Raiding King Louis XV's Wine Cellar

Last Friday, two of my room mates, me and a friend went wine tasting at Ô Chateau. A historic cellar that is walking distance to the Louvre and used to hold Louis XV's private collection for the court.

We did the Tour de la France tasting that included six wines: one champagne, two whites and three reds. All of them from different regions of France and each exquisite.

We also had a young sommiler, someone who knows their stuff about wine, who was in charge of leading us through the world of French wine. He was humorous, honest and knowledgeable.

He started off telling us the three steps of wine tasting.

step one:
- See.
Hold the glass by the stem; it is the best way to measure the clarity of wine . To measure the clarity of the wine hold it up towards the light-- look at it -- is it lighter or darker? If it has a lighter clarity than it is going to have more acidity than sugar... so more dry than sweet. If it has a darker clarity than it is going to be very sweet. Sweeter wine has a golden color to it...plus 250 grams of sugar. Dry wine will always be in a green or brown bottle and sweet wine will always be in a clear bottle.

He said that in France those are the only kinds of colors for bottles of wine you can find, but around the world that is changing...he once found a blue bottle of wine in Oregon.

Now to check the vintage of the wine, you must examine the wine's meniscus. To do that you continue to hold the glass side ways but hold a white piece of paper behind it; this will make it easier to see the two layers of color. The top layer is the meniscus. If the meniscus is paler than it is an older vintage and if the meniscus is darker it is a younger vintage.

Moving on to step two:
- Smell.
First you need to oxidize the wine by swirling it. Then you hold your nose up to the rim of the glass and inhale. Smell the different aromas.

There are five categories of flavors:
- Spice
- Flowers
- Fruity
- Woody/ Oak-y notes
- Animal flavors

Then raise your glass to your neighbor and dit santé (cheers) while looking them in the eye.


Step three:
- Taste.
Oxidize the flavors by taking a little bit of the wine into your mouth and swirling it around on the tip of your tongue. Best way to do that is to shape your mouth as an "o" and breath in while slightly moving your tongue. This will enhance the flavors and you will really sense the alcohol in the back of your throat.

He told us some neat wino facts, such as how to measure the amount of alcohol or sugar in the wine. If there is more sugar than alcohol, you have more legs (streaks that run down the side of your glass) but if the legs run down fast there is more alcohol than sugar.

He also explained how the weather can affect the vintage of wine; like in June or July when the grapes are warmer and dryer the vintage is better. Or in southern France the wine is darker in color because the weather is dryer and warmer year round thus giving it a higher potential to age.

And he touched on a few interesting wine cultural differences between France and other countries. Such as in their marketing for the bottles; it is illegal to name the grapes used in the wine over the name of the region. While in the "New World" (California and Australia) the focus is on the grapes from all over the country or state not on the region the wine is made in.

Another one was the difference between how we pair wine with food; we think of wine more as taste or a dessert. Where they pair the wine with food to enhance their diets between salt, fat and sugar. For example, they'll balance a high in fat meal with an acidic wine, because the acid in the wine will eat some of the fat from the food.

It was a blast and a perfect way to spend part of an afternoon in Paris. We learned about French wine, culture and all while in a historic location.

Welcome to Camp Kellerman's

Because France is a catholic country, we had the benefit of getting Easter Monday off--giving us lucky English assistants with Friday libre a four day weekend.

After much deliberating and scanning of weather.com, we finally decided to spend our Easter weekend in France's version of Florida---Tunis, Tunisia.

For those of you who don't have a keen sense of geography...myself included...Tunisia is a small country located on the African content between Algeria and Libya. Because of this location, our families weren't super excited about our tropical destination as we were. I believe the terms, "Oh perfect" and "idiot" were used in their descriptions as well as "kidnappings" and "terrorism". Of course, if you ask any French person what they think it's usually followed by this response, "Ohh la la, I luuve Tunis!" and a rather shocked look when you tell them you've never stepped foot near an African border.

I consulted trip planning gurus at expedia.com and found us a four star, all inclusive resort on a private beach. Sun, check. Food, check. Beach, check. Sounds perfect.

Should of known that Africa's version of four star was different than our American standards...explains the awesome price. We literally walked into a blast from the past and entered the world of the family style camping circa 1980's and participating was not considered optional.

After many Dirty Dancing quotes, we got a little annoyed of being lectured by the Animation staff for not participating in activities or not wanting to join in on conversations. I mean all we wanted to do was lay out by their overly colorful pool and tan our booties off; not be questioned to death about our origin and why we said we lived in France or lectured on our manners (good thing we said we were Canadian) for not saying good morning once or leaving their overly touchy, freaky cabaret right when it ended. (One of their skits was a rendition to "Grease Lightning" and we were the only ones who actually knew the lyrics, including the actors. Another was two men doing a skit where one was an instrument and the other was playing him and touching him in odd places.)

We came all the way to Africa to be the clique that everyone had at camp that thought they were too cool to join in on any of the fun. But we hadn't signed up for camp; we'd booked a sun filled, relaxing stay at a four star resort where our main objective was to find our lost tans. Interesting the difference between cultures and what is expected at a resort.

Besides being harassed by amp'd up Animation staff, we spent an afternoon in the main market where Lauren was felt up by some girl trying to find a money belt, and we bargained with the sale clerks for the best prices on local, touristy treasures. Another afternoon we spent horse back riding on the beach, and rode up to a traditional Tunisian hut where they made us bread and took pictures of us in native clothes...actually made us take pictures in customary wear. It was fun galloping along side the ocean and taking in the beautiful scenery, but I did rip my jeans on the saddle and nearly fell off when mid-gallop my stirrup broke.

We did manage to spend a good number of hours by the pool or on the beach soaking in the wonderful sunshine and getting some much needed R & R.

It was very eye opening to see such a vastly different culture from ours and even France's. The poverty level is very high there and a majority of the homes that would not be considered livable here. They had giant holes in the side of them, didn't have roughs and looked close to tumbling to the ground. It defiantly gave me a whole other level of gratitude for where I came from and where I live now. Another boost of American pride.

Let Them Eat Cake

Well, we may have not eaten cake, but we sure did eat alot of cookies during my family's two week stay here! We also visited the main courting grounds of the woman who may have uttered those infamous words.

Versailles.

I've been to Versailles six times now and I'm still not bored of it! I love it there! It's always breath taking and you never run out of things to see or places to explore in the chateau.
Even though it was my sixth visit there, it was my first time to actually make it to the outer areas of the grounds that include Trinanon, Le Petit Trinanon and Marie Antoinette's Farm. I insisted that we rent a golf cart and drive down to see those areas before we actually took the tour of the main chateau. I knew if we did the main tour first, we'd be too tired to make it to the rest. Also, by foot it would take an hour to walk to the mini-chateaux and farm; thus why we rented the golf cart.

You had to be over 24 and have a valid drivers license to be the lucky one behind the wheel. None of us met all of those recuirments, my sister, kim and I all being under 22 and my dad not having a drives license. Here's where the language barrier comes in handy, they failed to notice the bold, capped letters across my dad's ID saying, "NOT A VALID DRIVERS LICENSE." So, we zoomed off at four miles an hour down the "corn maze-esk" gardens of Versailles to find Marie Antoinette's favorite country escape from court.

On the way, we drove past a man-made canal that is in the center of the Versailles gardens, where tons of people were strolling by, laying leisurely on the grass, riding bikes, walking their dogs and even rowing row boats across the lake. A perfect way to spend a warm, spring afternoon in gardens that were started in 1661 and took forty years to come to their full fruition.

Trinanon and Le Petit Trinanon were both built for favorite women of the French kings. Marie Antoinette had control over both of them at one point, and were one of her favorite places to be outside of the main Cheateau. They are still shown under the style she had them decorated and are beautiful. They're both way smaller than the main chateau and it gives them more of an intimate feel, giving the viewer a more personal insight to life back then. It was fun to walk through the smaller, average size door frames (which are tiny compared to our current door frames), to examine the smaller rooms and be able to imagine people actually spending time in them, living their lives.

We didn't make it to Marie's farm because we had already surpassed our hour time frame for the golf cart, so we scurried off to return it.

After dropping it off, we proceeded to do the main tour. Like always, there was another wing to the chateau added on to the tour that I hadn't seen yet, which was a pleasant surprise. We ended up having to rush through though, because it was cram packed with tour groups.

It was a perfect visit to Versailles with the clan. We had a blast driving through the gardens, exploring the past and enjoying the early spring sunshine. I plan on going back in the next two weeks with my fiance and taking one of those lovely boat rides.