So. Cal. Winery Review
  • Home
  • About
  • Wineries
  • Gadgets
  • Tasting Menus
  • WINERY NEWS
  • Home
  • About
  • Wineries
  • Gadgets
  • Tasting Menus
  • WINERY NEWS
• WINE wine Wine wINE•

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WINERY REVIEW

Picture
Southern California has become a great place to go wine tasting!  Great wines, great wineries -- and great people!  This website is dedicated to bringing you the best info on wineries in San Diego and Riverside counties -- and a few other places as well.  Enjoy!
​Chateau 55 Wine Storage Facility
Get first month free and 5% discount per month for first 11 months by mentioning our name when signing up.
Link to Chateau 55 Website
  Site News
On to the second Arizona winery reviewed by Doc Ed -- Chateau Tumbleweed.

Chateau de Myrat

11/30/2022

0 Comments

 
​We were supposed to sail up the Garonne River to the small town of Cadillac (ll pronounced y, not l like the car), where we were to tour a Chateau making sweet white wines.  Unfortunately, the river level was too high for the Viking ship to pass beneath one of the bridges, so the tour was entirely by bus.  Not that much fun.
Cadillac at one time was home to a close (very close) friend of Louis XIV (the “Sun King”), who built a fabulous castle in the city.  Unfortunately, the castle was sacked during the French Revolution.  The town was built as a trade town, with the market square the center of the city.  Some pictures follow, and there are more at the end of this post.
Picture
Picture
Picture
​By the way, the people in Cadillac must love pizza.  Why else have a pizza vending machine in the central square:
Picture
​One of the first things I noticed on arriving at my first Bordeaux Chateau (i.e., winery) was how low the vines were.  You can see this in the picture below.  This is done to keep the heat in, and is actually a regulation both on the ground to leaf distance and the total height of the plants.
Picture
​Sauternes sweet white wines are made from grapes attacked by bortrytis, or noble rot.  I kid you not.  To do this, only the rotted grapes are used.  Now, as you might expect, all of the grapes don’t rot at the same time, so they can’t be picked at the same time.  To make matters worse, not all of the grapes on a bunch rot at the same time, as seen in the picture below.  The grower has to hand-pick the individual grapes with the rot – the gnarled, shrunken grapes in the picture.  That makes for some very tedious work, especially given how low the vines are.
Picture
​The winery we visited was Chateau de Myrat.  Per Wikileaks, Chateau de Myrat is a winery “belonging to the Sauternes appellation in Gironde, in the region of Graves. The estate is located in the commune of Barsac”.  Primary wine is, of course, the sweet wine Sauternes made largely from Semillon white grapes with some Sauvignon Blanc, two varieties that are subject to bortrytis attack.
Picture
Picture
​We did a vertical tasting, i.e., three of the same wines from different years (vintages).  You can see in the picture below how the color of the wine changes with age, going from light amber to dark amber.  If you go back to my About section on tannins it would seem that white wines do not have the antioxidant tannins to protect them during aging unless they are oaked.  As you can also see below, that is how it is done in Sauternes.
Picture
Picture
​As far as the taste, all three are very sweet, pretty much dessert wine sweet but with a much lower alcohol level.  The oldest wine has distinct flavors associated with aging – caramel, wet leaves, and maybe even some mint.
Let me finish this blog with three more pictures of Cadillac.  The first one was taken in the archway of the town gate, showing water levels from flooding at times in the past.  Cadillac is on a river, and sometimes the river visits the town.  The last two are of the castle.
Picture
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Jim Treglio

    retired physicist and wine lover

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.