Europe Continued: Avignon Day Two - This May Be Heaven

Day two in Avignon started perfectly. Felipe and I had breakfast in the hotel. What a spread they had, delicious pastries, fresh fruit, yoghurts, fresh squeezed juices, coffees and teas and so on.


I know it looks electric, but that's blood orange juice. yum.

After breakfast we met our tour guide Mika in the lobby of the hotel. Mika works exclusively for the Hotel d'Europe giving tours and running their conferences. We had scheduled a day long (8 hour) tour with her of the wine country. We wanted to see some of the wineries and the cities around Avignon, and since Felipe does not drive and we wanted to taste the wine, so hiring a guide seemed better than renting a car. Plus, having someone who knows their way around is a good idea!

We started out towards a town called Séguret (see the photo below). Our first winery was at 10:30am (yes, we started drinking wine that early!)


We took a winding hilly road, past patches of vines to the first winery, the Mourchon Winery. It's a fairly young winery compared to many around the area, it was established in 1998 by a British man named Walter McKinlay. We met with the owner's son-in-law Hugo, and he took us on a tour of the winery including the fermentation tanks, the bottling area, and we did a tasting as well. He could not have been any nicer or more welcoming - and we came at a busy time too! Because we were there in the middle part of October, they were in the process of just finishing the primary fermentation of that years crop, and it was the rugby world cup - so Hugo was properly anxious to check who was winning (Wales vs. France, France won...). We had a splendid time touring the winery, and learning about their vintages.



Some of the vines in the hilly countryside near the winery.

After purchasing a few bottles from Mourchon, we climbed in the car and drove back down the hilly, winding drive to the town of Séguret, where we walked around the medieval village taking in a lot of historic beauty.

(you can see Mika here, no formal photos of her...which is not to say she wasn't a terrific guide - she was!)








Unfortunately for us this little atelier was closed. The pottery miniatures are called Santons in Provence, and are typical of the area. I wish we could have gone in to look around!


I'm not sure what this was, but the cast iron detail really caught my eye. UPDATE: my Friend Sylvain, a native Frenchman informed me in the comments that this little guy is called a "tête de Bergère" - literally head shepherd, used often to keep the window shutters in place. Thanks Sylvain!


Here was a seriously weathered, fantastic old door on the ramparts at the outskirts of the old village. This door has been there since the 1400s! Just the texture alone was beautiful, not to mention the imagining what that door kept in or out of the village.