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.

Libourne and Saint-Emilion - Monday 4 September

This morning we visited Saint-Emilion, a beautiful hilltop town in the heart of the world-famous Bordeaux vineyards, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is located 35km north east of Bordeaux. It has a 2000 year history with the Romans having planted vineyards that long ago. The town dates back to the eighth century when Emilion, a Breton Monk, came to settle in a hermitage carved into the limestone rock which we saw as part of our visit. There remains 200km of underground galleries and the largest monolithic church in Europe which was quite amazing - a huge underground church, carved out of the limestone by hand by the monks. We were not allowed to take photos of this. The bell tower built later, sits over this underground church, and the church beneath is only able to be visited due to strengthening with metal structures against the older pillars. Limestone is everywhere and accounts for the soil that is exceptionally well suited to wine growing.

Next stop was the Les Cordeliers cellars, also with barrels stored underground within what the aforementioned passageways. Again, we heard about and saw some of the wine-making process for their specific wine. Directly above the underground galleries and ideal wine-ageing cellars was a picturesque vineyard. The wine is mostly pre-sold on the futures market and we had a tastingk of two red wines and also sampled a traditional macaron (different than the coloured ones in Paris, and a recipe handed down by nuns). After this we headed off on short tour of the town, seeing some great views over the lower town and surrounding area, and also walking through a lovely church and cloister (Église Collégiale). It had been drizzling in the morning and the cobblestones in the older areas of the town rounded and highly polished) were slippery and treacherous, especially on some of the steeper streets. But thankfully the weather had cleared up and we didn't need to return to the lower part of the town. Then it was back to the ship for lunch.







In the afternoon was a 1.5 hour walking tour of the older part of the town of Libourne, where we were docked. We had to dock across the river and cross a bridge to enter the town, the more regular docking area having been destroyed earlier this year when a Viking Cruises ship's captain had forgotten to undock and move to the centre of the river for the regular Mascaret (tidal bore) wave (a few centimetres high) that surges many kilometres upstream from the Gironde every few hours. Surfers are known to have fun with the bigger surges when they occur, and there are only 60 sites of these in the world. Our tour had to be completed by 4pm, if we were wanting to return to the ship, before it undocked for 45 minutes to await the surge. We just made it back in time after a fairly uninspiring tour of the town which, being a Monday, was mostly closed and deserted. We waited for the bore to occur, and although there was a definite surge, it wasn't as exciting as we'd hoped. We were to remain docked here overnight.



Dinner was at the Chef's Table degustation at the back of the boat (the booking we have made each week, with a different menu each week). Snails featured on the menu again, and David and I managed to swallow one each - no need to do so again in future!