Chamonix Activity Report: 3rd October 2004
This week sees the launch of our NEW Live weather station. Sitting at the top of Brevent you can see what the weather is doing at 2525m in real-time. We also have lots more weather stats for you, allowing you to spot the trends and make your own predictions, or just check the forecasts!
The other highlight of this week has to be yesterday's wine tour. Through the Tunnel du Mont Blanc into Italy and down to the Piedmont region south of Turin we headed off to visit producers of great Barolo wines, organised by the ever connisseurial Sam Owens of Chalet Petit Tinquer. With Max/Cam of Chamlodge and Veronica/Richard of Mountain Retreats as drivers and abley assisted by Lipika of Alpine Hideways, Nick & Martina of Mont Blanc Lodge, Joy, Kat and Lucy, we set off early. The first port of call was an Italian garage for a cappucino injection and fuelled and refuelled we set off again and reached the first producers, Abonna, at around 10am.
A quick tour of the factory and straight on to the all important tasting had us fairly sloshed by 11! We tried a number of their wines, sometimes several times each, lost track of which one was which on the price list and ended up buying several crates before we left. Their top Barolo is about 25€ a bottle (which is cheap relative to many Barolos).
Next stop was lunch at the reputed Ristorante Belvedere in La Morra. The castle of La Morra used to belong to Sordello da Goito, one of Carlo d'Angiò's Knights. From 1300 onwards, it was the property of the Falletti family. The restaurant stands on the site of this ancient castle and looks out over one of the most beautiful "natural balconies" of the Langhe and is one of the oldest in Piedmont.
Seven courses was the set menu, several more if you count the blokes having to help the girls through, and seven more varities of wine later and the day was going swimmingly. The food was delicious, although the bill did come to €70 per person so one would expect this and the service to be good - which they were. The Italians certainly do get it right!
After lunch which finished around 4, we headed to the second producer of the day for some really fine Barolos. We then headed for home, really quite merry and loaded with wines for souvenirs of a great day out. The funniest moment remained for when we got back. Max (who is Italian) rang Sam (in the other minibus) pretending to be one of the wine-suppliers and claiming that we had left the purchases behind (2 hours drive away!). The string of profanities which came out of the phone as Sam conducted investigations as to who had been responsible for overseeing the loading had to be heard to be believed! We put him out of his misery shortly after...!
One debate which you might actually be able to resolve is whether visitors to Chamonix would be interested in wine tours as part of your stay, probably more a summer thing than a winter one. Email Sam just to vote for the potential interest, or email Richard if you don't think you would take up the offer. Cost for the day, including superb lunch was €100, plus whatever you buy in wines (easily €60 more for 6-8 bottles).
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Additional snow and weather information provided, with thanks, by meteo.chamonix.com and the Tourist Office
