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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
| Mystery solved! (Maybe.) According to the guide yesterday, at least, the city of Tours is named after the Celtic tribe that used to live there. I guess it's kind of like America where we ran off or killed all the natives then named some towns and rivers after them. But it turns out that the city's coat of arms features three black towers. Yes, that's right, the city's heraldry is a pun. That sort of thing isn't unheard of. The only other one I can think of off the top of my head, though, is the Northern England town of Berwick, whose coat of arms features... a bear. This wasn't the only thing I learned yesterday, during my guided tour of some of the wine country east of Tours. Another cave was involved, this one belonging to a winery in Vouvray. Vouvray being some of my favorite wine, this particular tour was the primary reason for my trip, and it did not disappoint. Part of the reason Vouvray tastes like ambrosia of the gods, while other wines made with chenin blanc grapes in other areas of the world taste like piss, is that there's a unique combination of soil, climate, and process (among other factors) in this tiny part of France. What I learned was that part of the terroir is because they force the vines to dig their roots deep, very deep (the guide said something like 10 meters is possible) into the ground, where they delve into limestone. Limestone is a fossil rock. Billions of years ago, tiny sea creatures died and their skeletons built up and got compressed and turned into limestone over the eons. So the flavor of my favorite wine owes its greatness to the death of these long-ago organisms, thus demonstrating once again the circle of life. And also, it seems Tours has a thing for Rene Descartes, the scientist/mathematician/philosopher I'm sure I've mentioned in here hundreds of times. One example is here: "I Drink Therefore I Am"  I understand he was born in Tours, or at least somewhere nearby. My hotel was, in fact, right next to a statue of him, inscribed with his most famous quote. |
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