Libourne (caviar) & cruising to Bordeaux - Tuesday 5 September

We departed at 9am this morning for an hour-long coach ride to the Dordogne district where the Neuvic caviar estate is located. We saw the sturgeon ponds and learnt about the farming techniques including the important fact that it takes seven years before the eggs can be harvested as caviar. We had to wear special booties for our visit.

It actually takes three years before they can even determine what sex the sturgeon are, which is important as of course only the females can produce the eggs. These don't require fertilisation but it takes 3-4 years to develop eggs ready for harvesting, and this can take much longer for some species). In the meantime the males are sent away to be used for their flesh. Eventually, the females undergo an ultrasound to check the stage and size of their eggs, and then they're killed to harvest these. The eggs are processed according to size (2.5mm or bigger) and (dark) colour. The whole process is very labour intensive which results in the very high price.



Some volunteers amongst the group got into waders and had the interesting experience of trying to catch a sturgeon with a net.



We sampled the sturgeon and a small amount of caviar (one sample mixed with herbs, another mixed with butter, and then straight caviar eggs) along with a glass of sparkling wine. The fish was good but caviar is probably not something we will be indulging in often.



We were back at the ship by 1pm for lunch. The afternoon was quiet and relaxing, and I was tired (not having slept well in the previous two nights). I caught up on some blog posts and managed a 30 minute cat-nap. Anja did the talk about tomorrow's tour and the disembarkation coming up on Thursday. During her talk, another tidal bore was coming upstream and in fact this one was one of the biggest the crew had seen this year. It was certainly quite a surge and there were some guys with jet skis making the most of it!

The evening dinner was the usual wonderful affair, and then we moved up to the lounge to await our arrival in Bordeaux, with the anticipated sail-past of the lights and the city all illuminated around 9pm.