We have a reservation for a winery tour an hour north in the Medoc region. Driving more after yesterday feels like a lot. Next time we’ll plan a day in between a travel day and a day trip.

//Stefan Note: The kids favorite new game is pretending to put olaf to sleep.  The love doing this other than at night.

We drive up to Chateau Lanessan, a beautiful large estate with numerous groups of buildings on it. It is beautiful. We pull up and greet our host for the next hour. Our tour focuses on the horse stables, which is actually really interesting. I chose this tour over a usual wine making tour they offer because I hoped it’d be more fun for the kids. I don’t know if they find it that interesting. They’re too young.

But the estate has carriages dating back to 1900s. This family was wealthy and loved riding around with their horses! Then we go to the stables where the horses were cared for. Wow. The troughs are made of marble! Every detail was thought through when creating this space for the horses. Our guide points out the stables had running water before the main chateau house! This family loved their horses.

After our tour, we go to the wine tasting room. It’s large and has a corner for children! Awesome. The kids are happy, and we get to enjoy our tastings without too much interruption. The wine is very good. I buy my first Magnum because it is a euro cheaper than 2 bottles of the same wine. Whatever. I don’t have to justify my ridiculous purchases. It is fun because it is ridiculous. 

We drive to a place Chateau Lanessan recommended, Le Bontemps. It’s an unassuming bistro in the middle of this tiny town. The menu is on a chalkboard, which I love. We order one of each, which I also love. The food is delicious. The kids actually eat a ton.

After lunch taste wine at another winery Chateau Chasse-Spleen. We almost don’t go because the driveway looks like a private walkway up to the main house! There are flowering plants hitting our car as we pass! But apparently that’s the right way. The wine is good but expensive. Again the tasting room has an entire corner devoted to coloring supplies for children! I’m very impressed.

We drive down the road to Chateau Lamothe-Bergeron, a chateau Tripadvisor recommends for its innovative tour. The chateau, while over 150 years old, looks brand new due to restorations in recent years. It’s very fancy. This is when Oly decides he needs to really bear down and spend some time pooping in his diaper…in the middle of the gorgeous living room. We act like it is no big deal. You go, Oly.

The tour is indeed innovative. I love that it is different from every other wine tour. We walk to a cute little hut overlooking the grapes where we learn about what grapes are grown on the estate. Then we all get to taste different grapes to understand the pieces of the recipe. The kids enjoy this.

We walk back to the chateau and down into the cellar, where our guide continues the tour in the dark. The kids did not like this. Then there’s a video on one of the tanks that shows the wine-making process in the stainless steel vats. Despite knowing a lot about wine-making already, I thought this was interesting. Then we look at the barrels storing wine and get short presentation, again projected in the darkness, on blending. It looks like a great job!

Next comes tasting. The children are welcomed into a special alcove with coloring pages and colored pencils. Wow. This seems to be a common thing in Bordeaux. Instead of pouring us a few tastings as one would expect, our guide pours us two of the same wine from different years and has us guess which is the young, which is old and the years of each. It isn’t done in a ridiculous way either. It was nice to see effort to make a tasting educational and different from the standard. I’d definitely recommend this tour.

We finally head back home after a wonderful day among the vines. Both kiddos fall asleep in the car. We get home and have dinner. Then we let the kids watch a movie before bed. We figure they need a little R&R after being dragged around wine tasting all day.