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Friday 2 July 2010

It's Bob Dylan Time Again!

Mr Dylan and his Never Ending Tour were once more back in Europe this week and I decided to do my usual Dylan and wine holiday – it was also Libby’s first ever Dylan concert! The first concert was in the amazing Theatre Jean Deschamps a small open air amphitheatre within the medieval city walls of Carcassonne.

The weather was beautiful and Bob was in fine voice from start to finish. After the concert the Festival de Carcassonne laid on a free private wine tasting of local wines inside the theatre for all the spectators!

We headed back up to Bordeaux the next day in sweltering 35ºC heat to catch Mr Dylan in concert that evening. The temperature inside the concert hall was incredible but the atmosphere was very rock’n’roll indeed! Once again a great and very loud performance from Bob and his band, my friend Jam had driven up from Armagnac for his birthday and we celebrated afterwards with some good Bordeaux wines and matching them to Dylan songs instead of food!

The weather got hotter and hotter and I was back at the Chai on Thursday to bottle the La Grace de Côte Rôtie 2007 and the La Grace de Condrieu 2008.

Friday morning was the long awaited bottling of my Limoux Chardonnay the La Voute 2009. However the weather was so hot (39ºC!) in front of the Chai and combined with extremely humid conditions, the label on the bottling line would not stick to the bottles and cardboard boxes were becoming soggy!

However the wine was at the perfect moment to be bottled and the wine always comes first so I decided a change in the plan and to bottle the wine ‘T.B.’ or Tire Bouchon meaning corks only (no capsules, labels or boxes) and stacked in cages ready to label and box up at a later date. Then the humidity dropped and it was back to labels and boxes once again, so nature controls the wine right to very last moment!

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