Wine Tasting Day1 - Domaine L'Ostal Cazes

Our first full day of wine tasting begins! But first, we got lost about three times trying to find the first stop. Apparently the sat nav (GPS) gave the bus driver perfect instructions… but the tiny French village streets we had to drive down weren't always large enough for our bus! We had our first of many 63-point u-turns less than one hour into our first wine tasting excursion. We got to the first winery eventually, but we were already behind schedule. Oopsies! 

Walking up to the former brick factory turned winery

All of the wineries that we visited are places where Peter, our wine teacher, has personal relationships with the owners. Although each of the wineries had wine tasting rooms, it seemed like they didn't catered to large groups, so we were kind of an anomaly for them. This was nice because I had imagined our wine tour would consist of our bus pulling up to each winery at our appointed hour, only to see the last hour's bus pulling out. Even though we were on a bus tour, it didn't feel like a bus tour, if you know what I mean. 

L'Ostal Cazes

At the first winery, L'octal Cazes, as with all the others, we were greeted by one of the winemakers, given a tour of the vineyard (and/or bottling / aging warehouse) before moving on to the tasting. 

Stainless steel aging vats

New French oak barrels for second round of aging

We tasted four wines at this first location: white, rose, red, and a fancy red (grand vin). I'll add my notes below for any of my wine nerd friends. I purchased 1 white, 1 rose, and 1 red.

White: 70% viognier / 15% ? 15% ?

Red: 60% syrah / 30% grenache / 10% ?

70% syrah, 15% Cab 10% Grenache

50%/50% syrah / grenache blend

We had a lot of wines to get through and I'm all for enjoying wine but I've never been one to enjoy getting drunk. Therefore, I was pleased we received small pours for tasting and that most people in our party had one or two sips of each wine, took a few big sniffs, wrote their notes, then poured the rest of the wine into the spit bucket. I know, I know, so boring… but trust me - we had a lot of wine ahead of us that day!