The vultures circle-
Received this evening a fax-mailing from a merchant of wines name of DEPOT STOCK. Over and above the poetry that this name inspires, I give you the best passages:
« Specialised in the de-stocking of wine, we buy significant lots of all qualities../..We only buy lots “CRD’ [capsule reprèsentatives de droits], destined to be resold in [...]
“Vigneron’ or orchestra player
OK, let me tell you about the last few days- since Monday, Claudine and/or I have:
1 Tried to understand with the mechanic and Serge, my extraordinary head of viticulture, how better to maintain our beautiful tractor.
2 Discussed with Frèdèric, my apprentice, our attempts to redress the deficiency of manganese in a parcel.
3 Made a tour [...]
Brands for whom, brands for why-
Confined to the house by bad tonsilitis, I finally find the time to listen to a little Radio France Inter. Replay of an excellent programme on the «Rue des entrepreneurs [the road of the entrepreneurs]» about brands. They talk about lots of intelligent things in as much as they weren’t talking about wine.
Several opinions come [...]
A long silence
«Not to speak unless one has something to say» is a wise rule that I have trouble imposing on my mouth:) but which I swore to respect on this blog. Two weeks of silence, it was maybe two weeks of holiday, maybe two weeks of too much work to be able to write anything. The [...]
Virtual is real
One part of the weekend was devoted to my computer. For two years, I let it get on with itself, downloading useless programs, hidden indexes. It was time to get real and the arrival of ‘Tiger’, was a good excuse to get on with this impossible exercise (yes, of course, I have a Macintosh, obviously [...]
Obviousness
A good wine is one which renders the drinker happy-
Dynamic dynamists…
Last week, a lightening passage through a tasting of bio-dynamicists, an «off» at Vinexpo.
Dark room, sunken, noisy, but very clean, total disorganisation, astonishing mix of hyper-professional tasters and Baba-types in sandals and ‘churidar kurtas’. This should have been «hyper-closed off » anyone can go in. The ambience reminds me of Saturday mornings in the 70s [...]
My own dictionary of quotations
Curious to know more about T S Eliot following my posting the other day, I messed around on the internet and came across two quotations which suggested I might drop them into the world of wine. I decided on the spur of the moment to start a new section entitled « My own dictionary of [...]
“Vigneron’, intelligent 9 times… you will be (master Yoda)
Read in Le Figaro an interesting dossier on precocious children and their intelligence.
According to the article, Howard Gardner, professor of Science and Eduction at Harvard, listed 9 forms of intelligence: musical (Mozart); movement (the mime artist Marceau); logic-mathematics (Albert Einstein); linguistical (Thomas Stearns Eliot); spatial (Pablo Picasso); interpersonal (Gandhi), which enables one to understand [...]
The spy who loved wine
On this national holiday in the USA, I have set myself up as a wine spy for the CIA.
Everyone knows that during their spare hours, it orientates its spy satellites to track the great French vineyards . Have they already rummaged overhead at Vingrau? Hum, small chance. But, me, I’ve done it, thanks to [...]
The first ‘Salon des Vins d’Auteurs’
Scarcely returned from Vinexpo and after two days of sorting out problems and doing paperwork, it’s time to repack the car, direction Gap, for the first Salons des Vins d’Auteurs, the latest idea of two of my oldest, very oldest friends, François Briclot (of le Rouge-Gorge, famous wine bar in Paris) and Dominique David our [...]
Quite simply, to make good wine
My comparison between the «creative anxieties» of winegrowers and those of a painter has triggered off a passionate debate on LPV (la Planète-Vin), one of the cybernauts wonders – and I wonder – what would I do with a parcel of Aramon on a terroir suitable for artichokes/asparagus. If you don’t have the time to [...]
2005, the year of cross-breeding
No, I am not going to talk to you about Prince Albert. Even though, if I believe an article I gleaned from le Figaro, photographs of a handsome chubby baby on the cover of Paris-Match, can multiply the readership of a newspaper. Perhaps that would also work with a blog…
No, I have simply been [...]
Jean Guyon makes a Box…
One of the events at Vinexpo, was the presentation by Jean Guyon, owner of Château Rollan de By, in the Mèdoc, of his range of Bag-in-Box, humorously entitled ‘Bacchus Box®’ (one wonders why no one thought of it before…) 7 products, very fancy, designed by a German fashion house Escada (it was sufficient to observe [...]
And, you, young’un, taste my wine!
OK, I laugh at the title, but for the rest, well done. After several minutes visiting the site of e-motif (http://bordeaux.ecritel.net/index.php*), a mega-fun initiative of the organisation of young winemakers [Commission 'jeunes vignerons'] from some all-embracing structure in Bordeaux of which I know nothing, I tell myself that there is only one real idea, one [...]
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