Thankfully Thursdays winery Visits were much closer than the previous ones. Chateau Beaucastel is a very famous winery in the southern Rhône and we were only about 30 minutes away. This place was very beautiful! What a picturesque chateau with those blue shutters and ivy growing on the sides!
We were given a tour of the vineyards while we waited for another group to join us for the 10am appt. It was so nice to be surrounded by vineyards everywhere we looked. This is more of what I imagined when I dreamed of this trip. Also there were two vineyard dogs named Woops and Mistral. They were super cute and friendly. Adam—I want a dog!!!!!!
The other group arrived about 20 minutes late and our tour guide/winery representative was none too pleased. She refused to repeat anything and mentioned that they were late about five times.
This was quite a strange group of people, some dressed in jeans, a few in dress pants and blazers, and then one or two were wearing track suits (one of them was baby blue and reminded me of the juicy couture days). All of them had their phones out taking pictures of everything, a few even with selfing sticks and one lady was taking notes on a laptop. They reminded me in some way of the people who live in the capital in the hunger games. The picture taking did not stop during the tour. It got on my nerves a bit when they took photos while the lady was talking, but then asked questions that were exactly what she had just said. I kept my sassy mouth shut and bit my tongue because I was very close to saying “if you were listening she just said that!”.
The winery was beautiful on the inside too, everything was extremely neat and clean and crisp and organized. We saw bottles in the cellar that were stacked in this certain way where there are over 30,000 bottles in this little cubby. They don’t label anything until the order is being filled since labeling laws are different in each country.
We had a nice tasting of 5 different Beaucastel wines. The highlights were towards the end of course when we had their Châteauneuf du Pape from 2016, 2009, and 1995. This was definitely our most formal tasting and also the most expensive wines that we tasted. You will not find any Beaucastel wines in the suitcase...
After the visit, we tried to take some pictures using the self timer but it was tough to get any good angles. The sun came out and the temperature was nice so it was really hard to want to leave such a pretty place. Also I wanted to play with the dogs.
But of course, we were hungry-as always- so we decided to look for the Beaucastel store and check out the prices (found it and did not buy anything) but instead we found the cute town of actual Châteauneuf du Pape. There were so many little wine shops and restaurants and I think I realized here that I wished we had stayed in a little town like this as our home base. Each trip we learn a little more about what we want on a vacation. I also think on each trip our tastes change.
We had a nice lunch in this town. Adam has duck and I had this cool plate of (left to right) grilled asparagus, salmon tartare, foie gras, and fried goat cheese. There was a bit of caramelized onions on my plate and some lavender honey sauce on Adams plate that really made the lunch quite enjoyable!
