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by Anna Goldrein, with photography by Jon Martin
Coming home with a tan sometimes simply isn't good enough. Now we're expected to build up our skill sets as well as our colour over a short break. But I'm not talking about sweating over books in the schoolroom. Think wine-tasting in a Bordeaux Chateau, flamenco dancing in Jerez and learning to sail in Croatia. Suddenly, holiday homework doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
Bordeaux Wines
I went on a three-day class in the prestigious Bordeaux Wine School recently. I have now become an authority on wine. People ask me to taste wine, ask my opinion on which bottles to buy and treat me as little short of a qualified sommelier. Of course, I still know very little about wine. But thanks to the course I have learned to analyse smells and tastes. Above all, I have learned how to learn.
The course I attended comes highly recommended. It's the perfect combination of intensive tasting in the language laboratory (most mornings) and vineyard visits. When we started, I understood next to nothing, although the course was held in English. While our teacher spoke of blackcurrant notes, cooked fruit or minty flavours, I stared at the sticky dark substance in my glass, inhaled and smelt wine! Everyone in the class looked equally bemused, but we took notes on each of around 30 wines in our degustation (tasting) books.
Gradually the new discipline bore fruit. I began to distinguish the coffee notes from the caramel, grass smell from aniseed and stale onion from bad eggs (it is as important to recognise a bad wine as a good one). I could compare and contrast two glasses of wine and confirm which was the older vintage. I learned that wines are sensitive to everything that touches them - from location (in Bordeaux, this means left bank, right bank or entre-deux-mers) to period and method of maturation, soil, sub-soil, sunshine and grape varieties. Drunk with triumph, the class could at last participate. "I can smell pepper", shouted out one. "Vanilla scents", said another. At last. The scents were making sense.
Course: The beginners course includes wine course and tastings, the two first lunchtime meals (restaurant and chateau) and chateau visits. Accommodation is not included but the CIVB can provide a list of hotels. Alternatively, contact the Bordeaux Tourist Office on +33 (0) 5 56 00 66 00 or www.bordeaux-tourisme.com.
Cost: From €25 per person for a two-hour course to €645 for an intensive four-day course.
Contact:
Ecole du Vin
1 cours du 30 Juillet
33075 Bordeaux, France
Tel: + (33) 5 56 00 22 66. Fax: + (33) 5 56 00 22 82
Email: ecole@vins-bordeaux.fr
www.ecole.vins-bordeaux.fr.
French Class in Provence
I was back at school. But after a breakfast of fresh croissants, pain au chocolat, brioche and garden-fresh fruit, learning didn't seem such a hardship. We were sitting around an oval table in one of the largest rooms of an intimate chateau, set amid Provencal vineyards. At breakfast, our host Martine had been charming, slouching around in her tracksuit, like one of us. But now class had started and, as the clock struck 10am, she reappeared wearing a pair of severe glasses and bearing sheets of photocopies. No more Madame Nice Guy.
There were six of us students. A charming, well-travelled couple from Australia who loved everything French, a sprightly lady from New Zealand whose fragmentary French slotted into place as soon as she went shopping, an inquisitive psychologist who mastered the written but not as yet the spoken language, photographer Jon and myself. We had all different levels of French. But Martine managed to include and engage everyone and, though the course lasted a mammoth two hours, it ended in fun and games.
Provence-born Martine Baboin and south of France addict Miriam Macpherson, founders of French Class, believe that to learn the French language, you must soak up French culture. Hence mornings spent sweating over French grammar were balanced by afternoons of exploration into the nearby hilltop village of Saignon, Apt's extensive Saturday market or soaking up the art de vivre in the chateau's open-air swimming pool.
French Class runs several courses a year, which are organised, like the best French menus, according to the season. In spring/summer, swim in the chateau pool, in autumn/winter, hunt the truffles.
The courses vary in length, but all include full board accommodation, morning classes and organised activities.
Contact:
French Class
32 Glenmorre Road
Paddington 2021
Sydney, Australia
Email info@frenchclass.com.au or visit their website www.frenchclass.com.au
Tel 02 9380 2672 or 0404 259 986 (you will be able to contact a French mobile number in the weeks leading up to your course).
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