Tagged with "le tasting room"

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!

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’.

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.

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.

2016 turned out to be a very tricky year for them with miniscule yeilds of around 6hl/ha.

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.

Tomorrow starts a crazy few days of wine tasting here in the Loire valley.

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.

Life is too short to involve too much sieving and whizzing and the best things are made using fresh, local, seasonal ingredients.

Pruning in the Loire valley

I made a batch of these spicy samosas yesterday for an apéro dinatoire with friends in the hamlet.

Bâttonage is the French word for stirring the ‘lees’