Day 5 - Domaine Le Plan Vermeersch and Domaine du Pegau

As many of you may have heard, the volcano eruption in Iceland has canceled flights across Europe. We were supposed to be flying into Paris tomorrow morning, however now we will be taking about an 11 hour bus ride beginning at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. From what I understand if the ash from the volcano enters the engines they will shut down, which is why there is no air traffic over northern Europe right now. Which also means we will be stuck in Paris once we arrive, until the fog has cleared.
So this post will be brief, but our day still went on, and we visited two very nice wineries today: Domaine Le Plan Vermeersch was our first stop. Former organic grocery store owner, race car driver, and now winemaker, Dirk Vermeersch runs the winery with his daughter. They've just built a new, bigger winery, which is still undergoing renovation but when finished will also be the family's home.

The highlight of touring Domaine Le Plan was tasting the wine straight from the barrels. As you can see from the picture, the wine was taken from the barrel with a large baster. We sampled Grenache, Aramon, Carignan, and Syrah.

After the tasting we were treated to a delicious lunch, then sent off to Domaine du Pegau.

The great-grandparents and grandparents of Paul Feraud expanded the original vineyard planted in the 17th century, and then Paul eventually began to grow his own grapes. In 1987, Paul's and his wife's daughter Laurence, finished her wine studies and came back to work with her father. The father-daughter duo are still running the winery today.

The wines at Domaine du Pegau are some of the priciest we have tasted thus far, but also some of the most pleasant we've had this week.

We brought some of their fine wines, such as the Domaine du Pegau Chateauneuf-du-Pape 'Cuvee Reservee' and Domaine du Pegau Chateauneuf-du-Pape 'cuvee Laurence' with us to Laurence's favorite pizza place for dinner.

Although our spirits were lowered after hearing news about our canceled flights, we had enough wine, food and good company to continue enjoying the moment.

I'm not sure where or when I will have access to internet next, but hopefully I will be able to post from Paris!