This post is a part of the 2015 New Beer Every Day Beer Diary Challenge, #ottbeerdiary. Over the course of 2015, I will be trying a new beer every day. Please read the background in the link above, and enjoy reading about the most recently tasted beers below. If you’d like to join the challenge as well, let me know in the comments below, and be sure to check out Grown-up Travel Guide and his #grownupbeerdiary, where Andy Higgs came up with the diary format in use below. You can catch up on all of our posts as part of the challenge under the tag ottbeerdiary.
Day 133: May 13, 2015
Diary entry:
Today was our day to explore Bordeaux wine country.
Wasn’t sure what to expect, so not sure whether I actually liked it or not.
Tip #1 for anyone visiting Bordeaux wine country. Don’t stay in Bordeaux if you’re driving! The city is a traffic nightmare, and our day took us through it a few times today.
We started our day with a drive up to the Medoc region, with plans to stop and photo all of the first growth producers as well as a couple of others that we have bottles from.
Our first desitnation was the furthest North of the five first growths, Chateau Lafitte-Rothschild. And from there we worked our way down to Mouton-Rothschild, Latour (and the many second growths surrounding Latour), and then down to Margaux and nearby Chateaus Palmer and Dauzac.
At this point, the drive down through wine country itself was not bad. The difficulty was in getting out of Bordeaux itself and up to Pauillac, where Lafitte, Mouton and Latour are located. So after smooth sailing down all the way to Dauzac, we got a little cocky, and decided to just continue on to Chateau Haut-Brion in Graves.
Which, unfortunately, meant driving back through Bordeaux city again.
Nightmare!
Finally we found Haut-Brion, and were ready to head up to the Loire valley. But of course, this required us to go back through the city again!
ARGH!!!
Well, eventually, we made it out of the city, and even decided to still make a detour over to Petrus and Cheval Blanc, only because the GPS assured us we would not have to go back through Bordeaux again to head back to the highway north to Saumur.
Unfortunately, all these little detours brought us into Saumur after all the restaurants had closed for the evening, so we found a grocery and had a nice dinner of pate, cheese, and other spreads on a nice baguette, with a bottle of local Cabernet Franc.
But first…
The Beer:
Name: Kronenbourg
Style: Pale Lager
Producer: Brasseries Kronenbourg
Alcohol content: 4.2%
Bottle size: 0.33l Can
Purchased from: Small grocery store in Saumur where we bought our ingredients for dinner since all the restaurants were closed already.
Tonight’s beer is Kronenbourg by Brasseries Kronenbourg. Not the Kronenbourg 1664 that you can find all over the world, but the original Kronenbourg. A pretty basic lager, but I’ve never seen the original before, so had to give it a shot!
Commercial Description:
A timeless classic that bears the name of neighborhood “Cronenbourg”, in Alsace, where the brewery was installed in the early 19th century.
The Kronenbourg beer owes its success to its fresh taste, its fine bitterness, in perfect balance, and subtlety of its fruity notes. It is also a beer with soft texture, dense foam with fine and very light bubbles.
