Wine Wine and More Wine

---

Today we had a really relaxed tour on the bus. We had a tour guide Vivianne Beller gave us a really nice tour. She was born in Massachusetts and moved to France and has lived here for 32 years. She has 3 children and one lives in Pars, China, and America. She goes to America probably twice a year. We traveled around as she informed us of the plantations, and what things are grown. We are in the Alsace and we stopped by the "Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle". The castle was built in the 12th century and was the residence of the several different eminent proprietors including members of the Habsburg dynasty and German emperor Wilhelm II. As we went through the tour, it was like we were fighting to get through and we got a real sense of the history and what it was like there. It was very crowded here so it was a little difficult to get around.

Once we finished the tour of the castle, we went to eat some lunch in the area. After lunch, we were headed to the winery. We traveled to Riquewihr, France to visit the winery "Zimmer" and we had some wine tasting. While at the winery, I learned that the barrels hold hundreds of liters of wine and it compresses the grapes to get it out. Also, you have to crawl in the barrel to clean it, so it takes a tiny person to get in there! When you are tasting wine, they have wine crackers or bread to help you get rid of the tastes. We started tasting wine and you always want to start with the dry wine and work your way up to a sweet wine. We tasted 4 samples of wine. The first one was very dry and very acidic. As we worked our was up, the last one was very smooth and the wines we had were white wines. We got the chance to try different things, and I tried a few other wines and I believe some Schnapps as well. I bought a few as souvenirs and then we left to have some free time then dinner.

The dinner we had was great! We had this pizza type dish the guy was very proud of. It had different cheese, one had chives and the other had munster cheese. It was soooo strong!! Phew! They were all very good, and I also had a glass of wine with the dinner. The last one we had one with apples like dessert and that was very good. After dinner, we returned home and went to bed because most of the people were going to Paris the next day.

---