres.  On several of my wine tours, we had lunch or hors d'oeuvres with some of the wines.  One thing I learnt is that you are not limited to certain wines with specific meals.  You simply need to find the right complemetary taste.  For example, upon visiting a vinyard dedicated to sweet white wine, we had a lunch of duck different forms as well as several cheeses, foie gras and rillettes.  to drink we started with a dry white, and then moved to the sweet whites.  In all, we had three different wines, from different vintages, all having unique flavours, and each went with our meal.
At one of our other vinyard visits, we had a selection of three red wines.  We had lamb for the plat du jour, or main course, and for dessert, we had fruit.  during this visit, we had a "wine education" class.  We were given four scents, unknowns, and were asked to try to determine what flavours they were.  This is what vintners do every time they taste a wine.  They smell various flavours in the wine.  These flavours are not infused into the wine.  They are a natural part of the environment, they come from the soil itself, and some of the flavours also come to the wine during the ageing process.  At La Cité du Vin, there are several tables dedicated to flavours and aromas.  You would be surprised at the amazng things you would never expect to be a part of a simple glass of wine.  Things such as manure, all types of flowers, berries, cinnamon, nutmeg, berries, oak (because they use French Oak for the ageing), caramel, chocolate, etc.  These flavours and aromas are not added!  Different varieties of berries and flowers and grasses grow naturally all over the countryside, so the soil is rich from their roots.  The woody flavours, chocolate, caramel, etc, come from the barrelling.  The barrels are burnt to varying degrees...light toasted, medium toasted and dark toasted.  Most of the vinyards use their barrels once or twice, on occasion three times, before selling them to whiskey makers, and purchasing new.  Some vinyards only use them one time.  But the ones that use them multiple times may get even more flavours in their wines.  After three uses, however, the barrels seem to lose that woody flavour.

Each plot is brought in individually, so the grapes are all kept separate.  This insures that each flavour is coaxed out.  Each plot is then put into it's own vat for the fermentation process.  Again, each vinyard is different in their technique.  Some use stainless steel, others use concrete, and some even still maintain wooden vats.  Before the grapes are put into the vats, they are gently pressed and not squashed.  This is to release some of the juice without compromising the grape.  A lot of the vinyards fill the vats by gravity, to reduce the stress to the grapes.  Winemaking, from what I've learnt, seems to be very stressful for so humble a fruit.  I never even would have thought this.  This is one reason the harvest is done by hand, and even some of the pruning is done by hand....all to ensure a stress-free life for the grapes!