Tagged with "wine education"

Off-beat to say the least. Jean-François Merieau’s Tu le Boa is an extraordinary wine. In 2000 he made just 1500 bottles from tiny yields (around 20hl/ha) of Sauvignon Blanc.

The biodynamic approach to growing grapes includes burying cows’ horns in the winter and digging them up again in the spring. What’s that all about?

We’ve been living in the Loire for 12 years now and this is the first year that we have seen smiles on the faces of growers all over the region.

While most of the Cab Francs have been brought in in the appellations of Chinon, Bourgueil and St Nicolas de Bourgueil there are still grapes hanging on the vines in Anjou.

Harvest is in full swing here in the Loire and for the first time in three years we are seeing broad smiles on the faces of our partner growers as they bring in decent volumes of lovely looking grapes.

The Loire is the second biggest producer of sparkling wine in France after Champagne but here we call it Crémant de Loire.

Why would you bother picking grapes by hand when you can use a machine? Small growers often choose to pick by hand. Why do they do that?

Veraison is the point at which grapes start to change colour. Black grapes that until this point are green, take on a pink or purple hue and white grapes change from green to a slightly more golden colour. It marks the transition from berry growth to berry ripening. 

A single vine is capable of producing many bunches of grapes. The only way to make good wine is to have great raw ingredients and that means fully ripe grapes.

Planting at this time, with no rain and high temperatures has its problems but the team at Chateau de Fesles was unable to get onto the ground earlier.

Downy mildew is indigenous to north-eastern North America where it spread from wild vines into cultivated vineyards. It probably came over to Europe during the phylloxera crises when native American rootstock were being tested for their resistance to the disease that wiped out around two thirds of Europe’s vineyards.

Domaine Arnaud Lambert invites its professional buyers to a day of discovery and tasting every year at Arnaud’s beautiful home in St Cyr en Bourg. This year we went to take a look at the Clos du Midi.