Sun rise Port Grimoud
Up and at-em early, well 0700hrs and like the French left before breakfast to ensure we weren’t around when they came for the overnight money: Well we have to draw our horns in following so many camp sites that we were charged high season tariffs. We then stopped a few miles along the sea front for breakfast whilst watching the sunrise; this makes a change as we are normally asleep!!!
Dogs watered and fed, breakfast cleared away and off to
Chateau Cabriéres
our next stop, a vineyard in Chateaunuef-du-Pape that is listed in our “France Passion”. Apart from the farms and vineyards listed in this guide being free, we are also on a mission to find suitable wines to be served at our wedding on the 7th April. We want something “different” from the normal table wines supplied at functions.
We arrived at the Chateau just before lunch and were made very welcome by owner and told to park anywhere we wanted, and when we said we wanted to “degust” his wines, he suggested we came back after 1400hrs when they were open.
We reversed Rosie and trailer into a disused farm track right in amongst the grape vines, very appropriate for the mission we are on.
Back into the wine cellar and after much tasting and head scratching we are pleased to inform everybody we have selected a rather nice red from Chateau Cabriéres, a vineyard right in the heart of the Chateaunuef-du-Pape region. Not only is it made at this vineyard, it is also bottled on the property, and you can’t get better than that!
Vines for miles and miles
The rest of the afternoon was taken up walking Sooty and Bella amongst the vines and relaxing with some dozing in between as we had had several glasses if you totted up all the tastings.
No TV this evening, so watched a DVD as firstly being under trees, this would block any signal but more importantly it was so windy we thought we were back, sailing between two islands in the Caribbean on Anam Cara; the van rocked quite badly, how the grapes stay on the vines I don’t know. Me thinks we are in for a difficult night.