Aix and winery tour

We headed into Aix in the morning for a wander around the shops - I will soon have enough frocks to last me for the rest of my life!! I think the tally is up to nine or ten now... sigh.... but also YAY!!! We are also making a strong in roads into the various pastry treats which can accompany our morning coffee. I tend to stick to the eclair chocolat, but we have also sampled various custard, fruit and pastry concoctions!

Today I bought a beautiful photograph to take home for a souvenir, and we also sampled a slice of a massive spice cake (orangey - and a bit like a fruit cake without the fruit - yum!) which they sell here at the evening artisan markets.

I booked a haircut for tomorrow and we met up with Becky for a winery tour in the afternoon. We went to two wineries, at each of which we sampled the local produce - delicious!!! Sadly there was no option to send any home to Aus so I had to make do with buying a couple of bottles and making sure I made the commitment to drink them before I leave... Happily, this is a commitment I am willing to make!!

At one of the wineries they took us on a little tour and told us all about the wine making process. For an old winery visitor like me, it was more of the same, but it was still interesting. They tend to blend the various grapes to make the wines here. You can get AOC wine - which basically means it is made by the formula or by the rules of the region to be able to call itself a wine of Coteaux D’Aix-en-Provence. The other option is the VDP - Vin de Pays - which means that they have deviated from the “rules” by changing the percentages of grape varieties - maybe using extra cabernet sauvignon, or picking the grapes with machines. The VDP wines are often served as the house wine in restaurants, but they are great too! Each winery seems to make both AOC and PDV wines in Red, White and Rose. We tried them all!

One of the wineries had a library of past vintages... sadly I couldn't find the 1974... must have been a good year!! Here is the 1975.

We had a bbq dinner tonight featuring a bottle of red from one of the wineries - as if we hadn’t had enough wine today!! Happily we are all giggly drunks so it was great fun!!!