During the break of "le Toussaint", I went wine tasting with a few other assistants from my program. We rented a car and drove to Mâcon, about two hours north of Saint Etienne. Driving in France was an adventure, their stoplights are strangely where you would stop at a normal intersection in the US. You're not looking across the intersection for the stoplight, instead, it's a small set of lights where pedestrians normally wait to cross the street. So that was the first weird thing, the second was les ronds points or roundabouts. Europeans love their roundabouts, they are supposed to help traffic flow "naturally" and they eliminate the need for coordinating traffic lights. I guess they're okay, just slightly terrifying for the first few times.
Anyway, back to wine tasting and wine country. The region of Mâcon is absolutely breathtaking, grapevines and vineyards as far as the eye can see. It is the southernmost part of Burgundy, and borders Beaujolais, two of the more well-known wine regions in France. The difference between Burgundy and Beaujolais wines lies in their soil, one is more like clay and the other I can't really remember, nor do I remember which one is which, but the wine was really good!
We went to Chateau Chasselas, which I would definitely recommend to anybody looking to do a wine tasting. It is so cute and quaint and dreamlike, and we were lucky the weather was so nice!
During our tasting they fed us charcuterie and bread and cheese and escargot.
I'm hoping to do more wine tastings as Saint Etienne is in a good spot, but back to work for now until Christmas break!
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