There is a particular comedy in driving an American RV through the vineyard lanes of the Médoc. The lanes were laid down for ox carts. The vines press in close enough to brush the mirrors. The locals wave with a kind of bemused patience, as if we were a slow-moving piece of weather.
We worked our way north from Pessac, taking the smallest road we could find at every junction. The Bordeaux groaned around the turns. We stopped at three small producers in two days — not the famous houses, but the ones whose signs were hand-painted on a wooden board nailed to a fence post.
At one of them, an older man in a faded blue smock walked us through the cellar without asking who we were or where we'd come from. He poured from the barrel into two stained glasses he'd pulled from a coat pocket. The wine was rough, complete, and entirely his. We bought a case we didn't have room for and made room for it anyway.
The lesson, again: the rig is too big for most of the best places. The rig is exactly big enough to live in while you find them.
