Week 3 France

This week we visited multiple different places but three stood out the most to me.  The trip to the Gaillac Winery, the Armagnac, and the Horticulture Boffo freres. These three places all had one thing in common that I saw and that was everything they worked on was given extreme attention. Like at the Gaillac where they tended to the soil and pest control with precision. While we were there I saw each barrel being cleaned and prepared for the upcoming harvest of wine.  At the winery they not only filled, corked and sealed the bottles, but also labeled them as well. To me it was impressive to see all the work that was being done with only a few people, and they were not just simple tasks. All the while at the Armagnac facility we saw where they kept the armagnac in barrels and vats until it was perfect right down to the color and then taken to another room and like Gaillac were hand sealed and labeled right there at the facility. At boffo fereres everything was done by hand from the planting, maintaining, to the picking of the flowers by only a handful of workers. It was neat to see how so much work, planning, and patience went in to producing their products. I definitely think this is a lesson we can all learn from in that quality does not come from quantity.   To produce good quality it takes time and hard work. One example that came to mind is peaches. When growing you have to pick a few off the branches so you get nice size peaches and the branch doesn't break with all the weight. When they final start to turn color from ripening you have to worry about bugs and birds coming and eating holes in them while you wait for them to ripen on the vine. All this may not sound all that bad, but it takes a lot of time and patience. That is why most peaches people get in the market have been picked early and put in cold storage and ripened using ethylene gas.  So obviously the two are not the same quality which is something I have noticed in France, that they will take quality over quantity any day.