July 13th-15th

 Hello tout le monde!  Sorry i have been MIA for the past few days, but I have been very very busy.  Today is a free day where I will hopefully get some laundry done and prepare for our 3 day trip to Alsace, Germany and Switzerland!  It should be very very fun.  I added this picture of myself drinking coffee because I think it should be noted that I have been drinking massive amounts of cafe au lait here in France.  I think my record has been four espressos in one day.  And I am not drinking them to wake up, although in the morning that is sometimes the case, but more because they taste so darn good.  And as you can see below, they look pretty beautiful.  So, don't be surprised if I come back addicted to coffee.  

To the right are some barrels we saw at Fransois Frere's, which is the largest cooperage business in the world. They make barrels for just about all the wineries in the world and use oak that is about 80 years old.  Below you can see them making the barrels.  They are toasting them in the fire which can give the wine a toasty/oaky taste.  Barrels go for around $200 to even $1000.  This is why wine aged in 100% oak costs sooo much.  Oak also gives wine a buttery taste.

It smelled really good in the cooperage.  Just like a campfire with really expensive wood.  I should also add that the wood used to make the barrels is set outside on pallets and is aged for about 2 years to get some really good woodsy smells and flavors.  That was pretty interesting I thought.  

Above you can see the vineyards of Domaine de Louis Latour,  a pretty famous winemaker in France that ships out all around the world.  It was a beautiful and rainy day driving through the French countryside. The vineyard to the back let of this picture is called the Clos de Roi, for the King.  

The director of winemaking there led us down the cellar where everything was covered in Penicillin which made everything look ancient.  It was beyond cool.  To get down to where we tasted the wine, we had to go down the tiniest stone spiral staircase that was covered in water and webs.  It was like being in a pirate movie.  


In most of the wine cellar there were thousands of 
old bottles of wine.  The oldest were from 1890 and there were so many more from the 1940s and 1920s.  It was beyond amazing.  

Tomorrow we leave at 5:45am and right now I am going to go the grocery store to make an awesome dinner tonight.  All the guys here are very domestic and cook all the time.  Tonight I will finally join in the fun :)  I will probably not be able to update this till I come back from Germany, so I will talk to all of you in about 4 days!