Mark and Kathe's Travels

Christchurch to Kaikoura

2009-04-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

15.3.2009 (Sunday)

Mark and I decided to spend some time in downtown Christchurch today and get a feel for the city. We drove to city center—where the Cathedral was truly the center of attention, and headed towards the Art Center near the Botanical Gardens. We didn’t know exactly what to expect but were pleasantly surprised. As with so many of the towns and cities we’ve seen, the architecture is wonderful, and the streets are clean. There was a flower show going on at the Gardens, so everywhere you saw evidence of flowers.

The Sunday farmer’s market was going on at the Art Center, so Mark and I checked it out, only to see that this market was more artisans and craftsmen rather than farmers selling food. No worries; we checked out the wares and decided to have a coffee. We wandered about the downtown area for awhile; checked out the Punting on Avon, and decided to give it a shot after lunch. We ate Crepes and Paella from carts at the farmers market and then took a punting run down the river. It was quite relaxing; we’d have fallen asleep if our trip had been any longer.

Leaving Christchurch, we headed north again, our goal to stop in Kaikoura for the night. The East coast is not as mountainous as the West coast, so we made much better time. We saw a lot of cows and sheep and deer farms. As we got closer to Kaikoura, we started seeing wineries and vineyards, and decided to stop at Pegasus Bay. We met Matt pouring in the tasting room and tried several wines. We really enjoyed the conversation, and they made a fantastic late-harvest Riesling. It was nice meeting Matt, who is originally from Vancouver.

Dunedin to Christchurch

2009-04-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

14.3.2009 (Saturday)
Saturday we got up early and had breakfast, looking forward to spending the day in Dunedin. After looking over our options we decided to go to the farmer’s market at the Railway Station and then drive out to the Otago Peninsula to see the Yellow-eyed Penguins. Sadly the Cadbury Chocolate factory was closed on Saturday, and we chose penguins over the Speitz Brewery.

It was an incredible day. The Railway Station is beautiful and the market offered many culinary delights as well as a great cup a coffee. We wandered about and really enjoyed ourselves.

After walking around town, visiting a few shops, and peaking in the chocolate factory, Mark and I drove out to Penguin Place on the Otago Peninsula. It was amazing—couldn’t believe how big it was—we drove for 45 minutes, winding along the water. The tide was out, so once again we wondered at the ‘beached’ boats lying on their sides in the sand.

Penguin Place was on a large sheep ranch, and they were excited to have 23 roosting pairs of penguins. Our tour guide was great and we had him all to ourselves. He talked briefly about the life cycle of the penguin and then took us out to the coast where they lived. We learned that the yellow-eyed penguin is a forest penguin which likes to roost under trees. They have pink feet that turn red when they’re over heated and they mate for life (usually!) We were fortunate to see several on our tour.

After spending time with the penguins, Mark and I started our drive north and headed to Christchurch. We stopped at several spots along the way—my favorite being Moeraki to see the spherical shaped rocks. They were amazing. We took some really cool photos and had a lot of fun.

We drove through several towns today, including Omaru where we hoped to see the blue penguins, but they were not giving tours until that night, so we decided to keep driving. Omaru is a beautiful city, with spectacular buildings out of limestone. We read that they were built at a time where the city wanted to show that agricultural buildings could be as beautiful as churches and other municipal buildings. Quite stunning.

I got to drive today—pretty cool driving on the “wrong” side of the road, but after awhile you get the hang of it. The only ‘scary’ part was coming into Christchurch at dusk; Mark was giving directions, there was traffic and lights and turns—oh my! So much to keep straight all at the same time! But I got us there safe and sound.

Tonight we’re staying in our first Top 10 Holiday Park, and despite the more expensive cost, it was really nice; we particularly enjoyed the large inflated jumping pillow!

Haast to Dunedin

2009-04-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

13.3.2009 (Friday)
We put a lot of kilometers on the camper van, saw a few neat sites and made it to Dunedin. This is the largest city we have seen in NZ so far, about 120,000 people.

We started our day driving through the “Gates of Haast,” Cameron Flat, Makaroa, Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea. We stopped for lunch in Wanaka--eating our first BBQ in NZ.

Throughout the day we stopped by some neat waterfalls, and a large collection of rock stacks. Once again, we saw some incredible scenery. We saw our first-ever complete rainbow—where both the beginning and ending were in someone’s field.

Noticing giant fruit sculptures in Cromwell, Mark had to stop and take a photo, only to learn that it’s the heart of the Central Otago wine industry. We decided that we had time to do some wine tasting, which was a huge double bonus. We went to Rockburn and Mt. Difficulty. The views from Mt. Difficulty were incredible, and they are in the middle of a desert!

Cute town’s we’d find interesting to explore with more time: Alexandra, Roxburg and Lawrence.
Number of bridges crossed today: 74
Kilometers driven: 421

Notes from the drivers seat: Experienced a NZ freeway today in Dunedin. Was pretty weird to see a left hand exit as the norm. Had one small slip up giving the right of way at a traffic circle while trying to figure out directions. Otherwise, went well. Getting a turbo diesel camper van may have helped the lack of power up the long hills, but it’s all good.

Working the night shift

2009-04-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

So it has been quite a change to my normal life to work on the night shift. Luckily, I work with a pretty fun crew and we keep things light hearted (usually). It is stressful and we have deadlines, but we joke around. This is especially good for me!

But it is quite weird to start work at 7 pm. There is a period of disorientation on the way to work, with people wondering if the sun is going up or down, and what day is it anyhow? On the way home, there is often a very nice sunrise, and continued confusion as to the day of the week. Payback comes when we all go out to breakfast weekly. Must be disturbing to the non-nocturnals to see a gang of winery workers eating breakfast and throwing down a few beers at 8 am.

When coupled with the unusually bright sunlight in NZ, waking up in the early afternoon to watch the airshow that is buzzing your house can be hazardous. Those first rays of sunlight made me feel like a vampire. You definitely have to ease into the sunlight.

View of sunrise from receiving ramp. Beautiful!

2009-04-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

New Zealand - The Little Things

2009-03-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular posts on the Switzerland blog was this same subject, so here we go. I will update this post as more items of interest are discovered.

I apparently have a very strong American accent. I have a few Kiwis helping me identify exactly what this means.
Driving on the other side of the road is not that hard if there are other cars around. People tend to forget when they are the only car on the road.
Most bridges here are of the 1 lane variety, with a right of way sign. Can be exciting.
Almost nobody has a clothes dryer, and every house has a clothes line. I did this as a kid, but then the air pollution was too strong. The air is very clear here.
The sports are rugby, cricket, hockey (field hockey), and net ball, in order of popularity.
Net ball is like basketball, except you can't dribble and the hoop has no backboard. Seriously.
You are required to wear a helmet on your bicycle, but car insurance is not mandatory.
Dental and medical care is quite affordable, but not many hospitals.
Excellent lamb is about $2 US per pound. Good stuff.
Chicken is pretty expensive.
Chicken eggs have a vibrant orange yolk, and very flavorful. A little runny, though.
A LPG tank is referred to as a bottle.
Your car must be inspected every six months to renew the Warrant of Fitness certificate.

Franz-Joseph and Fox Glaciers

2009-03-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

12.03.2009 (Thursday)

Today is Glacier day! Our goal was to see both Franz-Joseph and Fox Glaciers. It’s cloudy today, but not raining—so we’re happy. We get a good start, driving through many cute, small towns along the way. Ross, a historic mining town would have been fun to poke around had we had more time, but we were determined not to get side-tracked.

Stopped at a tourist spot and found the cool remains of an old bridge that reminded me of a Star Wars movie.

We reached Franz-Joseph first and while we were tempted to pay $$$ for a guided tour or helicopter ride, we opted to hike out as far as we could to the Glacier ourselves. It was a great hike among rocks, waterfalls and a lot of weathered stones.

You can see below a photo of a "Wicked Camper Van" who likes to quote sayings on the side--this one Mark liked about Chuck Norris.

Fox Glacier was closer, but recent hiker deaths closed off the trail to the base of the glacier. Regardless it was a beautiful day. We also took a drive out to Lake Matheson, where supposedly the glaciers are reflected in the lake’s surface, but weather conditions were not in our favor, so we had to settle for a beautiful lake hike, and bouncing along on their swing bridge.

Other views of note today: stacked rocks at Bruce Bay, incredible views of the coast at Knights Point, and the beautiful sand beaches on our drive into Haast.

We stopped for the night in Okuru, just past Haast Beach. It’s a nice camper sight, but tonight we were pretty tired, and mostly enjoyed the email, laundry and kitchen facilities. Mark is reading his new book, and I’m updating our blog!

Sadly, we have to end our trip south. We hoped to make it to Milford Sound or Dunedin, but time just isn’t in our favor—so our goal for tomorrow is to make it as close to Cristchurch as possible. It’s a long drive, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m excited to pass by some more Lord of the Rings film sights, and we’re driving for quite awhile along Lake Hawea. Should be beautiful.

Cape Foulwind, Pancake Rocks and Hokitika

2009-03-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

11.03.2009 (Wednesday)
We woke up to grey skies and were worried the day might be a long rainy day—but we were blessed with rain while we drove and then beautiful, sunny skies for the rest of the day. We headed Southwest to the west coast. This was a great drive along the Buller River, the site of some scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies. It was beautiful and dramatic, with lots of water pouring down from the rainstorm.

We reached Westport, which was uneventful, and pouring rain; stopped for supplies and coffee. Mark could not resist driving to Cape Foulwind, which ended up being fantastic. There was a seal colony living on the point, and the storm was driving a continuous lineup of huge waves. As we arrived, the sun came out, and we were blessed with some great sights. Loads of tropical plants, and some cute seals. Our little camera does not do the seals justice, as they look like little turds on a rock in the picture. Trust me, there were seals…and they were cute.

As we have mentioned before, the tides here are pretty drastic. Plus or minus a few meters for high and low tides, so you may be next to the water, or hundreds of meters from the water.

Note for the day from the driver’s seat: Driving a rickety camper van across a one lane bridge that is shared with a train track is challenging, especially when Kathe tries to take a picture across your view. Good times otherwise. Only one bobble in a parking lot when no other cars around. Drove on correct side of road at all other times.

On a side note, Mark’s English may be deteriorating for a while, as he is reading “The Earth is a Harsh Mistress”. The writing style is a little crude. Good read to now. End program. Hi Mike.

We then headed south along Highway 6. A really nice drive, with more one lane bridges and cliff side roads. Pretty interesting driving. Mark was excited because we started seeing penguin crossing signs. Not too many of those in CA.

We next stopped in Punakaiki to look at the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. The park was full of dramatic geological features of layered limestone and mudstone that give the interesting striations. A few cool blow holes, and some beautiful scenery. Again, very thankful for the cooperation of the weather during this visit.

As another side note, it is very easy to spot American’s in N-Zed…they don’t have accents.

After the pancake rocks, we headed further south to Greymouth, where we took a short break from driving and wandered around. We learned that historically this town has a tendency for flooding, and in 1988 built what is now known as the “Great wall of Greymouth.” It truly is a great wall and blocks all views of the ocean. Too bad.

Our final stop for the night is a small town called Hokitika, a town gearing up for their “Wild Foods” festival going on this weekend. Had we stayed we could have feasted on goat, boar, kangaroo, bugs and grubs and many meats I’d not heard of before. An artisan city, we saw jade, wood, glass artisan shops. Cute, but the best feature was the beach right outside our campsite. We sat and watched the sun set, then feasted on pasta and salad, with Quark Cheesecake for dessert. Apparently Quark is a kind of cheese. Yummy none-the-less.

Abel Tasman Park

2009-03-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

10.03.2009 (Tuesday)
First thing we noticed this morning: beautiful sunrise; second thing: the awesome hi-tide compared to last night.

This morning we got up, cooked breakfast, showered and got underway.

Our goal was to hike as much of Abel Tasman Park and still allow time to drive south and be positioned for our next day. We promised ourselves not to get too set on any one plan, and today worked out great. The southern entrance to the park is outside Marahau and is only accessible by foot. We considered renting kayaks, or taking a water taxi, so we could see more of the park, but the costs were high, and we thought we could cover a lot of ground on foot.

As it turned out, we could have spent our entire week camping in the park and not seen all of it, but we didn’t mind, it was all beautiful. We decided on hiking to Stillwater Bay for lunch and then return. It was about 2 ½ hours and we stopped at various beaches and bays along the way. Apple Tree Beach was awesome. The ferns grow as big as palm trees and the contrast between the tropical forest and the golden sand beaches are impressive. I kept trying to get a good photo of a fern unfolding, which is captured in so much of the Maiori artwork.

Over the course of this week we were continually amazed at how much the tide recedes during the day. We were surrounded by water as we left, and 5 hours later upon our return, all of the water had gone out for low tide. Amazing. It reavealed hidden messages left as giant rock sculptures left in the sand by determined "trampers."

After our hike we stopped for refreshments and perused a local sculpture gallery. We even considered staying the night to take a “moonlit” kayak tour, but the clouds were coming in, and we worried all we’d get was wet. Probably the right decision, as it started raining not long after we were on the road.

Mark had a challenge driving the camper through high winds and then a rainstorm into our final destination for the night—Murchison. We do not recommend the campground we stayed at—even if you’re desperate.

Kaigas Camper van Tour 2009-South Island, New Zealand

2009-03-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

9.3.2009 (Monday)

Today we wrangled a camper van and started our mini holiday along the western shore of the South Island. It turns out this is peak season on camper vans, but we got lucky and found one in Nelson. A short and pretty bus ride led us to a great camper compliments of Ron and Rowena. It is a Mazda van with a high top that can be used as the third berth. It is just tall enough for Kathe, but Mark cannot quite stand up inside. Nelson is a very cute little town, and we are definitely planning on going up there again.

A short note on driving a manual transmission in NZ: This gives you one more distraction while you are trying to drive on the left side of the road. What are they thinking?!? This has not been that hard, but Mark keeps driving on the right in parking lots. The “Give Way” rule is truly crazy, and not looking forward to those intersections. Also, Mark is a little too big to be driving the van, as fifth gear comes pretty close to the steering column. Good times—but he handles it well.

The camper van is awesome. Drives pretty well, and it has a nice gas stove. Our first meal, you ask? We cooked up a nice dinner of pear salad with lamb in mint and bbq sauce. Lamb is quite delicious and affordable here. Mark has begun to grow wool.

The camper has everything that two people could want, except for the toilet. We drove to a camper park in Kaiteriteri from Nelson, and it is really nice. There is an absolutely beautiful beach right across the way, and they have nice amenities.

The photos above are of the beaches at sundown in Kaiteriteri. Tomorrow we will head out to explore Abel Tasman National Park, which is going to be quite an adventure.

2009-03-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Our first week in Blenheim, New Zealand
We enjoyed the free wine and food complements of Air New Zealand tremendously—with a 21 hour flight ahead of us, we truly enjoyed the amenities! Mark and I watched at least four movies each, and we both highly recommend “Slumdog Millionaire” if you haven’t yet seen it!

Our final flight into Blenheim landed in the midst of a torrential downpour—much to our chagrin, but it didn’t dampen our spirits a bit—WE ARE IN NEW ZEALAND! Yahoo! Bridget, an admin assistant for Delegat’s met us at the airport and took us to our home for the next 3 months.

We were among the last to arrive, and have learned that we have 11 people living in the house! I think this is what I worried about the most—what it’d be like to live with 10 other people, but so far it’s been great. There are 9 guys and 2 girls. There are 4 Americans, 2 Bulgarians, 1 guy from Scotland and 1 from Austria, a couple from France and our last housemate is from India. Great group. We get along well, share well and so far all seem to truly love cooking good food and the exploration for good wine.

Sunday we discovered that Blenheim has a Farmer’s Market—it’s awesome and we will go there every Sunday we can until it stops in winter. The artisan cheeses, fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and herbs are like nothing we’ve experienced, even on the central coast—the food is remarkable. In addition, you can have a fruit crepe for breakfast or a farm-fresh egg omelet with Swiss chard and tomatoes. Mark and I both preferred the crepes—although you should see the color of the eggs here!

On Monday, we started work—an informational workshop held at the convention center. We got information on the winery, the wines, our training, and how to set up bank accounts in town. In the afternoon we were ‘fitted’ for our work uniforms and boots, and then enjoyed a tasting of the Oyster Bay wines we’ll be making for harvest.

Tuesday through Thursday were incredibly busy days spent in the winery. Mark headed for the lab, where he’ll be working, and I worked with a small group all week, training in the cellar. It was a busy week, and we all came home tired and anxious to learn what our final assignments for harvest will be. As it turned out, Mark and I were assigned the night shift—he’s working with a small team in the lab, and I’m working on the white cellar crew. From everything we’ve heard, it’s a lot of work, weird working at night, but with the right team, can be a lot of fun. We’ll be enjoying our ‘end of shift’ drinks at breakfast, and sleeping during the day, but I’m sure it will be great.

Other days of note this week:
Wednesday was Bulgaria night—a celebration of food and Brandy from Bulgaria to celebrate their independence from the Turks. Turned out to be a week-long celebration, but hey, who’s counting?

On Friday, we started later in the day for a tour of Delegat’s vineyards, followed by a White’s Bay BBQ, sponsored by our bosses. It was a great afternoon of the sun and sand. We played Rugby, Frisbee and Cricket. We ate a lot of BBQ, cooked by Barry and Ron. A great day indeed. Afterwards, the interns all met for drinks in Blenheim. We were an impressive mob, and while Mark and I turned in fairly early, we heard the celebration went into the wee hours.

Over the weekend, Mark and I worked to finalize our vacation plans for next week and spent time in downtown Blenheim. Scotch is a great place to find a mohito and Hogaarden Forbidden Fruit.

On Sunday, we joined Emmanuel and Marie, our French house-mates on a trip to Picton, near the Marlborough Sounds. It was an absolutely beautiful day. We hiked a bit, ate a bit and generally enjoyed ourselves. We also bought a BBQ—an elusive thing this time of year in NZ.

The stowaway attempt was, unfortunately, detected and thwarted.

2009-03-01T01:07:00.000-08:00

Rainy Morning in Paso Robles

2009-02-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

Mark and I were driving to work on Friday and noticed the double rainbow shown here. It's a pretty magical time of year; the ground cover starting to grow bright green, pruning taking the fuzzy look off the vines. Everyone here is glad for the rain. It hailed here this afternoon--ending just as fast as it came. The picture below is how it looked just after the rain.

Europe - The Little Things

2008-07-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of small things that I noticed during the month spent in Switzerland/France/Italy:

Alcohol has little or no taboo. Ex #1. At the Italian university, which is run by the Catholic Church, there is wine on tap in the cafeteria. Ex #2. At the Changins campus, the vending machine sells Heinekens.

After your football (soccer) team wins a match (game), you are allowed to honk your car horn for an hour, but after that it is illegal.

Eggs and milk are not refrigerated in the supermarket.

Everyone eats French fries, or pomme frittes. Everywhere. To an alarming extent.

Horse meat is actually quite tasty when cooked properly. Not sure how I feel about this one, but I'll roll with it for now.

You can bring your dog on public transporation, but you have to buy them a half fare ticket, as if it were your child.

Ordering a latte at a coffee shop gets you a curious look and a cup of steamed milk.

Scooters in Switzerland are very quiet, but extremely loud in Italy (4 stroke vs. 2 stroke).

Bus drivers can get a big bus through almost any small, medieval city, unless the road construction guy gives you the thumbs down when your round the corner.

Everything in the super market comes in little tiny packages.
In restaurants, a beer is usually cheaper than a Coke.
In restaurants, its nearly impossible to get a glass of tap water, and the beer is still cheaper.
There are a lot of really expensive cars in Switzerland: Ferrari Enzo, Porsche Carrera GT, and Bugatti Veyron were all seen within one mile of eachother, and there was a Lamborghini used as a daily driver that we frequently saw in Ouchy.

Fresno State Wine & Society students, with Swiss organizers

2008-07-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

The Kaigas' with Mr. Sebastien Fabre

2008-07-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

Bastille Day

2008-07-14T04:16:00.000-07:00

Monday 7.14.2008

Today is Bastille Day in France, a major holiday that celebrates the beginning of the overthrow of the French monarchy. We had three lectures in the morning session:

André Lehman from Solutech, who displayed a machine that charts the progress of a fermentation by differential air pressure through tubes of different lengths. Pretty interesting, but they are coming out with an improved model soon.

Mark Welch from Cal Poly gave a talk on sustainable winegrowing in California. He also talked about IPM (Integrated Pest Managment) in California. This takes into account the life cycles of the pests, and coordinates the treatment plans accordingly.

Ken Fugelsang from Fresno State then gave a really good talk on Brettanomyces, an organism that lives in barrels and wine (after fermentation). Brett was isolated originally from British beer, a fact that our Dr. Thornton failed to mention.

We then went to Ouchy, where we got on a boat and headed to Evian, France. Yes, the home of the water. We can honestly say we've seen & tasted water from the source of Evian water!

The setting sun was absolutely beautiful this night.The Evian sprin, where people were filling up lots of water bottles.

There were a lot of booths set up along the waterfront, and we enjoyed some really good kabobs. They sell fireworks, and Pierre bought the largest firecracker I have ever seen. There was a nice fireworks show that night, and we caught the boat back across the lake to Ouchy and caugth the last bus home. Great night.

Mark shooting bottle rocket - action shot Big fireworks show

A Day in mARTigny

2008-07-13T12:07:00.008-07:00

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Mark and I decide to take a trip to both Neuchatel and Martigny today. We chose Neuchatel because of its proximity to a lake and the fact that you got to ride the "tipping" train there; we selected Martigny because it seemed appealing as an artsy town. We wanted to go to the art gallery that had a large sculpture garden and in particular, a Nikki de St. Phalle sculpture.

As luck would have it (as well as a little bad timing) we missed the train to Neuchatel by about 2 minutes. So we went to Martigny first instead. We were still flying from the excitement of our day yesterday and were hoping to have as much fun. At the train station we took a few minutes to get our bearings and then set off for the museum. Immediately it became clear that the museum would be easy to find--we found fliers/posters for it everywhere! To see their website, check out: http://www.gianadda.ch/wq_pages/en/expositions/

Mark and I perused the exhibits-we weren't too fond of the paintings by Balthus, but we enjoyed the da Vinci exhibits and the sculpture garden--sadly only one Nikki de St. Phalle, but I've included pictures!

After leaving the Gianadda museum, we went to visit the St. Bernard museum. Todd would have enjoyed this museum--you got to pet the dogs! They had at least 6-8 at the museum, and started taking them for walks as we were leaving.

The rest of our afternoon was okay--we took a walk out to the castle--not all the way, but part of the way. Then we paid $4 Swiss francs to take a bus tour of the city--not our favorite part of the trip--but we ended on a positive note, had a great lunch and headed back to the train station to head out to Neuchatel.Mark enjoyed the tipping train! We didn't end up having dinner in Neuchatel--it was just too rainy, but we did purchase some beautiful cheeses and meats with fresh bread to have a nice dinner in our room while we did laundry. Quiet Sunday night:)

Lucerne –Transportation Museum

2008-07-13T12:07:00.007-07:00

7.12.2008

Today we decided to forgo the Italy trip due to the rain forecast for the entire weekend. We got on the train and headed to Luzern, about 2 ½ hours away. It is an amazingly beautiful city, with a nice mix of old and new buildings built around a lake in a valley. I dragged Kathe to the Transportation Museum, which ended up being a ton of fun and we spent 4 hours looking around.

They have a very impressive train museum, from very old trains to modern trains. We were able to see the angled trains that are used on the very steep tracks, like the trip up to Mt. Pilatus. We were going to take this train to the summit, but it was blanketed by clouds and the views would have been pretty slim.

We then moved to the Peter Sauber exhibit, which I was really excited about Peter Sauber is a Swiss race car designer, who fielded his own team for several years in Formula One. Several cars were on display, including a very recent mode. These cars have gotten extremely aerodynamic in the past few years, to an amazing extent. I drove on a very elaborate video game cockpit, which was a lot of fun. I passed Mark Weber on the Monaco track (meh).

We headed through the motorcycle and bicycle section, and then went outside where we took part in the world’s most exciting museum exhibit: we got in a head on collision. Two Mini Coopers were rammed together at 13 km/h after we were seatbelted into the cars. No helmet or liability waiver was needed. Life is exciting outside of California. The corrected video is below.

We realized that the museum is much larger than we anticipated, as we headed into the airplane, helicopter, boat, cable car, and tunnel boring sections of the museum. They also have a giant map of Switzerland that you can walk across, and zoom in on areas of interest. I found the dormitory buildings where we are staying in Lausanne. There were games for kids to play, as well as magnifying glasses and a GPS locating type device. Pretty cool stuff.

On our walk back to the main part of the city, we walked by the ampitheater and there was a very good band playing. Lots of people were on hand to listen, despite the pouring rain. We headed up to see something called the Lion, which was very beautiful, and stumbled across a glacier park. Really neat stuff, that was uncovered when a guy was building a wine cellar…now a national park. There was interesting information about global warming and carbon emissions, and then we found the hall of mirrors. The hall of mirrors was moved to this location…glaciers and a hall of mirrors seems like a great combination? This was really fun, and I did suffer some disorientation: I ran into myself once, and turned a corner to find me looking back at me, which was pretty creepy. They have a big tower we climbed up to see the city, and there were more fun mirrors.

We then headed over the covered bridge, which was really cool. We topped off the night with a really nice, but expensive, fondue dinner, and then headed home on the train.

Chateau Thivin Visit

2008-07-13T12:07:00.005-07:00

7.11.2008

Today we headed to the Beaujolais region to visit the family winery of an alumni from the Changins campus, at Chateau Thivin, in the Mt. Brouilly sub-appelation. We got a tour of their vineyard, which was much further along than any others we had seen. The area is warmer and dryer, and you could see that the vines were slightly stressed from water shortage. More on that later.

They have a wonderful old world cave where they store wine in barrels. The mold growing on the walls was pretty scary. They had several old basket presses on display.

Their fermentation area was one of the more unique I have ever seen. The grapes are dropped down through hatch covers in the floor, and into either concrete or stainless fermenters. Winemaking in Beaujolais often uses the some form of the carbonic maceration technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_maceration) to enhance the fruity characteristics in their wines.

Once the wine had finished fermenting the available sugar, the bottom door is opened and the must is allowed to drop down into the press, which is mounted on rails, in a very efficient design.

We then headed to the tasting room to taste through the wines, and they hosted us for a very nice lunch, where every table got a bottle of every wine they make. Wow. The menu consisted of pork and sausages that had been cooked for 4 hours in a kettle containing last falls pomace (grape skins and stems). Very flavorful and a nice meal. A local musician came in to provide fantastic entertainment, albeit in French. We also enjoyed a very nice cheese plate, and a wonderful desert. Wow.

We then made a stop by their office to purchase some wine, during which time the skies opened up and it absolutely started raining cats and dogs. Lots of very wet people on the bus, and most people took a nice nap on the bus ride back to Lausanne.

Visit to Beaune

2008-07-13T12:07:00.003-07:00

Thursday 7.10.2008

We had an interesting lecture this morning from a Swiss professor who was working to profile wines based on a matrix of acid/tannic and structure/soft. I’m not sure that these classification systems work outside of a spider plot, but always interesting to see these experiments. We tried a nice Chablis out of the gate, which was so nice because we did not get to try any Chablis in the region. I was pretty close to his data points for most wines, but thought very differently about many of the wines. Go figure. We then drove back to Dijon for lunch.

We went to Ikea with Nicole and Andrew, for lunch and looking around. They have more that just Swedish meatballs, and it was actually a quite nice lunch for a very good price, relatively speaking.

After lunch, we took the scenic route to the city of Beaune. It is a very touristy area, but we had fun. Toured another church, and found an incredible bookstore/wine shop that carried a tremendous selection of books about wine. Wow. Unfortunately, almost all were in French and all were very expensive. The wine shop had a few bottles of Domaine le Romaine Contee, topping out at 5,900 Euros. Wow. Maybe we will buy this to drink at the hostel tonight.

We had a pretty good dinner with Jeremiah, although the glasses of Chablis we ordered were corked. It’s a double edged sword to know about wine sometimes. A lot of the group went to a karaoke bar that night, but we were pretty tired and went back to the hostel. We started to try and plan a trip to a really neat lake in the Piedemonte region of northern Italy for this weekend. Will be challenging, but we’re going to give it a shot.

Chablis

2008-07-13T12:07:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Today we headed to the Chablis region and had a very interesting talk from a viticultural consultant about the soils of Chablis, and the underlying geology. Best talk of the trip thus far, in my opinion. There are several layers of soil profiles surrounding Paris, and they appear in concentric rings.

Chablis is famous for producing Chardonnay wines with minerality and crisp acidity. This is said to come from the underlying limestone soil, that created calcareous soils. Basically, clay with big limestone rocks, and 30 cm deep you hit a pure limestone layer. The limestone layer will be either solid, or fairly crumbly.

A long time ago, this area was a sea that rose and subsided several times. The solid pieces were deeper water, and the crumbly layers were the shoreline areas. The resulting wine from the land over the solid bits will have higher minerality, and be tighter. The wine over the crumbly soil will be more open and fruity. Best description of soil and resulting wine I have heard, and I think the wines from this region are the best expression of the effect of terroir.

There is a big problem of spring frost in this area, and there are different means to protect the young shoots in April. A common and inexpensive means is sprinklers, but we saw a new method that was pretty extreme. They put a resistant wire along the bottom trellis wire, and then run current through the wire to provide heat. Wow. The obvious question was cost, which is about 25,000 Euros/hectare (~$16k/acre at 1euro=$1.60) just for the materials. Additional cost for installation and running the electricity to the vineyard make this an expensive proposition. This will provide either 10watts/meter or 20w/m in a pulse type application. I’m not sure exactly how much heat that provides, but it seems like it might protect the young shoots. He did point out that if a freeze hit in May, they shoots would be too far away from the heating element. Very interesting, and another example of how much money they put into the vineyards here. I still can’t reconcile the vineyard costs here with the relatively low prices, compared to California wines. Once an accountant, always an accountant I guess…

We saw more interesting things in the vineyard as well. The pruning system in Chablis is unique, where they have a successive cane pruning system. We also saw a helicopter spraying a nearby field, and some unique over the row tractors. These are really neat tractors that straddle the trellis, and can handle slopes pretty well. Neat stuff. There was also a fair amount of lime induced iron chlorosis, which is an iron deficiency caused by heavy rainfall in lime soils. The rain messes up the ion gradient that the root has created, and the plant cannot take up iron. It will recover. We saw a lot of this in Switzerland.

We then visited Domaine Borgnat, where one of the Summer University’s coordinators has ties. They have a very old cave and winery, that is essentially a castle. It has been in that family for countless generations. They treated us to an incredible spread at lunch, that included all of the wines they make. Wow. Crémant (a sparkling wine), Aligoté, Rosé (really Pinot Gris made like a red wine, not a white wine), two Pinot Noirs, and a third that includes an ancient variety César. Then an almond flavored liqueur and a grappa, but I had to pass on this round. The sausage at lunch was quite interesting, and to put it lightly, “gamey”. Always good to try something new, but this one was not in my ballpark.

Instead of a nap, we then headed to a cooperative Crémant producer that is located in a giant cave, about 10 acres underground. It was a former limestone quarry, then a mushroom farm. Incredible place, albeit really moldy and wet. There were several sculptures put into the walls by local artists. Annual production of 3 million bottles, with an average of three years in the cave. So, about 9 million bottles in the cave. Wow.

We tried the wines, and they were alright. Not really my cup of tea. But Kathe & I tried a kir, which is white wine with Crème de Casis. Now we’re talking. We had to escape the mold smell, so we went out and took some neat pictures with our new friends Andrew & Nicole from Cal Poly.

We went to dinner with them that night, and had a really nice spread, including a Sicilian Chardonnay blend that was quite nice.

Wine Tasting in Hautes Cotes de Nuit

2008-07-13T12:06:00.006-07:00

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

This morning we headed out to the Dijon business school where we had a presentation from Gerrie Richie on different cultural practices used in the vineyard. Afterwards, Mark and I decided to have lunch in Dijon with Nicole and Andrew. We found a kebab shop—France’s equivalent to McDonalds it would seem, and had a great lunch of sandwiches and drinks. My first french fries in France. From there we headed back to the hotel, where we had a little time to rest before our next adventure.

This afternoon we visited Domaine Bernard Hudlot, in the Hautes Cotes de Nuit, Villard-Fontaine. The man that greeted us had a similar persona to the owner of Casse Basse. Friendly and welcoming, he was very proud of his wines and allowed us to try both the older and newer versions of his Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs. We tried a 2002 Chard, a 1996 Chard, a 1997 and 1987 Pinot Noir, and a young 2004 Gamay. We had a great time visiting his winery.

We learned that he has almost 800,000 bottles—and a lot of mold. Still trying to figure out why these wineries don’t clean better. We had to walk single file down the stairs into the cellar to avoid the mold. I’m also trying to avoid a “mold cold.” Ah well, it’s easy to overlook when the wines taste good. We enjoyed the younger Chardonnay and the older Pinot Noir. All of the younger Burgundies were just too oaky—too hard to approach. They definitely need time in the bottle. Our host recommends at least 20 years. I think he knew what he was talking about.

After our tasting, several students bought wine. They were incredibly reasonable for their quality.

This evening we were bussed to Dijon city-center again. Mark and I decided to head out on our own to try something new and less expensive for dinner. Nicole and Andrew headed back to the same restaurant we ate at Monday. We probably should have joined them. We had a cheaper dinner, but the quality was on par with the price. Lesson learned. We walked home—desperate for some exercise. It was a pleasant walk as we passed a nice coffee shop, and got to get a feel for the area surrounding Dijon’s city center.

Back at the hotel we made an early night of it—catching up with our blog and downloading some Simpson’s on the computer. (I think Mark misses the TV.)

Traveling to Burgundy—Dijon, France

2008-07-13T12:06:00.005-07:00

Monday, July 7, 2008
Today we get an early start and travel to France through the Jura Mountains. Like all of the other trips we’ve taken through Switzerland, it is beautiful. Different from all the others, it’s not a long drive—yeah! Each time we’ve traveled into a new country we’re amazed at how the architecture changes. This part of France is really pretty. Once in Dijon we check into our hostel—pretty nice, but it feels like we’re staying on a cruise ship—only no cool towel animals to greet you. Ah well, at least we have internet service!

At our hotel we have about 45 minutes to get settled and have lunch.

We head out after lunch for the barrel maker Francois Freres in Saint Romain, Beaune. This is the first cooperage facility that we’ve visited on this trip, and everyone has a good time. Apparently these folks aren’t worried about OSHA showing up on their doorstep because we were allowed to walk around without hard hats. The barrels they made were beautiful, and the whole facility smelled like sweet oak. We learned that their facility will hold up to $1billion in inventory that will produce approximately 1 million barrels. Amazing. Its interesting to learn that while many of the procedures of barrel-making are mechanized, the barrels are still put together by hand, and the quality standards are very high.

These are the photos of oak used to make barrels, and different steps in the process.
Once our tour is over, we head back to Dijon. We have several hours free in the city before we get on the bus and head back to our hostel for the night. Andrew and Nicole join us as we head into the city. We decide to walk to Notre Dame (not the big one) and see what it looks like. It’s another beautiful cathedral, but very different from the one in Siena.

Photos of Notre Dame--the gargoyles were quite impressive!

For dinner, we find a restaurant with an outdoor patio and enjoy a fantastic meal of pasta and pizza and Pinot Noir. It’s a great evening. Along the way we pick up a bottle of wine to enjoy later.

Lazy, Rainy Sunday

2008-07-13T12:06:00.003-07:00

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Well, despite our best intentions, we are too tired to get up early today. Mark thinks he may be coming down with a cold, and it’s raining outside. In other words, it’s a perfect day to be lazy. We finally get ourselves moving by 9am and drag Lauren out for breakfast, a trip to the farmer’s market and the Migros for some groceries. We really enjoy ourselves—the Crepe restaurant we selected was expensive, but the crepes were amazing.

Savory Crepe

Farmer's Market in Ouchy

Afterwards we wandered our way through the farmer’s market to select some fruits, cheeses and bread to take along on our trip to France tomorrow. We select a nice fresh loaf of bread and some Gruyere and Asiago cheeses. Next we go to the Migros (Swiss version of a supermarket) and pick up some meats, water and snacks for the bus. So far we’ve learned the bus rides are far longer than scheduled, so its best to be prepared.

Today is laundry day! Despite our desires to be jet-setters, we still need to do laundry!

Large Stone Sculpture in Montreux

Mark and I rest for a bit and then decide we’ve hung out long enough and head out to Montreux to see what’s happening at the Jazz festival, their 42nd annual. It’s still raining, but we don’t care—the train ride was beautiful and so is Montreux. We look around, do some browsing through the different vendor carts set up, and look for the free Jazz that should be playing outside. We find eventually and are fortunate to hear the USA big band from Texas. They’re really good. After awhile it starts pouring and we decide to head inside to the Jazz club. Unfortunately no band will be playing while we’re in town, but we decide to have a glass of wine and relax for a bit. A great end to a fun, relaxing day.

Kathe's new car--a SMART car:)

Mark and a Jazz Legend

Travel to Lausanne

2008-07-13T12:06:00.001-07:00

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Saturday was a very long day of travel back to Lausanne. We left with our luggage at 8am and didn’t get into Lausanne until 7:30pm. We had a truck-stop lunch, not as good as the one where we had the fresh porcini mushroom pizza, but not bad. The route was long because Sebastian asked the bus driver to take us through Genoa and Piemonte.

We had coastal views for awhile, and then headed into the Alps. It was a beautifully scenic trip. We loved it, but were very crabby and tired when we returned to Lausanne. After unpacking, refreshing ourselves, we met Andrew and Nicole for dinner. We had pizza, salad and pasta at the Carousel restaurant on the lake. It was pretty, but very expensive compared to Italy.

Last item of business: get a good night sleep!

A day of wine tasting in Tuscany

2008-07-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Today is all about tasting Brunello de Montalcino. We head out in the morning after breakfast in the hotel—more good coffee and bread, pastries—and banana yogurt! We travel about an hour to Montalcino. It is absolutely beautiful countryside. Tuscany is exactly as it’s pictured in the calendars and postcards. My photos certainly can’t do it justice.

The first winery on our tour was at Cal d’Orcia. I really loved it. The winemaker and owner both made presentations, and were extremely knowledgeable. Owner Francesco Marona Cinzano presented on “Wine marketing.” We tasted a 2006 Rosso di Montalcino and a 2003 Brunello di Mantalcino, then a 2005 Banditeila, the single vineyard red wine that was the most California style of them all. I appreciated the professionalism of both the owner and the winemaker. The winery and grounds were beautiful and the winery was pretty clean. The owner is 15th generation—and a great salesman.

Next we went to Fattoria dei Barbi and the Wine Museum on their site. It was quite rainy when we got off the bus. So we had to make a run for it. I enjoyed the museum-mostly because I was able to find a map of Montalcino and find out the age of each of the wineries we were visiting and where they were located on the map of the area.

Fattoria dei Barbi was the oldest of the three we were to visit. We had a long tour of the winery “museum” and saw mainly the storage rooms with barrels—our guide shared that the production area was not a part of the tour…too bad…I’m not sure he understood that we were all wine students. While the casks were beautiful, mold was very apparent in the rooms, and it started taking its toll on me after awhile. By the time we got to the tasting area—which had a great set up of breads, bread w/olive oil, meats and cheeses (I’m really loving pecorino and truffle infused cheese) I was pretty well saturated. I did not really enjoy the wines as a result. Afterwards I did try their single vineyard Brunello “Vigna del Fiore” which I thought was fantastic.

Our final winery of the tour was Case Basse di Gianfranco Soldera. Mark and I did some research prior to coming and were pretty excited to meet this man. He is a legend in the industry and sells his wine anywhere from $150/bottle to $350/bottle. Needless to say we were honored to have the opportunity to meet him. Gianfranco is a hoot. He’s a little old Italian man who had us all laughing despite the fact that we had no idea what he was saying. He led us into his new winery which was finished in 2001. Case Basse had existed before as a winery and the vineyards were planted from nothing by him in 1972. Gianfranco shared many of his opinions on winemaking—mostly that it’s an art rather than a science…that you need to do most of the work in the vineyards (90%) and only 10% is the winery. He does all of the punch downs himself, which all of us were impressed by. He said he starts at 6am and works until 1am the next day. No time to waste during harvest!

The building is underground, and the walls are solely 1 meter thick of rocks held in place with a metal mesh. When it rains, "water comes in through the walls and the ceiling". Very interesting concept, although not sure I'd be interested in the water.

After our last winery, we were all pretty pooped, but I enjoyed the scenery once again while we traveled back to Siena. Mark and I relaxed a while once back at the hotel and headed out around 8:30 for dinner. The streets in the market were packed with fans of the winning Contrada—it appeared they were having a celebratory dinner together. I really wanted to watch the sun set in the Piazza where the Palio took place, and had my sites set on a restaurant we’d seen yesterday. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to see Professor Nuri, Nicole and Andrew and Jennai. They were just finishing, but ended up hanging out while we ate. Mark took some “postcard-quality” photos. Once we finished—we had a fantastic dinner: papperadelli with wild boar sauce, pizza with spicy sauce, bacon and mascarpone cheese, Crème Brule and chocolate lava cake with cappuccinos—ooh la la, quite yummy.

We all walked to the fountain in the square to make wishes—it’s rumored that a wish will result in a quick return to Italy! We were happy to make a wish. On our way back to the hotel, we had to stop for gelato (of course) and ran into a massive crowd of “porquipinos” leaving the square and most likely headed for the Piazza.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Siena

2008-07-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 3, 2008

This morning we checked out of the hotel, had breakfast and boarded the bus to ISVEA, a research facility in Poggibonsi. We had several presentations and a tour of the facility in addition to a simple snack of sandwiches and focaccia bread. Afterwards Sherri finished her presentation from yesterday on Prohibition, which the foreign students were very interested in hearing about.

Next destination—Siena & the beautiful Tuscany. Last night we watched a crazy horse race on TV, and the importance of this race to the history of Siena became clear today. We are so fortunate to be staying in this city. We got our rooms and I took brief nap—for some reason I’m pretty tired. Feeling refreshed after the nap, Mark and I had some Limoncello and headed out to explore the city. We are completely free to explore the city on our own until we have dinner with the group at 8:30pm.

It turns out to be a great afternoon and evening. Mark and I run into Sherri, the professor from Cal Poly. We all are a bit hungry, so we get a slice of pizza that we can eat while we walk around. As it turns out our celebration from last night’s crazy horse race is just getting started. We see men of all ages dressed in brightly colored clothes and about a half an hour later we watch a parade begin that will still be going on at midnight.

We are amazed at the beauty of this city. The architecture, the alleys where shops and homes are tucked away are all captivating. There are no cars (at least not many) and people are either walking or riding scooters. It’s a pretty charged atmosphere. We find a great store where we buy some wine. The victory parade passes us again and we wonder about the pacifiers they’re all wearing around their necks. We cross paths with Rally who tells us about the cathedral, so we decide to try and find it. But first we find the giant piazza http://www.ilpalio.org/palioenglish.htm where the horse race (called the Palio) was run last night. It is breathtaking and huge. We feel so small walking through the center. It’s hard to imagine that the night prior a huge race had taken place here.

Moving on, and deciding to come back later, we walk up a few steep alleys and find our way to the cathedral, which again is beyond our ability to describe. We know that pictures won’t do it justice either. It is breathtaking. The funniest thing about the place is that its striped—we later learn its green and white, but to us right now it looks black and white, like a zebra. But that doesn’t reduce its beauty. Wow. We pay the $3 Euros to look inside and explore. Many famous artists have worked on this cathedral. The sculptures are all by Michelangelo, and we are amazed. We wonder how he found the time to do all that he did in his lifetime, but are glad to have the chance to see his work. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/siena-cathedral-duomo-di-santa-maria.htm

After the cathedral, we decide to head back to the square and have some beers while we take it all in. We pick a patio right across from the church and tower and just relax. The beers are good, the temperature is cooler due to the shade, and we’re all happy. Later some of the Cal Poly folks join us and we move on to do some more exploring. We see more beautiful streets, another passing of the parade, and see a few of the rival Contrada’s colors flying as they get ready to celebrate themselves. As we walk, we start seeing others from the group, and we realize it’s getting close to dinner time.

Our Italian Guide, Dr. Valeria Mazzoleni, introduces us to our host for the evening. We dine outside at a location within the Crontrada of the Turtle, della Tartuca d’Orto dei Tolomei. Our host is gracious and Mark and I sit with him at dinner—outside overlooking the Southern part of Siena—and ask a lot of questions about the history of Siena, the Contrada, and the Palio. We felt honored to have the opportunity to learn so much from him. What a beautiful night.

Tuscany at last--Fierenze and Poggibonsi

2008-07-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

This morning we packed our bags and headed for Tuscany. Yeah—back to the mountains. As nice as our visit to Fraciacorta and the lake, we are all missing the beautiful mountains. Our visit today was to the University of Fierenze (Azienda Agricola Monepalde). Dr. Valentina Canuti, a doctoral student at the University, gave a presentation on the Tuscany region. We enjoyed her talk despite the blistering heat and humidity. Cal Poly professor Sherrie Niku went next and spoke on the history of winemaking in California.

After the presentations the program director took us on a tour of the school’s winery and we were all relieved to get a brief respite from the heat when it started raining. Sadly, it only lasted a few minutes...and then got really humid!

Our evening, and next hotel stop was in Poggibonsi, a really cute town between Florence and Siena. After checking into the hotel, we walked down the street to the center of town and found a place to have beers, do a little shopping, and purchase a bottle of Limoncello.
We found a really beautiful piazza where we had dinner. The restaurant was great, and several of our team mates ended up at the same place. It was a great meal, and afterwards we all ended our night with gelato.

Franciacorta, Italy

2008-07-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
We get up early and have breakfast in the dining hall of the conference center at 8:30am. We have coffee, bread and toppings. Not bad, but right now I’m really craving eggs. After breakfast we get on the bus for our trip to Piacenza and the University. Today’s sessions focus on the “Study of different maceration parameters and their influence on red wine quality” by Dr. Milena Lambri; our second is on “Use of cork, synthetic, and screw-cap stoppers for wine: a study of their influence on wine quality”, presented by doctoral candidate Elena Grillo. Our third is on the “Impact of coating VOC’s on wine sensory characters” by Dr. Maria Daria Fumi. Our final speaker today is Cal Poly’s professor Geraldine Richie. She presented on “Sparkling wine Production in CA.” We had a sparkling wine tasting which was enjoyable…we tried Schramsberg (slightly corked), Roederer (one of Mark’s favorites), and Domaine Chandon. All in all the presentations were interesting.

After lunch we left the area and drove to Fraciacorta to visit a sparkling wine producer there called Tenuta Villa Crespia. It is a very large, beautiful facility. The director, Francesco Jacono gave a presentation on the terroir of Fraciacorta and then led us on a tour of the winery, ending with a tasting of two of his sparkling wines. The first was without dosage and the other had some sugar added—a Brut. They were both very interesting. Most people enjoyed the Brut, but I think the one without the sugar gave us the most to talk about—especially since we learned that he also had the grapes macerate on the skins for a period of time before pressing.

Our final destination for the day is a local tourist destination on the lake, Lago d’Iseo—a beautiful town on the water. We enjoyed a light dinner of wine and salads and walked along the lake to be pleasantly surprised by the town center. We found gelato—and today I decided that my favorite flavors are Stracciatella (fior di latte and chocolate) and cherry (I'll give the Italian name later if I can locate it!) I think Mark's favorite flavor is Pistachio.

Traveling to Piacenza

2008-07-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 30th

We are so excited to be going to Italy. I can’t believe it! Leaving Switzerland we took a familiar route south which led us to a huge tunnel which eventually led into Italy. Wow. A 6km tunnel through a mountain—that was a trippy experience, although it’s become clear since that the Swiss are skilled bridge and tunnel builders. Our destination today: the University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. (Istituto di Enologia E Ingegneria Alimentare)

As we drove into Italy, I was amazed at the mountains, and how beautiful it was—our bus driver even pulled over to show us the back of the Matterhorn (cool.) I noticed immediately that Italians are not as concerned with how their country looks—we saw many abandoned buildings and a lot of trash—neither of which we saw in Switzerland.

I was excited to see castles at the top of every hill and imagine they would have been fun to explore. After a few hours however, the terrain changed. We were out of the mountains and driving in a flat countryside. It looked a lot like California's central valley. We noted rice fields in addition to other crops.
It was a long bus ride.

Several hours later we arrived in Piacenza, famous for both its food and wine. The University kitchen was kind enough to hold lunch for us, and we dined on meat, a side dish, and pasta. If we liked we could have had wine out of the soda dispenser (Mark and I opted for “fizzy” water). Now, sleepy and full, we met the instructors in the program, the director of the school and listened to three presentations. We are welcomed by Valeria Mazzeni, who introduced each speaker, and translated. We would get to know her better as the week went on.

After the presentations, we boarded the bus again to travel 10km out of town to our hotels. We were all a little nervous about what to expect, as we’d been told we’d be sharing rooms, 4 each. As it turned out we were given our own room. We had air conditioning and a really big bathroom! We couldn’t believe it—our best accommodations yet. Sadly, no internet (the start of a trend for this week.) Bummer.

We had 30 minutes to get back to the bus and head to the center of Piacenza for dinner. At first we weren’t really impressed. Piacenza is kind of dirty, flat and hot, and the buildings are unimpressive. But the downtown area had interesting little side streets and alleys which were fun to walk down---unless you were starving and trying to find dinner. We learned right away that Italians don't usually open their restaurants for dinner until later. We were happy to find a nice pizza restaurant. The food was great, and we even had some to take home for later. The town was buzzing a bit more after we finished our meal, so all in all it was a great night.

Back at the hotel we enjoyed a nice quiet evening with air-conditioning!

Weekend Travels

2008-07-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday, June 28th
On our own! Each weekend, we are free to spend our time as we like. Mark and I had a few ideas in mind: to see a Glacier, to visit the Medieval town of Gruyere and to tour the Museum of 5 senses across Lake Geneva in Yuoire, France. As it turned out we got up a bit late (I think the pace of the week caught up on us) and arrived at the train terminal around 10am with our friend Lauren. We learned that it was already too late to make the trip to the Glacier outside Gstaad, or visit Yvoire (to see the museum of the 5 senses), but we had plenty of time to visit Gruyere, so that’s what we did! It turned out to be an amazing day.

In essence our trip was a large loop taken by train. We took the express train out of Lausanne north to Palezieux to Gruyere and saw more amazing countryside. On our return trip we decided so to go through Montreux.

At first we weren’t too impressed with Gruyere. As soon as we got off the train we saw the fromagerie (cheese factory)—were we learned about the terroir of the area and the significant impact it has on the cheese. It felt like a sensory class because we smelled several different scents blind--many of which I never expected to smell in cheese.

Automatic cheese washing and flipping machineMilk heating kettle (beautiful)

After the tour, we walked around a bit looking for a place to have lunch but it was too late. We were going to leave when we decided to take a walk to the medieval town and look around. As it turned out, the whole town of Gruyere was at the top of the hill with the Castle!!! We had just been at the bus terminal. We felt a bit silly—and relieved that we had taken the time to hike to the top of the hill. The first thing we recognized was a gelato shop, and decided to refresh ourselves after the long hike up the hill. Afterwards we walked around a bit, and meandered towards the castle.

To our complete surprise we turned a corner and saw some giant Alien sculptures and realized that there was a museum dedicated to H. R. Giger(http://www.hrgigermuseum.com/), the artist who created Alien, Species, and Necronomicon. The artwork is dark, but it was fascinating to see, since the movie Alien is such a part of our movie history. Needless to say it made our conversations for the remainder of the day very interesting. Did we mention--that next to the museum there was a bar designed after the Alien set?? This day just kept getting better!

Due to our sidetrack visit through the museum we ended up racing through the castle, which was architecturally beautiful; being on the top of a mountain made for exciting photos.

After visiting the castle, we felt we must have a drink in the Giger Bar—mostly for the photos; when finished, we raced back to the train station and checked the schedule for a trip back through Montreux. Fortunately, we were able to jump on one of the Goldenpass panoramic trains; the views of the mountains and the lake coming down into Montreux were breathtaking. It was hot in Montreux, so we cooled our feet in the lake for a bit and wandered a lot before choosing a place to have some wine and share a pizza. The people-watching was fun—we saw our equivalent of a “booze cruise” taking off, advertising a local free magazine. After relaxing and chatting for awhile, we headed back to our hotel.

Once in Lausanne we picked up some food from the coop—bread and tomatoes to go with our cheese from Gruyere. We helped Lauren download her photos and drank some wine and ate our bounty. It was a great night.

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Today we started early so we could enjoy our day at Glacier 3000. Lauren decided to sleep in, so Mark and I headed out by ourselves. Our first train out of Lausanne was a historic train where we were served coffee and enjoyed a comfortable journey back in time. The travel was beautiful. Once we arrived in Gstaad, we were in the mountains, so the rest of the trip by bus was amazing. At Col-du-Pillon, we were at the base of the mountain. It took two different cable cars to get us to the top, which was approximately 9000feet. I had never seen a glacier before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect (so far it just looked like a mountain.)

Riding the cable car we saw many people hiking trails that were all over the area. Across the road and up some hills we saw lakes formed from water falling from the hills. Had we known we would have planned differently--a hike in that area would have been amazing. The glacier was impressive. Mark paid to ride the alpine slide—kind of a cross between a bobsled and a rollercoaster. It looked like fun, but I was too chicken to ride it, so I enjoyed taking photos of Mark riding it—which he thoroughly enjoyed.

We took the chair lift down to a section where people were hiking out to Devil’s peak. At first we thought we’d walk, but the snow was pretty slushy, and I wasn’t wearing waterproof shoes. Instead, we each paid $15 to take a Snowcat out to the point. We passed the dog sled teams, people hiking and met a group from Edinburgh having lunch at the peak. Our guide pointed out the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and a few other peaks. We saw the glacier, a large, slow-moving river of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, which slowly deforms and flows in response to gravity (compliments of wikipedia.) It was impressive. We saw people hiking everywhere. After our Snowcat ride back, we climbed to the top of the observation tower and were amazed all over again.

Our final activity on the mountain was to have a beer and some lunch at 9000feet. The balcony was warm and sunny and could not have been more beautiful. We each had a beer and raclette (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette). After our brief respite and snack we headed down the mountain to Col-du-Pillon were we waited a few minutes for the bus taking us into Les Diablerets, a small ski resort town. Mark and I perused a cheese shop a bit and then got some ice cream. Our trip back was nice, and we’re starting to become familiar with the terrain. Luckily we caught the express train back to Lausanne through Aigle.

Final note for today-we got our first rain tonight, which actually cooled things down a bit. Yeah!

Friday - Trip to Valais Region

2008-06-29T12:30:00.001-07:00

We got an early start today to drive to the Valais region, which is actually the upper Rhone River Valley above Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). We had a tremendous tour of a very old vineyard and winery, Domaine de Gilliard. The vineyards are accessed through a tunnel! The vineyards are very steep and highly terraced. They have an old gondola system that is quite elaborate, but now remove the grapes from the vineyard at harvest via helicopter.

We then took a long walk through vineyards and over a ridge that separates the French and German speaking regions. Very varied terrain, with some wonderful alpine rivers and small waterfalls. Broad range of wildlife and plants along the way.

The end point of the walk was the Wine and Vineyard Museum, where they are preserving the knowledge and equipment of yesterday and today, in the vineyard and the winery.
Mark wearing a modern picking basket, still used throughout Europe.

We then went to the family winery of one of the Swiss students, Madelyn, took the group to her family’s winery, Denis Mercier, in the city of Sierre. In the Valais region, Chasselas wine is called Fendant. There is a definite difference, as this region is much warmer and dryer. They use sprinkler irrigation for the vineyards.

At the winery, we had a very nice tasting. Savignan Blanc (not a typo) as a varietal was really aromatic and wonderful. This is the grape used in the Jura region of France. Next was my favorite Fendant of the trip thus far, a Pinot Noir, and a Pinot Noir – Syrah blend (I think) that was quite nice.
Madelyn and her parents (to the right)

We also had a wonderful Raclette meal for dinner. Raclette is a cheese, but also a dish prepared by heating the cheese to a boiling point, then scraping it onto some boiled potatoes with pickles and pearl onions. They purchased cheese from three local regions, and the differences amongst the cheeses were interesting to explore. This is usually a cold weather dish, but it is so important that we had it on a quite warm day.

The chefs and the cooking equipment.

A nice plate of food to enjoy with the Fendant wine.

Thursday - Class Sessions

2008-06-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

Today we had two lectures from Swiss professors in Enology.

The first lecture covered the use of an elaborate filtration system to remove many things from wine: sugar, VA, malic acid, alcohol, etc.. By the use of ultra and nano-filtration, as well as reverse osmosis, these compounds could be removed from wine.

The big project was to remove malic acid from must, and eliminate the use of malolactic fermentation, which produces the buttery aromas. This worked pretty well, and the Chasselas wine was actually better this way. But for the malic acid reduction, there was an elaborate two pass filtration of the must.

The second lecture covered the artisan wine barrel cooperate in the German speaking part of Switzerland. They are trying to create complex models that will predict how the wine will change from barrel aging, as well as trying to determine if a wine was actually stored in a barrel or oak chips were used.

We observed a unique vineyard machine that is used to position the growing canes, and then hold them in place with string that is tied to the end posts, and stapled each few feet. Really saves on labor. Neat Swiss designed machine.

We had a student wine tasting today, with wines from the home regions of the students. Cal Poly brought some very nice wines, but I was really impressed with some of the Swiss wines and the Canadian icewine (one word). Fantastic stuff that is very viscous and sweet but has wonderful aromas and acidity.

Tonight we watched the second semi-final game of the UEFA cup. Spain beat Russia. Either way, we will get lots of cars honking their horns by the dorms tonight, as we live right by the main road out of Laussane.

It's all about the soil!

2008-06-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

Greetings! Today was another wonderful day. We are continually amazed at the country-side here and the graciousness of the Swiss who have invited us here. Our topic(s) of study today were geography, soil profiles and climate. We started our day at the University and then headed North through completely new areas to the city of Neauchatel. It was a beautiful drive, and along the way we learned more about the different soils of the areas based on the geography. Much of the country is mountainous, formed by continental drifts millions of years ago; the other parts are valleys, with rich soils and climates influenced by glacial shifts and volcanic action.

The area we visited was called Vully, which is a valley sandwiched between Lac de Neuchatel and Lac de Morat; Chateau de Praz is the name of the winery. The owner/mother is 5th generation and her daughter is the winemaker. Their generosity was infectious and I liked their wines. We were poured another Chasselas, a Gewurztaminer, a Framburger and a distilled Gewurztraminer(very strong!) In addition they brought out pastries to pair with the wines. I enjoyed their presentation, and their kindness. Once finished with the tasting, we sat in their garden to enjoy our lunches. The winemaker and her mother served water, coffee and sweet pastries. Ah, the incredible food!

A hotel across the street from Chateau de Praz, where we had our first tasting today.

Chateau de Praz, and some of their vineyards

Madeline, one of the Swiss students waiting for our tasting to begin.

Mark enjoying the sweet pastry after lunch. Think of it as creme brulee on a really soft pastry!

A view from the garden where we enjoyed our lunch today. Lac de Neuchatel is in view.
Empty bottles from the winery. Recycling is pretty important in Switzerland!

After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting different soil profiles in vineyards around the area. Our professor, Stephane, was very informative, and encouraged our participation in problem-solving some solutions for the differing vineyard issues. It was a great experience.

Stephane standing in a soil profile examining some soil; one of our "problem" vineyards. We're looking down a steep grade set high on a hill. The vines are three years old, but not growing.

Our dinner today was a special bbq at the lake back in Lausanne. Several of our team went swimming, but most just enjoyed the relaxing evening drinking wine and getting to know their Swiss/CA/Canadian counterparts. It was a great evening. BBQing our own steak/lamb/pork/veal and veggie skewers, Mark and I were reminded of one of our favorite SD restaurants—the Turf Club.

The evening did not end with dinner—remember, Euro 2008 is alive and exciting in Lausanne—so we all headed to the soccer match between Germany and Turkey after dinner and then to a club in the Centre of town for drinks afterwards. Our younger friends had a very LONG night. We however, crashed early—around 1:30am. Sante!

Our First Days at School

2008-06-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

The teams from California and Canada have been warmly welcomed, and we are truly enjoying ourselves. Monday we toured the campus, winery and vineyards at Changins, and were introduced to the Swiss professors and students who will participate in the program with us. Our first lecture, “An Introduction to Swiss Vineyards” taught us about the different wine regions of Switzerland and included a wine tasting of the primary wines from each region. We learned that currently the Swiss people drink 99% of the wines they make, leaving only 1% for the export market. This may explain why we haven’t seen too many Chasselas wines at Vons.

In the evening we attended the opening ceremony, where we learned that the school is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Many Swiss officials attended. Afterwards we were treated to a very nice meal and then taken back to our housing facility, about 30 minutes from campus. It was a long and rewarding day.

Each day we meet the bus near our rooms and are taken either to the University in Changins or to wherever we might be traveling to for the day. Tuesday was a day of travel. We started in Lausanne and traveled by bus to Rolle and into the vineyards in Luin. We stopped at a chapel that had an amazing view of the valley below.

From there we took the bus to Nyon where we boarded a boat and spent most of the day traveling on Lake Geneva, called Lac Leman in Switzerland to many different cities and ports: Yvoire, Evian, Rolle, Morges, Lausanne, Vevey, and Montreaux—just to name a few. It was a breathtaking trip. The coastline of the lake is amazing, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures!

We disembarked the boat in Montreaux, which is Switzerland’s Mediterranean city and headed into the Lavaux wine region. This is where it really got exciting. I’m not sure any photo can truly capture how amazing this region is, with its steep slopes and breathtaking views, but we tried our best. The vineyards are steep and dangerous, and everywhere the eye could see.

After a short walk we arrived at our first winery, owned by the city of Lausanne, called Clos des Abbayes. The hosts were gracious, informative (this winery is nearly a 1000 years old!!) and very generous with the wine. We tried three varieties: Chasselas, Chardonnay and a blended red with Pinot noir, Gamay and Merlot.
Rounding out the day we stopped in Cully, visiting with the owner of another old winery, Louis Bovard. This man is 10th generation winemaker, and his wines show the richness of his history.

From Cully, we head back to Lausanne. Mark and I are exhausted from the day, have dinner and call it a night! Whew, what a couple of amazing days.

Travel Day to Switzerland (posted a bit late)

2008-06-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

We are leaving Fresno at 11:44 am for LA, then a long layover before flying to London (Heathrow) and finally Geneva at 6 pm tomorrow. This will be a nice opportunity to catch up on some sleep, as we have been going strong for a few weeks now: putting our belongings into storage in Fresno, then cleaning up the house in San Diego. We did find a few days to relax on the beach in San Diego and hit some of the old hangouts, which was a ton of fun.

The Fresno airport is very small, and was used as a set in the new Indiana Jones movie. I’m not sure what part they used, but this is a little tiny airport.

Good bye for a month, Central Valley.

Our friends Vickie and Eric in Fresno are watching our beloved dog Buster. He will have a great time playing with their bulldog. Our cat Annie is living with Kathe’s mom in San Diego, and will have a whole new house to explore.

Vineyards on the way to Lausanne from Geneva. More vineyards than I expected to see.

Introduction

2008-06-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

We will be publishing this blog of our travels as we enter the wine world. Stay tuned for a big Switzerland trip this summer, followed by internships in Napa Valley this fall.