Wine Tasting Day1 - Domaine J. Laurens

After our fine lunch and brief hang-out in the sun while we waited for even more cases of wine to be loaded to our bus, it was off to the third winery… 2-1/2 hours late, but so it goes...

Drive to our last winery of the day

Our last winery of the day was another family-run place who produce sparking wine. We received another tour, and this time we saw some production and bottling taking place. 

Just a few bottles of wine...

There were walls and walls of stacked wine bottles. The gal giving us our tour explained that the aging bottle of sparkling wine can be dangerous; at one point during the tour she pointed out a gaping hole in the stacks of bottles where a bottle of wine had exploded and had to be carefully removed. She said that an exploding bottle has been known to take out several bottles around it, thereby leaving loads of broken glass and an unstable stack of wine. Not to mention a loss in revenue. But this is the way it's done, so… this is the way it's done. 

Wine aging in the bottle

She explained that sparkling wine also has to be rotated in the bottle. I forget why, but it's important to do so. Some wineries turn the bottles by hand, but in this particular facility they had a fancy bottle turning contraption. They'd load up the crates with bottles and then over the course of several days the cases would slowly be rotated as required. Sadly, this machine was not on the day we were there. 

Wine turning contraption

Wine that had been aged and turned were ready for wrapping and labeling. We were lucky and got to watch one lady work the machine while we were there. I really liked that almost everyone we met working at this facility were women. It was a nice change of pace to see so many female winemakers! 

Wine bottling and labeling machine + woman

After our tour we took a quick stroll through a small vineyard and then made our way into the wine tasting room. 'Cause, you know, it had been almost two hours since we had done any wine tasting. Oh, the horror! 

Grapes at J Laurens 

We tasted three sparkling wines, all of which were okay, but I thought not nearly as yummy as the wines at the first two locations. I ended up purchasing two bottles of the brut, because, well… what's life without a little bubbly from time to time! 

A blurry rose

Brut

3rd wine… goofed and took a second picture of 2nd wine. Who, me? Drinking?