French School Field Trip

We were also assigned the irregular verbs but I have admit that this assignment was easier to do!

Today Billy and I join up with other students from Alliance Francias to spend the day at a local French vineyard. We started out on a bus at 9:30 and returned at 18:00 and it was a fabulous day!

The name of the place is Chateau De Cointes and it is owned and run by Anne and Francois Gorostis who are now in their fifties (possibly, I don't know for sure but now everyone I meet seems like they must be in their fifties ;-) The Chateau has been in their family since the 1920's they live there with their teenage and young adult children plus a nice assortment of animals; horses, dogs and a really cute 8 week old kitten.

Their vineyard is in the area of the south of France that gets the weather from the Mediterranean and the weather from the Pyrenees Mountains. The area is referred to as the Malepere which is around the famous castles of Carcasonne. Here is a quote no doubt translated literally from the French:

"Mala Pera, a Land with Character....Mala pera (bad stone) cracked by the sun, dried up by the wind, people bent, clinging to the slopes wanting to make it sing."

And yet the wine is really Good! First we got a tour of the vineyards then we got explanations of how the wine is made. (I'd say I get about 50% of the information which means that Billy and others translate for me or I wind up with odd ideas. Like thinking that we are going to "shop" through the vineyards, REALLY? When it turns out that we were "walking" through them!) Then the real work began! The wine tasting!

It starts with the white wines, the the rose, then the reds. There was the opportunity to spit them out after you tasted them but well waste not...... This is one activity that did not require much translation ;-)

After the wine tasting we all sat down for a meal on tables set up outside overlooking their vineyards. They prepared a great meal with two fabulous salads, bread, sausages, a cheese plate and apples plus coffee. Oh, and wine to go with of course!

The next part of the trip was an opportunity to visit a black truffle orchard. I chose to go with the walkers, it was a beautiful warm day and off we went.
The walk lasted about an hour was lead by the owner at a nice clip through hill and dale. I had only one awkward conversation with him that used up my French repetorie, a sort of" name, rank and serial number" conversation with a lot of smiling. Then after our little 5K up the hill (props to the girls in the group wearing the strappy sandals, who not only kept up but never complained) we got a lecture under some old oak trees in French that was so heavily accented the French speakers needed a translator! The gist of the lecture was "Truffles are worth 1000 Euros a kilo we work pretty hard to make sure we get good truffles and we have been doing it a long time." There that just saved you a long walk in the hot summer sun!

After that, hot tired, and well lets call it "well fed" we hopped on the bus to get back to Toulouse. Another homework assignment successfully completed!