Pension lawyer meets world: St Emilion

St Emilion is a small fortified medieval hill town a short train ride to the east of Bordeaux. It would be fair to say that it is now primarily a tourist town. And the type of tourists that come here are interested in wine. Red wine.

The station is a little way from the town, but it is hardly a hard hike up to it - and it does have the advantage that you can see some of the wineries along the way. Everything around here is to do with wine. (Although a proper pavement from the station would have been a nice touch.)

The town itself is very pretty if old grey stone buildings are your thing. Fortunately they are mine!

This is something I have seen in other well preserved old towns, a public laundry from the days you washed things by hand. Now they make a rather picturesque feature.

As you can see the town offers a lot of sweet views, as is typical on an ancient town built on a hillside and so offering photogenic topography. What my photos avoid is the reality of the main street. Just one shop after another aimed at the tourist market. Not quite the normal tourist tat, as these these tended to be wine (or food related). But nonetheless it is heavy on the retail experience. Too heavy to my mind. Because the shops rather overwhelm the atmosphere that you come to a place like this for. Far too many places end up like this - basically a place for pensioners on a coach trip to browse for souvenirs. But if you just get away from the main drag you can enjoy the space.

The 12th century Collegiate Church

Behind which lie beautiful 14th century ruined cloisters, now used as a wine bar

And of course Thibault found us an excellent restaurant for lunch at which we arrived promptly at opening time.

But as I say, everything around here is about wine, and so was our trip, as Thibault had booked us in for an English speaking guided tour of one of the chateaux. While I would have liked a poke around the house itself, that wasn't on offer.

What was on offer though was a trip into the vineyards. And an interesting talk on the vine growing process. Being France there are lots of rules. So said our guide. Lots of things you need to do to allow you to call your wine St Emilion. One of which, to my slight surprise, is that no irrigation is allowed. I mean the Romans and Greeks used to add water to their wine. The French won't even allow you to add water the vines.

We also got a tour of the cellars and underground caverns that dot the area - only one photo because it was unsurprisingly dark.

In contrast fermentation takes place in nice modern shiny copper vats.

And afterwards we got to taste some of the product. Nice enough in a cool lounge, but nothing that made me want to leap in and buy some. Sorry, in my opinion, an awful lot of effort for something pleasant but unexciting. Although I enjoyed the little tour well enough, helped by our guide speaking excellent English with just enough accent to feel distinctly French. And a sense of humour.

And we got chatting to an American couple - the ones receiving a drink above - and we asked them for a drink afterwards. So we had to find a wine bar. And where better than the 14th century cloisters we discovered earlier? I mean regardless of the quality or price of the wine, a better setting would be damned hard to find! I just loved the place. Not at all crowded, and beautifully shaded. Perfect. And we all got on ever so well. Just a lot of fun. (And pleasingly we had a train to take us back to Bordeaux so the alcohol wasn't a problem.) The rest of the afternoon flew by with a couple of bottles of red stuff.

The young couples deep in conversation. I suspect they don't really see themselves as all that young, but obviously I do! everything a matter of perspective...