From the monthly archives:

March 2010

A class act: The Club des Vignerons Lauréats

March 26, 2010

There are many sorts of wine shows in France. There are international shows with wines from all over the world and regional shows with wines from a particular wine region. There are local shows with wines from one appellation. I’ve even been to wine shows celebrating one particular variety of grape. There are shows with [...]

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Black is back: Cahors Malbec returns to the world stage

March 21, 2010

Like many things in France, Cahors wines have had a long, and sometimes tumultuous, history. People were enjoying “the black wine of Cahors,” named for its characteristic inky color, since the Romans developed the Cahors wine industry, planting vines here in southwestern France even before they got to Bordeaux. Cahors wines reached their heyday in [...]

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‘May I suggest an excellent biodynamic vineyard tour,
followed by a visit to a 15th-century church, sir?’

March 15, 2010

Regular readers of The Vine Route already know about my interest in wine tourism. One of my first articles on this blog was about a VinExpo conference on the subject. And I’ve just put the final touches on a southern Corsica wine tourism guide for Wink Lorch’s www.winetravelguides.com website. So I was excited, yet a [...]

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The monsters hiding in the vines

March 11, 2010

Photographing grapevines has become a pet passion of mine since I started The Vine Route blog. Mostly I’m looking at them as part of the landscape—a way of capturing the beauty and uniqueness of each vineyard. While at the recent Vinisud (held from February 22 to 24 in Montpellier) I had the opportunity to see [...]

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A ‘Must’ event at Vinisud: Pascal Fullá and
the Le Mas de l’Ecriture ‘Off’ vertical tasting

March 7, 2010

Parallel to the 1,600 exhibitor booths, multiple wine-tasting events, and conference sessions at Vinisud were a series of so-called “Off’ events. The name comes from a French propensity to borrow an English word or expression (“le week-end,” “un leader,” “le smoking,” etc.) and to use it to express something else. In this case, ‘Off” is [...]

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