Pau - Tuesday, April 7th 2009

Tuesday started out with another white wine tasting tour at the Domaine du Cinquau winery (http://www.jurancon.com/sommaire/html/english/sommaire.html). They have a slightly larger winery than the one we toured Monday, but produce a very similar white wine that is paired with oysters, fois gras, or desserts. The proprieter, Patrick explained the whole operation to us, and described the way the machinery cleans the bottles, bottles the wine, and corks and pressurizes the bottle. The location has also in recent years become an event facility for weddings and conferences.

The highlight of the day was visiting one of the largest producers of Foie Gras, Euralis, along with a tour of their corn factory that is a 50/50 partnership with General Mills and Geant Vert (Green Giant). We shook hands with a giant Green Giant statue, and had an amazing tour of their sweet canned corn factory.

The tour guide showed us all the machinery for processing corn so that it is canned at precisely the moment it is ripest, and canned the same day it is picked. Even though it was not the harvest season while we were there, we still got to see some of the labeling machinery in operation as it processed thousands of cans per minute. We also learned that there is a minimum five day waiting period between canning and shipping, so that any unwanted bacteria in the can has time to reproduce and be detected. The unwanted bacteria is detected by a machine that checks each and every can for the proper vacuume pressure, since if bacteria are present they consume oxygen and alter the vacuume pressure inside.