Stop-. or go?
From Wednesday 21 September 2005
Very decidedly very complex vintage this 2005. Firstly, odd grapes, which seem scarcely ripe with so much acidity, and which nonetheless, after three or four days of maceration, give wine like black ink, which is appetising and sensual in the mouth. As for the tannins? They are essential, the key [...]
New
A new link towards the Blog of the likable Dupèrè-Barrèra HERE. This couple of iconoclastic neo-vignerons who have no limit in their search for excellence. Their wines are very good, my oath, and, believe me it is worth spending a bit of time reading their stories of the harvest, learning the intensity of their passion [...]
7 days to act
Have you seen recently a TV series, screend in France on M6, where a time machine permits a brave man to go back 7 days in the past in order to save the world from catastrophes?
If you haven’t, OK, at least you now understand the principle.
Good, that made us talk about science-fiction, now… [...]
Full moon
Woke at 4.30 am, without really knowing why. Eyes scarcely open, my brain burning with harvesting strategies.
After half an hour of turning this way and that, my mind full of tanks, grapes and possibilities, it’s clear I won’t get back to sleep…
I jump into my shorts and stick my nose into the air [...]
Sensations, impressions, conception-
OK, I don’t know if I am going to succeed in explaining my mood at the moment. Let’s try..
To begin with, I must tell you what one mustn’t believe, as I have believed for a long time, those vignerons who tell you that everything is done at the vine. Those that tell you that [...]
Confounded butterfly!
I know very well that «when it is too easy, it’s not entertaining», but I must acknowledge that it will be well past 80 to 100mm of water which have fallen on us this week.
Well, the advantage, when one has hills, is that the water moves around. And then a great terroir is perhaps [...]
Luxury, calm and pleasure of the well-equipped “vigneron’
I could also have entitled this note « in praise of the banker », I hesitated a bit. Let me explain whilst the press delivers a slow white succulent grenache juice, I have a few minutes to write before returning to put the pump on (I have taken a small photo of the grenache blancs, [...]
It is the return-
After having made a tour of the vines in the rain, I was reminded of this phrase of Jacques Brel which said:
« Talent, is the desire to do something»
This year, fortunately we have an ENORMOUS desire to do something, because we really have to fight-
OK, we’ll talk about it again.
PS Thanks to everyone who asked [...]
Carrefour puts its back into it!
Look, so everthing is clear… I have nothing against supermarkets in general and Carrefour in particular. One, I do my shopping there every week. Two, to reveal all, I even wrote, for several years, the copy for the catalogues «Foire aux Vins». But it was at the time when those responsible for quality liked wine [...]
Man, love and monkeys
OK, whilst I was wasting time trying to find you a good technical explanation of the right and left brains, I fell upon this:
…« man and woman clearly belong to two different species. In this era where one has begun the process of decrypting the human genome, you know perhaps that one can demonstrate [...]
He who was transformed into a prawn-
No, don’t insist, I won’t give you the name of the restaurant thanks to which, yesterday, within scarcely 20 minutes I was transformed into a prawn.
Some tapas, a beautiful slice of tuna ‘à la planxa’, all was going quite well, indeed, just as I was getting back into the car. I looked a [...]
« The one who changed his brain-»
So, you didn’t know? Each year, each ‘vigneron’ even if only a little passionate changes his brain.
He passes from the left brain to the right brain. During the whole year, he has in effect abundantly worked one half (I don’t talk here about women, although obviously they too often work hard;)) of the brain, [...]
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The bets are placed. The treatments finished 2 weeks ago, the grapes are delivering their true colours even in the most retarded terroir. As every year, it thus becomes urgent….to wait.
Before becoming a ‘vigneron’, I was always making fun of these hurried ‘vignerons’ who thought, once September arrived, to bring in their grapes as [...]
Time for jam
Each year, at around the same time, I get out my copper preserving pan and start my «jam week».
This pan has a history. My wife gave it to me, just a few months after we arrived at Vingrau. I understood that day…that she understood me. Because, to give a preserving pan to the man [...]
Mondovino in the open air
Last Saturday the doors were open at Vingrau.
The goal? To permit the village inhabitants to discover the cellars of their village, cellars which strangely, most of them have never visited.
A good-natured day, a light lunch in the village square, once night fell, a free open air projection of Mondovino.
Well, despite the tiredness and the late [...]