To get into the true sense of french life, we decided to had to learn more about the essentials of France: wine and food!We found a wine tour where we could spend several hours at the winery, chat with the wine growers, learn the process, help out with jobs on the vineyard, taste the wine and enjoy lunch! We loved the sound of this, plus the children were welcome, so off we went!
The winery, La Tour de Chollet, was a small, family owned organic winery. Kirsty and Paul moved from England about 10 years ago, deciding on a "French-change" - having not grown grapes or made wine previously, they went about learning then decided to settle and have their family in France. We had a walk around the vines and learnt the process of growing grapes, seeing merlot, sauvignon blanc and semillon grapes.
The grapes are only a week or so off being harvested, so the vines were heavy. One of our jobs during the day was to walk along the vines and clear leaves away from the bunches of grapes, to allow maximum sun onto the grapes. We also had to snip off any small, underdeveloped grapes.
Our other job was to empty oak barrels of the 2012 red wine, then clean out the barrels. We all got to have a go and it was fun. We tasted their wines and made several purchases! Kirsty and Paul then prepared lunch for us, which was a great spread of baguettes, salads and cheeses ... plus a great choice of wines!
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| Team photo for the day! |
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| Inspecting the vines and pruning some leaves |
Then there was the French food!
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| the girls starting the chocolate lollipops |
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| Learning the tricks with choux pastry |
We arranged to have a chef come to our house, who helped us prepare some canapés for our dinner. Our savoury dishes included foie gras lollipops with a fig dressing; toffee tomatoes with pesto tarts; parmesan bread with duck; and fish mousse on toasted baguette. For sweet canapés, we had double chocolate lollipops with roasted pear; lemon and basil tarts; and choux pastry with hazelnut filling. All yum, yum yum!!
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| Filling the choux pastry |
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| Stirring lemon curd |
The cooking and preparation took about 4 hours, but it was fun afternoon, chatting and learning new skills. We all got to have a go at preparing the dishes and learnt many new tricks along the way.
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| Jac de-boning the fish |
Whether or not we can recreate them when we get home is another issue!
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| Foie gras on the end of those sticks! |
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| Sprung! |
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| toffee tomatoes with pesto pinwheels on top! |
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| the result of the choux pastry - profiteroles! |
After our afternoon of preparation, we decided that such fancy food needed a fancy occasion: so a dress standard for dinner was introduced. Lipstick and high heels was the dress code! | ||||
| The savoury results of our cooking class We all did the best we could, with our limited travelling wardrobes, but all scrubbed up well. We started the evening with champagne, proceeded to eat our specialities, then ended up dancing to Olivia's playlist! Sophie's quote the next day was: "we didn't even sit at the table to have our dinner!" It was great fun and will be a highlight for all of us.
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The Wilsons dressed up for the evening ... one of the few times I've worn lipstick and heels!
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