Blogs from Sauternes, Aquitaine, France, Europe

This is the day to expand our pallet and go out and taste the sweet wines of Bordeaux, the Sauternes. The boat sailed during the night from bordeaux to cadillac. We took a lovely drive through the countryside of this region and it was just beautiful. Everywhere you look as far as the eye can see are acres and acres of beautiful vineyards and the French chateaus with the grey slate roofs. We stopped at one vineyard for a tour of the winemaking process and cave along with a wine tasting. The real treat of the day was the lunch that Uniworld arranged at Chateau d'Arche. Ooh la la was it fantastic. Three courses each paired with a sweet Sauterne wine. Now, I know you would think you could not enjoy that much sweet wine but ... read more

If you are not into wine, you will find this entry of very limited interest...if you love wine, stop for an amazing experience we had the chance to live few days ago. Sauternes is less than 2% of the total Bordeaux production, with a maximum yield of 3333 bottles per hectare (I simplify the terms to make it easy here). As they have a maximum of 2200 hectares, make the maths, each year, the maximum amount of bottles that could be released is less than 7.5 millions bottles. It is actually way less than this as the calculation is based on a maximum yield production, and this never happen and is not even advisable. We arrived to Sauternes driving on a Sunday night from Bordeaux just in time to settle in one of the few rooms ... read more