Into the bowels of the Earth (Sunday 21st July 2013)

 After a late night we got off to a slow start today! Being in the heart of France's most productive wine region – it generates 30% of the French wine lake – we thought we'd better visit a winery. We headed for Terra Vinea in Portel des Corbieres via the scenic route of xxx and yyy. The road was a winding, single lane, sealed road that made is way through the hills of the Corbieres. The countryside through here is typical of the region. The land is dry and rocky with frequent rock outcrops, ridges and peaks. The vegetation is scrubby with most of not exceeding a couple of metres in height. The only exception to this are the scattered groups of pencil-thin cypress trees. We crossed a couple of nice streams along the way, one with a deep and cool swimming hole which was enticing – but we had no togs to don.

We eventually arrived at Terra Vinea via the wrong winery as we had turned off the road a couple of kms too early. One of the strange aspects of French directional signs is that when they are advising you to continue straight ahead the arrow generally points to the left of the sign rather than the top of the sign, as it does in Oz. Very confusing. Oh, and another thing on the subject of road rules etc. The rule in France is give way to the right. So, the traffic on the through road must stop and give way to any traffic that may be coming from a side street.

The highlight of the winery is the cellars which are 80 metres underground. The site is an abandoned gypsum mine providing a network of tunnels 200kms in length to use for wine storage. Visitors descend into the network via a long sloped entrance arriving in an auditorium carved out of the rock where an audio-visual presentation is given. The presentation includes a spectacular light show. The tunnels are, pardon the pun, cavernous, probably three or four stories high and triangular in shape. As you may guess there are thousands of barrel in storage. The winery has put a lot of work into paying respect to the Romans who first brought wine-making to France. There is even a mock Roman town way down there!

After the tour we went wine-tasting, of course, bringing home a couple of bottles to enjoy later.

The bottles didn't last long. Peter has prepared a meal of paella which he cooked on his Aussie barby in his vegie patch on the outskirts of the village. We all helped carry the esky and other items around to his plot where he fired up the wood barby and cooked the meal while we sat and enjoyed the warm evening with his neighbor Anna and her two children Felix and Tizel

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