© M Khiter
Wine Tasting at Cha Cha Cha
No better way to learn & practise your French than over a glass of wine
After three and a half years in Chamonix I am still struggling with my French. Like a lot of native English speakers here in the valley, I can understand a fair bit and can do the usual ordering and asking for things that are necessary...but conversation, well that's a whole different ball game.
So this year I decided enough is enough and I signed up to some French conversation classes with Myriam Khiter - MyMyBlaBla. Every Monday and Wednesday evening at 6pm people are welcome to meet with Myriam in Cafe Bluebird in Chamonix Sud to talk French, learn new things, practice grammar and generally enjoy French in a relaxed environment. And what better way to do this than to take a trip to near by ChaChaCha for a petite dégustation...
The friendly and multilingual staff at ChaChaCha offer wine tastings most evenings from 6pm and far from being intimidating, as I initially thought it might be, these tastings are an interesting and educational insight into French viticulture and wine production. So last week, we began our French class with some wine and wine making grammar and some pointers on words to use to describe the wine - it really is more of an art form! And with Myriam by our side, we went to ChaChaCha, pulled up some bar stools and some snacks and settled in for our wine tasting...all in French!
Known simply as Cha'Cha'Cha the shop sells wines and whiskeys and is owned by the Picard family who also have vineyards in Burgandy at the Château de Chassagne-Montrachet. The name comes from the this connection - Chateau Chassagne in Chamonix.
The Maison Michel Picard in Burgandy was founded in 1951 by Louis Félix Picard owner then of 2 hectares of vines. Michel Picard, his son, then joined him to work in the vineyards, winemaking and marketing of the wines.
Now owning more than 135 hectares of vineyards, Michel Picard fields produce over forty different wines.
And so after a little history of the shop, our wine tasting began - one champagne, two white wines and three red wines. Luckily for us our server was Italian and spoke French as a second language so he spoke slower than a native French person which helped with our understanding! He explained first of all where the wine or champagne came from, the characteristics of the region and of that particular vintage and then...we drank. Thanks to our quick grammar check before arriving we were able to talk about how the wines tasted, looked and smelt, and our server was more than happy to discuss anything we asked about or to explain things in more detail when we didn't understand. I found that I was actually starting to understand French wines a little, and that rather than my usual method or picking the wine with the nicest label, I might actually be capable of making a judgement based on something else...
Regardless of what we said about any of the wines, we were never made to feel that we were right or wrong with our thoughts and opinions, which made it a very relaxed discussion. We had quite a spirited debate on whether it was Sauvignon blanc or Chardonnay that smelt like cat pee (pipi de chat!) - I am still convinced that it's Chardonnay! And although we were trying to do the whole thing in French it turns out that all the staff there speak excellent English as well, so they can clarify any queries that you might have.
There is such a nice atmosphere in ChaChaCha too, I sometimes forget that it is actually also a bar. It's certainly somewhere that I would like spend more time! For €15 we got all six glasses and around 2 hours of great chat from our Italian server - I'd call that a bargain.
And since I was going round to a friends house for dinner afterwards I used my new found knowledge and selected a bottle to take based on my new love of wines from the Bordeaux region! Maybe I'll go back next Monday...
