May Day An enigma in this month’s La Revue du Vin de France: Mille et mille. Smectite. Monos. 5ha. Cadel aime la flèche which translates roughly into “A thousand and a thousand. Smectite. Single varietals. Cadel loves the arrow”. None of which makes any sense to me. An email arrives. “Are you the enigma in […]
Spring comes to Rives-Blanques skyful of birdsong. We sit on tattered wicker chairs watching the sun sink behind the mountains … and into our glasses of Blanquette de Limoux. They shimmer with light. “This is what life’s all about” Jan says happily, lifting his glass to his lips. In this complete, bird-punctuated silence, you can […]
Saturday March 1 Flying high Nice way to begin the month, with the news that our AOP Limoux blend la TriLogie 2012 has won a gold medal at the granddaddy of all wine competitions, the Concours Général de Paris. This is part of the competition started by the French government in 1800-something, to identify the […]
Maybe it’s a Catholic sense of guilt that makes the local Limouxins say so gloomily, “rain’s on the way again” as they admire this panorama of gleaming mountains hanging like freshly washed laundry against a pristine and perfectly blue sky. That is how February came to our plateau: on a plate, and dressed to kill. […]
The month freewheeled in on a slipstream of unreasonably unseasonable weather, easing us into Vintage 2014 with a warm, deceptively gentle little shove. Pruning the vines is moving at a fast pace, as we make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. Silence reigns in the cellars, thank goodness. Last month Eric roared at […]