France – Arrival

For those of you that haven’t been to Europe before, you should know that most flights consist of an overnight journey. You leave here some time late afternoon, say 5:58 PM, and you arrive at a destination like Geneva, Switzerland at something like 7:02 AM. And it is still dark outside. This of course meant that even in spite of copious amounts of drinking on the plane, was unable to get more than slight fits and starts of sleep. That meant that our first day in France required us to push on through with minimal sleep.

After the hour and a half long drive from the airport to the chateau, the first order of business was to get ourselves set with a meal. So after unpacking we immediately headed for the local grocery store, the InterMarché. Once there we proceeded to buy all the important parts of the meal, bread, cheese sausage and of course, wine. We then proceeded to set up the wonderful spread pictured above for lunch.

However, if you look very closely at the picture (click on it to enlarge it) you will notice that the bottle of rosé there is none other than Fabbioli Cellars’ Rosa Luna. That’s right, the Diminutive One wanted to make sure that we had wine available at all points on this trip and she brought a couple of bottles from the states to cover our first day there.  (Ms Cocktail also brought a bottle of the Van Gogh Espresso Vodka for the same reason, talk about always being prepared!)

Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this was that for the entire week, we never stored any of our wines in the refrigerator inside. You see, on this property, there was also a mountain fed spring called simply enough, the Source. The Source was a beautifully constant 39° F and the running water not only chilled our white (and rosé !) wines quickly, but kept them at the optimal temperature for the duration of the time they were there.

Fabbioli Cellars Rosa Luna 2010

This is a clear, medium intensity, salmon colored wine that fades to clear oat the edge. It has a clean, youthful nose displaying medium(-) intense aromas of cantaloupe and pear. It is a dry wine with medium(+) acidity, medium alcohol, no tannin and medium body. It has medium intense flavors of red cherry, cantaloupe, citrus and mineral with a medium finish. It is a good wine that is ready to drink now but will not improve in the bottle.