All this wine education, I thought this was to be a holiday. Today we head not that far down the highway to the next famous wine region of Beaujolais. A wine and area that we have very little knowledge of, hope to learn a lot which won't take much. Again a very similar terroir to the Cote d' Or region perhaps a little more on the granitic side of soil types whereas the last two regions were very rock and stone based.

Arrive at our accommodation after being completely lost (again) in the back blocks of the northern section of Beaujolais - we needed to be way down further south . Sought help but no understand the lingo. In the end a guy came into the post office and had a little understanding but could not place his thoughts into words. In the end he took us outside, made us get in our car and we followed him quite some way until he pulled over and gestured that we were now heading in the right direction. This has been the case right around our travels, people can not do enough for us by way of general assistance.
We are now situated right in the centre of Beaujolais country at a Cheatau - if you don't mind! It is called Chateau de la Flechere (look it up as no fibbing here) with our mine hosts Marie-Noelle and Jean-Claude Lacroix. Talk about living, this takes being posh to an all time high, there are no other guests so we are kings of the Chateau. They even have their own vineyard as well. This is their weekender when they "come down from Paris" Talk about placing the plumb in the mouth when talking to our hosts, our respective mothers would have thought that they had brung us up right.

Jean- Claude has promised us a tasting of some house vino "once we have a greater understanding" of the region, it's appellations and fruit character . He even sends us to a local museum that conducts education program's with winery tours and then the good bit, tasting the product. Off we go, pen and paper in hand (wine glass in the other) and an apple for the teacher.

There are 10 specific appellation and 2 general appellation that make up Beaujolais as a region, again the terroir and actual vine location within specific site aspects all direct the character of that particular wine. Our Chateau is in the Beaujolais- Villages appellation area. We learn a lot and it is very very thirsty work. The place we went to receives over 2 million visitors a year and is set out like an old train station, we even went on a mini train ride from the education centre to the actual winery a few blocks away. John insists that I have to mention the other activities they provide at the winery, such as outdoor gardens, large chess boards, coffee shop and unfortunately a 10 hole mini golf. Now I am working on the beginners luck theory and as you would understand the absolute charitable nature that I have within, it was a prerequisite to allow my opponent to good grace and afford him a victory without him thinking that I was throwing the game . Sound relationship building I say!

A highlight of the visit was that we were placed into a platform in a theatre and then taken as if we were bees over the region with the platform rocking and rolling all over the place, this bees eye view of the wine region was spectacular.

With knowledge gained and wine tasted we head back to our Chateau to report back to J-C, he is happy with our new found base knowledge so heads to his private vins cave for a few bottles. M-N sets up the table with glasses, cheese and bread crudités. I must say his wine is very sound, John felt very typical of the appellation style!. His best vintage so far has been the 2009, we played along and then the next thing after J-C and M-N had a chat in French, J-C is back down the vins cave for the 2009, nothing but the best for the travelling Aussies. They tell us they only get 2 - 3 groups per year of us.

Now around 8 .00 pm, where does the day go, it does not get dark until around 9.00 pm at the moment. As we go further south it will be later and (hopefully) warmer as the last week has been only around the 15 degree mark. Anyway we are booked into a local restaurant that is situated right on the Sone River. Naturally we are the only non French speaking people in the place. In tonight's case a total blackout, this makes for some fun interpretation of menus but just adds to the authenticity of the occasion.

As we were at a place called 3 Canards and we were told that the owners came from Madagascar. As one could just work with some key French food words we opted for the Canard Madagascar, yes safe but better than being sorry. All good, naturally we were able to breeze through the list of Beaujolais.

Back to our digs, thinking about sub-letting some of our room, could easily fit a few more in compared to what we have been used to. Pack the sack with a few hard decisions being made as a few pickups along the way mean that other non-essentials such as clothing must make way. I am way over the comfort level for pack carrying so will need to toughen up but those bloody stairs and hills, they are everywhere.