The Rain in Tain (l'Hermitage) Falls Mainly on the Vineyards...and Orchards

 (With apologies to Lerner and Lowe's 'My Fair Lady').

Our day in Tain l'Hermitage began with a ride up into the vineyards on a little road train. As you can see from the photos, the weather was not the greatest for this ride. It was cool and at the very least drizzly. We rode up into the hills and looked over an endless sea of grapevines. The Hermitage region produces wines predominantly from the Syrah (or Shiraz) grape varietal.

This was the little train that drove us up into
the vineyards

After heading back to the ship to dry out and have lunch, those of us who wanted to climbed in our bus and went to visit a family-owned orchard and farm to learn about the fruit and other produce that is grown in the region. One tends to forget that more than just grapes are grown in France...

On our way we passed this interesting sculpture in the
town of Tain l'Hermitage

Our visit to the family orchards reminded us of some of our local 'pick your own' orchards. The young lady who runs the farm now, with help from her parents, explained their processes, the history of her orchards and the fact that she grows a number of heirloom varieties of peaches which are rare and quite sought after. It would have been a much nicer day if we could have walked into the orchard to see the trees, but it had begun to pour rain just before we arrived, and it didn't seem to want to let up.

She also explained how difficult it was to produce and harvest in the current economic conditions, but was also proud to have contracts that sent her produce all the way to Paris. She also showed us a video on all of the other things she has added to the farm to expand the experience. They have school children come out to learn how the fruit grows, they offer pick-your-own when the peaches are ripe, they rent out event space and even make their own wine. The produce that we could see in the market looked great, even given the wet spring they had been having.

The market sells the farm's produce as well as items
from other local growers

Some of the trees in the orchard. Everything was 
drenched in rain so it would have been difficult
to walk out and see the trees.

In the evening we had our final sail for the cruise, to Lyon. As mentioned previously, there had been so much rain in the previous week or two that the Saone River was over 1 metre higher than normal in many places, so getting under the bridges, either upriver or downriver, would pose a problem. We would be staying in Lyon for 4 nights until our scheduled transfer by coach to Geneva to end the trip.