The day started down in the cellar where one of the walls has been left bare.  Here you can clearly see the strata of kimmeridgian soil and rock that help to give Chablis wines their unique taste.

We then headed outside and followed the same path as the grapes take during the harvest to arrive at the fermentation hall.  Pierre showed us the presses that are used to extract the juice from the grapes, and explained how the juice in transferred to the vats, and the sugar turned into alcohol.

The wine that is made from the Boissonneuse vineyard, the plot chosen by Gourmet Odyssey, is vinified in 3 different vats.  We stopped at each one to taste the 2012 vintage to see how it has been getting on since we harvested the grapes in October.  It's interesting to see how each vat has evolved differently, with one being much further behind than the other two.

In the next door hall, Pierre showed us the machines and the line that is used to bottle the wine.  After the wine is bottled, it is then passed through the labelling machine before being put into the cases and dispatched to the four corners of the globe.

Back at the winery, we started the first of the workshops.  Often, one of the most difficult things when tasting wine is to find the right words to describe the sensations that you are feeling.  We set up an exercise using flasks containing different smells to help us identify the variety of aromas that can be found in white wine.

The tongue also helps us when tasting, and different zones are sensitive to different tastes.  During the second workshop we tasted five different types of water; a control test, and one each that had had an acidic, bitter, sweet and salty flavour added to it.

By this stage, we had earned our right to start tasting some finished wines!  Pierre had prepared a few different series of wines to help us appreciate different characteristics.  We started with a blind tasting of the three different white grape varieties used at the winery, Aligoté, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.

We tasted others series of wines to identify wines aged in stainless steel vats and in wooden casks, and how to identify a corked wine.

We continued the tasting over lunch with a Boissonneuse 2010 and 2003 to get an idea of how a wine ages, and we also tasted a magnum of one of the red wines made by the winery, the Irancy "Les Mazelots".

Some fresh air was in order after lunch, so we headed over to the Boissonneuse vineyard where the adopted vines are located.

We finished the day with a visit of the old fermentation hall where some of the more prestigious wines are aged in oak casks and barrels.  We also had one last tasting in store - that of two lots of the Boissonneuse 2011 which will very shortly be blended and bottled.  We tasted each wine separately before blending the two together in a measuring cylinder.

So lots of discussion and lots of tasting!  We hope that the day taught gave a little more insight into the life of a winemaker and the important choices to be made during the winemaking process.