Given how many Bordeaux wines I’ve made, I was very eager to learn more about the Bordeaux region itself. As I experienced in Chinon and Vouvray and Bourgogne and Chalon-sur-Saône, […]
Europe
Chinon and Vouvray
Chinon The vineyards of Chinon are primarily planted along the steep slopes of the River Vienne, with soils that are mostly gravel over Turonian limestone. Only 2-3% of the grapes […]
Tours and the Loire
It was a bit of a mission to get from Bourgogne and Chalon-sur-Saône across central France to the Loire Valley: the main high-speed train routes fan out from Paris and […]
Bourgogne and Chalon-sur-Saône
A trip to Burgundy has always been on my bucket list, and while our timing wasn’t perfect – it was a later vintage than usual so all of the small […]
Lyon
Lyon was a quick overnight stop for us on our way west, a way to break up the journey from Switzerland’s Valais canton to the Burgundy wine region. Often compared […]
Canton Valais and the Swiss Alps
After 34.6 kilometers/21.5 miles of darkness and ear popping through the Lötschberg Base Tunnel – which, when it was originally completed, was the longest railway tunnel in the world – […]
Gornergrat and the Matterhorn
The Gornergrat Bahn is Europe’s highest open air railway, stretching 9.3 kilometers/5.7 miles from the resort town of Zermatt at 1605 meters/5266 feet above sea level to its terminus at […]
Central Switzerland
It was a beautiful train ride from Innsbruck in Austria to the central Swiss city of Zürich: we passed through so many quaint mountain villages and some beautiful farms and […]
Innsbruck and the Austrian Alps
As we were walking out of the train station in central Innsbruck the first thing I saw was a couple a little younger than Lisa and I exiting the station […]
Munich
We weren’t expecting a lot from Munich: another city on our way west and a good way to break up our train journey into the mountains of Austria and Switzerland. […]
Prague
The words “new” and “old” have a bit of a different meaning in the centuries-old city of Prague. Our digs for our few days in Prague’s New Town – Nové […]
Moravian Wine Country
Whether we had the all clear to enter the Czech Republic was a bit of a gray area and something we scratched our heads over for a little while when […]