Saturday, July 16, 2011

Touring the chateaus

Saturday we rode the bikes around the area surrounding Pauillac. It is a region of the Medoc with some very well known wines. The Medoc is one of the six major wine growing areas around Bordeaux. It is well known because of the Rothschild labels (Mouton Rothschild and Lafite Rothschild). The first chateau we saw north of Paulliac was Lafite Rothschild.


Just down the road was the most unique chateau we've seen, Cos D'Estournel.








Other chateaus were sprinkled along our meandering route.








There are a number of different architectural styles represented, but the buildings are relatively new and date from the 1800's. We stopped for lunch in St. Stephe and the rain started as we ate under the shelter of a bandstand at the school. We rode back to Pauillac in the rain and were glad when we got under cover. We ended our day by watching a very exciting stage of the Tour de France on TV, a gutty performance by all the favorites. Tomorrow we leave Pauillac and we will finish on the north side of the River Gironde.

2 comments:

Diana said...

Nice real estate. Are the chateaus private residences or are they associated with the vineyards and wineries? (A wine tasting would be awesome in one of those beauties.) You mention rain frequently. Is this a surpise or did you expect it?

Dave and Belinda said...

Hi Diana, yeah we were hoping to do a wine tasting at a chateau but we were there over the weekend and they are open only Mon. through Fri. We got the impression that most of the chateaux are associated with the wineries. Some did seem to be private residences, and some looked like they did double duty. The rain has been a bit of a surprise. Honestly we don't know what is normal, but this seems to be a wet summer. Current forecast is for rain through Fri.!