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Le Tasting Room starting again
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!
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Wine tasting on a Sunday in the Loire – Chateau des Vaults
Ok, so you’re staying in Angers in the Loire and you love wine and you think ‘right, it’s Sunday tomorrow, let’s go wine tasting’.
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Frost damage in the Loire 2017
Sadly I have to report that after an extraordinarily difficult year in 2016 due to frost, the Loire has yet again been hit hard in 2017.
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Château de Bois Brinçon
We caught up with Xavier and Geraldine Cailleau at the Levée de la Loire a few weeks ago and tasted through their interesting range of wines. It’s always nice to have what I describe as ‘off-beat’ wines and Bois Brinçon has several little gems that are particularly interesting to the wine enthusiast.
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Pithon-Paillé
2016 turned out to be a very tricky year for them with miniscule yeilds of around 6hl/ha.
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La Renaissance des Appellations – Domaine de Juchepie
Layers and layers of exotic aromas from macerated raisins and caramel to black tea, ginger and spice. A truly delightful wine. How anyone can say they don’t like sweet wine I don’t know.
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Getting a grip on the 2016 vintage
Tomorrow starts a crazy few days of wine tasting here in the Loire valley.
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Why is pruning so important?
There are different ways to prune vines. Here in the Loire in Anjou we see a lot of Single Guyot and Double Guyot pruning, a cane replacement system.
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The pleasure of cooking
Life is too short to involve too much sieving and whizzing and the best things are made using fresh, local, seasonal ingredients.
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Pruning in the Loire valley
Pruning in the Loire valley
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Samosas with a spicy beetroot dip
I made a batch of these spicy samosas yesterday for an apéro dinatoire with friends in the hamlet.
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What is bâtonnage?
Bâttonage is the French word for stirring the ‘lees’