FrenchDuck UK - Latest

Amongst the wealth of good organic produce at the London Real Food Festival (24-27 April 08) several French wine producers will be in attendance offering tastings of their organic wines.
This includes Domaines Schlumberger from Alsace,the Irish-owned Chateau Haut Garrigue (or Wild Earth Vineyards) from Bergerac (South West France) and from the Languedoc Les Clos Perdus.

Les Clos Perdus is a small winery founded by Paul Old and Hugo Stewart based in the village of Peyriac de Mer (11 Aude, Languedoc-Roussillon) in the Languedoc region of the South of France.

The name Les Clos Perdus (Lost Vineyards) reflects our discovery of select parcels of old vines, scattered throughout the hillsides. Many of our small vineyards had been disregarded by larger producers because of their isolation, their low cropping potential and their inability to be machine worked.
The selection of grape varieties on particular soils, in differing locations gives the wine the complexities we are looking for.
Our aim is to produce distinctive well balanced wines of the highest quality.

They certainly seem to have hit the mark with recommendations from the likes of Jancis Robinson and listing at Gordon Ramsay at Claridges and the Club Gascon in London.
Interestingly they also list a rare white wine made from the Terret grape - (although currently sold out)
For more info on Les Clos Perdus see www.lesclosperdus.com
For more info on the Real Food Festival see www.realfoodfestival.co.uk/

A highlight of the wine year has to be Yapp’s pre-Christmas sale which runs on 23 and 24 November 2007 (9am-5pm) at their delightful premises in Mere, Wiltshire. The setting is the Old Brewery and the range of wines on their list is an impressive choice of some of the best and most interesting growers in the Loire and Rhone, Provence, Alsace, Champagne, the Savoie, Roussillon, the Midi and Corsica.
To add to the offerings there is also an exhibition of contemporary still life paintings running from 9th-29th November 2007.
Amongst my selections from their list (not necessarily in the sale) I would highlight:-
- the Pic St Loup wines of Mas Bruguière (Languedoc)“.. rich, compelling wines with vivid garrigue fruit aromas, an earthy palate and good firm tannins.”;
- Menetou-Salon AC Domaine Jean Teiller (Loire) - “An atypically fruity wine with a scent of newly mown grass. The ripe, juicy palate yields a fresh, dry finish.”;
- the biodynamic Savennieres AC Coulée de Serrant (Loire) ;
- the red, white and rosé Lirac ACs from la Fermade (Rhone) “Sweet black cherry, touch of roasted sage, good brisk tannins - this is a Rhône red of finesse “;
- Bunan’s intense Bandol AC Mas de la Rouvière (Provence)“A deep ruby colour with intense aromas of truffles and peppers. The palate displays liquorice and tobacco with plenty of firm tannins.”
And let us not ignore some of the lesser-known offerings of Jasnières AC and Thouarsais (Loire); and the selection of wines from Savoie and Corsica.

Yapp Brothers Ltd, The Old Brewery, Mere, Wiltshire BA12 6DY

This is a critical time in the winemaker’s year, and the only time when the vineyards and cellars seem really busy - choosing when to pick is such an important decision - too early and the grapes may not have reached optimum maturity - too late and the weather
Over in Alsace, the harvest at Hugel et fils is due to start on Monday 10 September 2007. Despite a generally poor summer, a good Spring and some decent weather in recent weeks has led to a promising early vintage.
Alsace is known as the “wine merchant’s wine” as they get to taste it and rave about it, but it tends not to sell as well as it should. But get beyond the Germanic names and bottle style, and these can be some of the finest dry white wines in the world, especially Riesling. There is no real entry-level wine to serve as a good introduction, but choose a good producer and you’ll not be disappointed with these elegant, dry and rich wines.

One of the best names in Alsace is Hugel et Fils, and to get winelovers involved with the harvest their website is running a daily diary of this year’s harvest in the form of a blog. This will give readers an opportunity to ask questions and make comments in a very interactive way.

Our 2007 harvest will begin on Monday 10 September and we have just posted our first comments on-line. These will be regularly updated and can be accessed directly at http://blog.hugel.com/en/

Hecules Wine Warehouse in Sandwich, Kent stocks some of the Hugel wines in the UK/

This photo of a section of the Alsace wine route, taken just a few days ago really raised my spirits in what has been an English summer which can only be described in the range of “disappointing” to “disastrous”. Amid reports and experience of a very damp June in France and late ripening in the vineyards it was good to see a picture of a vineyard looking like it should in the middle of summer. Of course it also serves as a reminder that the Alsace climate boasts one of the lowest annual rainfalls in France, mainly due to being situated in the “rain shadow” of the Vosges mountains to the west.

The Alsace Wine Route winds its way from north to south, for more than 170 kilometres, along the eastern foothills of the Vosges. This delightful itinerary runs across a succession of undulating hills, through pretty villages with narrow streets of flower-decked, half-timbered houses, clustered around their church steeple.
Visitors can easily explore the heart of the vineyards, along numerous vineyard paths leading to the crest of each slope, where signs explain the work of the winegrower and the diversity of the grape varieties.
They are welcomed into winstubs and tasting cellars to instantly discover the traditional appeal of the vine and the wine.

I keep an eye on a site called Trek Earth which is a photo repository, and which includes a France section see – http://www.trekearth.com/ which is where the above photo comes from. I often see photos on the site which are very evocative of the magic of France.

For more on the Alsace Wine Route (la route des vins d’alsace) see www.vinsalsace.com – but if you planning on spending any time on that site I suspect you may want to turn the sound off!

Whilst the mid-summer in the UK has been pretty miserable and very wet, bad weather has not been confined to this side of the English Channel, and many wine regions in France are now reporting serious concerns, particularly about the onset of mildew on the grapes. Up to 60 days of frequent and heavy rains in Bordeaux, South West France and elsewhere have led to very damp conditions which provide an ideal environment for parasitic mildew to develop on the leaves and young bunches of grapes. Even spraying with the distinctive “Bordeaux mixture” of copper sulphate and lime does not have much effect when the rain dilutes its effects as soon as it is sprayed.

Certainly my visits to the wine regions of France this summer have been disappointing weatherwise, and unless the weather improves soon there may be a serious shortfall in the 2007 vintage. Really good weather from now until September could rescue the quality of the resultant wines, but not the quantity. However, the 10 day forecast for Bordeaux still seems to threaten rather changeable conditions rather than the reliably hot and sunny weather you would normally expect in mid/late July.

Alsace was also severely affected by localised hailstorms in June, which were so ferocious that cars were damaged by the hailstorms.

Just another reminder that owning a vineyard is seldom an easy option – pests, diseases, marauding animals, weather, the 35–hour week, customs bureaucracy….. all seem to conspire against you!