Happy New Year to readers of this blog and visitors to Wine Travel Guides! Not a good start to the year: the French courts have ruled against the newspaper Le Parisien for failing to display the standard alcohol warning “L’abus d’alcool est dangereux pour la santé : consommez avec modération” (“Abuse of alcohol is dangerous:… View more
Ampelography is the study of grape varieties and nowhere in France do they get more interesting than in one of my specialist areas – the Savoie. Last week I attended the first general meeting for a new centre for Alpine Ampelography – Le Centre d’Ampélographie Alpine Pierre Galet. The centre is at Cevins where Michel… View more
Unusually, we needed to spend time near the Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne at the beginning of this week, en route back from France to England. And, to my great surprise, we made some good finds: Firstly, a hotel that could almost be a large chambre d’hôte, in the middle of the fields in… View more
Showing off Wine Travel Guides at The Wine Show in London was interesting. Of course, the stand didn’t appeal to everyone as it was dry! We wondered whether to offer wine from one of the recommended producers in the Guides, but then decided it would defeat the object, as visitors would be tasting the wine… View more
Very belated posting … no broadband for 2 weeks (UK readers: don’t ever sign-up with Tiscali, I won’t even start the rant here …). Exciting news: www.winetravelguides.com has taken a stand at The Wine Show at the Islington Business Design Centre in London. This consumer wine show takes place from this Thursday 25th – Sunday… View more
Marcelo Belmonte, viticultural director of Trapiche, Mendoza, Argentina could have talked to us about clones, trellis systems, irrigation and everything you might want to know about vine farming in the desert climate of Mendoza … and he did. In fact I’ve learnt more about viticultural methods from Argentinean agricultural engineers (as they call them over… View more
Here is my Uruguayan pin-up – wine producer Reinaldo de Lucca, maker of some intense Tannats, and exciting Marsanne and Syrah – a Francophile, a womanizer of the kindest sort, and an all-round lovely, generous man. The comprehensive wine information website, Wine Pages has published my in-depth article on the wines of Uruguay, which I… View more
Took a week off mid-July and went to Le Marche in Italy. We drove down from the French Alps through the Mont Blanc Tunnel and reached Modena for lunch. The place I had hoped to find, ‘Restaurant Lauro’ full of car memorabilia, seemed to have disappeared, but fortunately I had an old Michelin red Guide… View more
Late June and July were busy – no excuse for not writing my blog, though! Lots of press releases sent out about www.winetravelguides.com resulting in some articles – including The Yorkshire Post and The Wharf (Canary Wharf’s free newspaper) in the UK, the Irish Times and an Israeli website – read all about Wine Travel… View more
“Bonsoir Lyon” yelled Mick last night after the obligatory “Start me up” opener from the Rolling Stones. The Stade Gerland stadium only takes 25,000 and sitting near the front on the side, we had an excellent view. The Stones haven’t played Lyon for 25 years: “Vous êtes encore beaux après 25 ans”, said Mick in… View more
