Wish upon a star

Friday night we were invited to a wine tasting at a friend’s house in Chatillon-sur-Seine. It was a beautiful, balmy evening. The chateau-like presence of the house, framing the courtyard, was subtly picked out by the lights from the pool. It formed a perfect backdrop to the garden setting.

Everyone had been asked to bring a bottle of Ladoix Premier Cru. On arrival the details of the wine were noted down and the bottle wrapped in brown paper. A number was then written on it and the bottle was placed in the centre of a table. There were 19 bottles in total.

Everyone then had a chart to score each bottle they tasted. As I was driving, I left our tasting to Brian. He didn’t seem to mind.

It was simply a delightful evening of chat, (practicing our french), delicious food, and an opportunity to blind taste a lot of different wines.

At the end of the evening, Antoine and Dominic collected in the score sheets, and the person who brought the wine with the highest score won. Sadly it was not us.

However, we did win in another way. We got home around 1am, and the sky was beautifully clear, so before we went in to bed we took a moment to admire the view of the Milky Way sweeping across the night sky. It’s an amazing sight. I then remembered a friend of ours had mentioned that if we had a clear sky we could glimpse the Perseid meteor shower, which is at it’s most visible at the moment. The timing was perfect, because as we looked up a very distinctive bright streak flew across the sky, burning a long trail behind it - it was a real thrill to see it.