Le Wine Buff in France, Bordeaux Day 1

Air France window over the outskirts of ParisFinally.  It’s quite similar to that feeling of gloriously painful anticipation that you once experienced before every birthday as a child…I was finally going to Bordeaux as part of Le Wine Buff program for Enjoy Bordeaux!  I have been a ‘Buff since late last year when the pilot program first kicked off.  The Bordeaux Wine Council (CIVB) sponsored the trip and we’ve been working for and with them and CreativeFeed to help educate the public on the thousands of affordable, high quality and downright tasty Bordeaux wines that are imported to the US. These wines are the majority from Bordeaux and don’t cost the same amount as the many techno gadgets I brought along with me on the trip.  So there I was…in Bordeaux and yet I had never even been to Europe!

Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux
Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux

I was also able to finally meet the rest of the crew in person.
Indeed, other than a brief encounter with my fellow Bay Area Buff Rebecca Chapa, I had yet to meet any of these vinopanions IRL until now.  I had also wrangled in the men who comprise Mutineer Magazine to embed themselves in our vinous midst, so now we’d have shoots for both our documentary and photo ops for articles in the finest beverage magazine on earth…sweet.

I landed off my Air France flight with the Mutineers in tow and we made it to our homebase, the Hôtel de Normandie dead center in the middle of the city of Bordeaux.  We arrived with nary a minute to spare before taking a guided tour of the ancient city (it’s only a couple of thousand years old…give or take a decade…).  Breathtaking was a word that was used once or twice and the depth of knowledge of our tour guide was just as impressive. Brigitte’s enlightening tour was provided as a courtesy of the Office de Tourisme de Bordeaux. Walking around an ancient city was bound to stir up an appetite and well, a thirst!  Here we were surrounded by fantastic appellations or A.O.C. of vineyards and I had yet to have tasted a drop of that tasty fluid known as wine.

Chez Jean
Chez Jean

Fortunately, the CIVB predicted this predicament and we landed for what was to be the first of a long string of epic dinners, at a restaurant just a few blocks from the hotel, Chez Jean.  Yum.  More walking around after dark provided some great photo ops as you can see in some of the pics below.

All of the wines from this trip will/are tagged with “LWB2010BDX” and my photos and HD videos can be found by day (Day 1 for instance) and are also all tagged with “LWB2010BDX” on my Flickr.  Enjoy Bordeaux also has a set of fantastic photos at their own Flickr.  All of our tweets used the hashtag #LeWineBuff.  I will continue to upload the wines as I write these recaps and then compile all of the links in one final post for this series about Le Wine Buff in Bordeaux.

So what was the final tally?

12 Chateaux, 8 A.O.C., 9 restaurants, 2 hotels, ~110 wines, ~9GB of photos and videos, 11 pages (10pt MS Word font) of notes typed on my iPhone and 22 hours of sleep, whew.

Cheers!

Touring the city of Bordeaux
Touring the city of Bordeaux, with Brigitte
Touring the city of Bordeaux, near the Opera

Touring the city of Bordeaux, near the Opera
One of the famous ancient arches of Bordeaux
One of the famous ancient arches of Bordeaux
The misting, mirror pond of Bordeaux along the Gironde
The misting, mirror pond of Bordeaux at the Place des Bourses along the Garonne.
The fountain at night in the main square along the Gironde
The fountain at night in the main square along the Gironde

Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo

View posts by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo
Ward Kadel - @drXeNo is the founder of Vinopanion wine blog, former West Coast Ambassador & Staff Blogger for WineLog.net and former Le Wine Buff for Bordeaux.com (CIVB). He will try any and all wines and tends to write about the parts of his life that include wine...like virtually all of it! He and his wife grew up in Napa and Sonoma and they still live in the Napa Valley. Check out the wines he's recommended with his WKBadges. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Like #Vinopanion on Facebook. Contact him: "Ward at WineLog.net". Ward happily accepts samples but does not guarantee a review, positive or negative.

6 Comments

  1. Mama Donna
    June 29, 2010

    Wow, can’t wait for the next installment. Isn’t is a completely different experience amidst such beautiful and gracious historical venues?

    Reply
    1. Ward Kadel - @drXeNo
      July 5, 2010

      Thanks Moms! Yep, I’m recovered and almost finished with my coverage of the WBC10 conference, so then it’s back to LWB!

      Reply
  2. Mike the Wine Guy
    July 5, 2010

    Sounds like a rewarding and enjoyable trip!

    Reply
    1. Ward Kadel - @drXeNo
      July 5, 2010

      Hi Mike and thank for checking out the post! Yes, it definitely was a truly special and very lucky experience. I’ve got a lot of writing left to do to try and tell the many stories that I enjoyed during the 6 days on the trip. Gotta get to typin’!

      Reply
  3. panikmekanik
    July 30, 2010

    it was very interesting to read http://www.winelog.net
    I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
    And you et an account on Twitter?

    Reply
  4. […] First off, I wasn’t tired despite all of my travel overnight the day before and immediately launching into almost a full day and night of awesome Bordelaise activities.  Indeed, I felt so fit that I decided to go for my first run of the trip, along the riverfront […]

    Reply

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