Friday : wine and biking/ bottling

So I have a friend here who owns a wine touring company. Small scale, but she does a biking trip for university students twice a year. So I signed up. We met up and got the bikes from a rental shop. It was me, one other guy, and about 15 good looking girls. I know my life here is pretty awesome. So…. We rode out to a vineyard about 20-30 minutes outside of town. It was a nice ride seeing the scenery change from “busy city” to “rolling countryside”. The one problem was that the Mistral (the wind force that blows in cold air at 20mph in this area, and usually for 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 days straight) picked up right as we started. And most of the ride was uphill and against this wind. But alas we all made it.
So we got off the bikes and regained our breaths and hydration. The Vineyard was of small scale, and of course it is after season right now. But it was still really cool. We had the owner, a French guy, explain to us all the processes of growing the vines, harvesting the grapes, and then we moved onto the fermentation. For the last part we went inside to the room with the large steel holding tanks where the wine sits, and the sugars ferment, thus creating the alcoholic wine. And just so you know the reason red wine is red is because they leave the skins in the tank for a couple days and the color is pulled out into the wine. And rose/pink wine is pink because they leave the skins in for just about half a day. Interesting? After he explained everything to us, in French mind you, the tasting began. He passed out glasses to everyone and then poured us wine straight from the steel containers. It was a really neat experience to get the wine before it goes to a bottle.
So after we got all nice and toasty we had to get back on the bikes and head into town. It was a much easier trip, considering it was downhill and with the wind. But when we got into town we hit French traffic. And I was actually almost run over and had to try and get out of the way, which caused a fall/jump from the bike onto a sidewalk. I cut my finger open and scraped my knee, but I survived. So we got back into town and checked in our bikes. Then it was off to my friend’s house, Hilary, to bottle some wine of our own. This was pretty cool to do. We poured the wine out of big jugs into bottle and then used a hand press to cork the bottles. After we all got a bottle the fun was over. But it was a great time and for only 20 Euros I would suggest it to anyone.