The Strasbourg "Cave"

Before I move on to Paris, I remembered that we have another small "trip" to post about. About 5 blocks from our apartment is a hospital. Under that hospital is a wine "cave." In French, a cave, pronounced "cahv," is a cellar. This cave was created because the hospital at one time (before people could pay with money) accepted payment in the form of trade. The area grows a lot of grapes, so wine grapes and wine itself was a common trade item. The hospital started its own label because they received so much, and today, it buys grapes from the local growers to continue this label. All of the proceeds go toward buying updated equipment for the hospital. Their most recent purchase was a state-of-the-art ultrasound machine for the maternity ward.

Some of the "big kids" were posing in front of the hospital, and Sophie kept trying to weasel her way into each picture. These girls, who hang out with Sophie a lot on trips, posed just so that Sophie could be in a picture.

Descending into the cellar:

This is the spread that they set up for us. The breads were baked in the hospital bakery especially for us. The hospital bakes fresh bread for the people there, and never sell it to the public. It was so tasty that several people said that they wouldn't mind being put in the hospital here!

The barrels:
This is a very unusually shaped barrel. The front, as you can see, is egg shaped, but the back is round. It dates back to before the French Revolution.

You can see here the fleur-de-lis symbol on the egg barrel. Apparently, when the French Revolution started, the revolutionaries raided the cellar, and sanded down everything connected to the monarchy on the barrels. They didn't have enough education to understand, though, that the fleur-de-lis is a symbol of the French monarchy and left this one engraving on the barrel!

Yes, this really holds 26,080 liters of wine!


This barrel holds the oldest wine in a wooden barrel in the world:


And we all got to smell it:
After the tour, we got to taste some of the wine, which we all really enjoyed. The tour guide was nice enough to break open a bottle of apple juice for Sophie. She felt like such a grownup!


She insisted on sitting next to this barrel to drink her juice:

Here we are with the on-the-ground coordinator for the Centre-in-Strasbourg program, Heidi.