From the category archives:

Faugères

Domaine Sarabande: A ‘Flying Winemaker’
from Down Under lands in Faugères

May 27, 2010

A vineyard named after a somewhat risqué dance from 16th-century Spain that reappeared two centuries later as a stately court dance is the latest stop on The Vine Route. The Sarabande, a triple-time dance with the accent on the second beat, was originally danced by a double line of couples accompanied by castanets and tambourines. [...]

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Faugères flamboyant: Domaine de Cébène
turns northward to make unique southern wines

May 21, 2010

The two adjacent Languedoc wine appellations of Faugères and St Chinian are similar in size, grape varieties, soil types and styles of wine. Both appellations were even created in the same year–1982. But Faugères has long lived in the shadow of St Chinian; mostly because of the greater notoriety of several St Chinian winemakers. That [...]

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Chai Christine Cannac: A naturally-good wine bar

May 14, 2010

French speakers will immediately catch the play on words in the name of this wine bar in Bédarieux, a small town in the Languedoc-Roussillon’s Hérault department. “Chai” is French for an aboveground structure used for wine storage and aging. The French word “chez,” which has the same pronunciation, refers to someone’s home, or, in a [...]

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Going vigneron: Julien Seydoux’s journey from Paris to southern France, from financial investor to winemaker

April 2, 2010

I was speaking recently with the father of a child who plays on my youngest son’s basketball team. He told me about how his company, which supplies parts to Zodiac Marine, the French manufacturer of inflatable boats and above-ground swimming pools, might lose its supply contract with Zodiac. It seems that the Carlyle Group, the [...]

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True schist: The Barral brothers ride again

January 25, 2010

One of my favorite winemakers, and the person I interviewed for my very first Vine Route article, is Didier Barral of Domaine Léon Barral. Barral and his brother Jean-Luc make some of the best wine in the Faugères Wine Appellation in the Haut Languedoc region north of Béziers. The frères Barral were recently featured in [...]

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