Marquis de Montesquiou: A blueblooded Armagnac

January 30, 2010

Marquis de Montesquiou, which is a member of the Pernod Group, is one of France’s most illustrious Armagnac houses. As pedigrees go, you can’t get much more blueblood than this. The de Montesquious are one of the oldest families in France; its oldest members, the Counts of Fezensac (who ruled over much of historic Gascony, [...]

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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 a [...]

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Domaine Fiumicicoli: A wine with a thoroughbred’s spine

January 20, 2010

Domaine Fiumicicoli is located in the AOC Corse-Sartène. A 13th-Century Genoese bridge, the Pont de Spin’a Cavallu (pictured on the wine label), which spans the Rizzanese river, lies close by to the D69 départemental road that runs in front of the vineyard.
If you continue north on this winding, two-lane road you’ll eventually arrive in the [...]

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Château de Laubade’s Ali Baba treasure trove of Armagnac

January 16, 2010

Château de Laubade is part of the Lesgourgues family of wine properties that also includes prestigious estates in Bordeaux, Graves, Madiran and Uruguay. Maurice Lesgourgues purchased the 120-hectare (almost 300-acre) Bas Armagnac property in 1974. At that time, there were only 40 hectares (around 100 acres) of vines on the property. His son, Jean-Jacques Lesgourgues, [...]

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Tiny detectors of hidden delicacies:
searching for truffles with the mouches à truffe

January 13, 2010

A recent sunny, January afternoon, with a clear blue sky and temperatures hovering above freezing, got me to thinking about a similar January afternoon just over ten years earlier. My wife and I had recently purchased a walnut farm in the Périgord region of southwest France. I didn’t want to raise a family in a [...]

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