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Amboise is a delightful market town perched alongside the river Loire. Leonardo da Vinci spent the last 4 years of his life living at the Clos de Lucé.

I wanted to make Nigel a special cake for his 50th birthday this week but with 10 people to feed this weekend I decided to have one made by Cake Passion.

And the 2018 vintage in the Loire? What can I say? You’re going to find some amazingly ripe and full bodied wines at amazing prices from this vintage.

Pruning is in full swing here in the Loire with teams visible in the vineyards as you drive along. Much of France has had snow this past week.

The van arrived with all our furniture this last Monday so it’s been all systems go this week unpacking boxes. It’s been like a lucky dip, rediscovering our things.

Our furniture (that has been in storage since October) arrives on Monday. We can’t wait to get everything into place and start making it into a home after 4 months in our (lovely but temporary) home.

In our village, we return to the calm just like we had in Cumeray although we have street lights and mains drains. I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be excited about that!

We always try to drink some different wines out of season and last night enjoyed this rare and tricky to grow grape, Persan from Domaine Giachino.

So, we’re living between two houses at the moment. We signed for the new one last week and are ‘commuting’ between the two doing some decorating.

You might think that not much goes on in the vineyard in December but in fact it can often be a busy month. There are lots of tasks that need to be tackled.

Pithon Paillé’s former domaine will be called Domaine Bel Argus, named after the tiny rare blue butterfly that can be found among the vines of Les Treilles. 

I’m a huge fan of sweet wine and luckily for me, we live in the Loire valley which makes some of the best sweet wine in the world.