I'm in France this week as the guest of Planète Bordeaux, a wine information and outreach center midway between Bordeaux and Saint Emilion. We're staying (our little delegation of wine writers) at Château Pey La Tour, a wine-producing estate and country hotel owned by Maison Dourthe.
On the Air France flight from Seattle, just because of the title, I watched "From Paris With Love," which turned out to be a wretched splatter film with John Travolta as a wise- cracking hard-ass who kills people all over Paris without ever raising an eyebrow or tasting real cheese. What a shame, what a wasted opportunity.
In the course of a dinner-hour visit last night, at Château Penin, we tasted the bourru (still-fermenting sauvignon blanc) from the tank, then bottles of rosé, clairet (a darker, more full-bodied rosé), the estate's sauvignon blanc-sauvignon gris blend, then four current vintages of Penin red (mostly merlot) and three older bottles as well. The winemaker is Patrick Carteyron, a 54-year-old professional enologist who took over the family estate in 1982. It's 40-hectare (100-acre) property, planted mostly with merlot, that produces a quarter-million bottles a year, well-made wines that sell for about $15 in the US.
And what wonderful food! A magnificent bread, Tourte d'Antan, from a rustic bakery in Terrasson; thick côtes de boeuf (rib-eye steaks), grilled over vine clippings; half a dozen magnificent cheeses, including a beautiful Camembert. The photos are on my Facebook page. (For some reason, they're in reverse order.) I'll post more notes and pictures as time permits.
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