Hopping down to France for Winey afternoon
Our earliest morning yet, we packed our bags and headed out
of the Irish College in Leuven at 7:20a.m. As Hugo drove us toward Strasbourg,
France, everyone finally had the opportunity to re-charge. While we stopped for
our trusty bus driver Hugo to take a needed rest after driving tirelessly for
hours, the group overtook a gas station that seemed more like an airport
terminal. We discovered the biggest bathroom in all of Europe and ate everything
from baguette sandwiches to delicious hot meals. Several students also
purchased 1.5 liter bottles of water for 0.90 Euro cents – our best buy yet!
After a short drive, we met up with Monsanto rep Sylvain Pottier who accompanied us to
a local hops farm outside of Strasbourg. Sylvain translated, while the local
farmer explained the details of his cereal grain and hop operation. We also
discovered during our visit it costs 3.5 million Euros per hectare to purchase
land for commercial/urban development outside the city.
From Strasbourg we traveled to one of many local wineries in Alsace, France. Albert
Seltz Winery is based out of a house that is over 400-years-old and Albert
himself is the fourteenth generation winemaker. Half-American half- French, Albert provided us with many interesting perspectives on wine. The most interesting part
of our tour was visiting the wine cellar. We went underground into rooms with
walls over one meter thick piled with thousands of dusty bottles full of aging
wine. The cellar even included an original well over 22 meters deep. Following
our tour, we had a wine tasting where our entertaining host taught us that
selecting a quality wine is like searching for the perfect mate. Albert
explained that some people, like wine, are very attractive on the outside, but
not very interesting on the inside. He recommended selecting mates and wines
that are more interesting in the long term.
Our final "hop" landed us in Manneheim, Germany where we will camp out for the next few
days surrounded by history and industry.
By Reid Thompson, Evan Hultine, Alyssa Bane, and Xiaoying Hou
Posted by Evan Hultine, Alyssa Bane, Reid Thompson, Xiaoying Hou
