Wine Travel Guides Update and a Test

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 Guides in Hebrew:
http://bakbuk.co.il/htmlpage/internal.asp?cat=4&nam=1714
More articles are promised over the coming months.

Meantime I’ve signed up to Google Adwords and some of you might be reading this because of them – it’s certainly giving me clicks, and a couple of subscriptions, but it’s a hairy business being your own SEO.

I’ve had time for leisure. Went down to Vienne, south of Lyon for Jazz à Vienne – a fantastic jazz festival, where we were lucky enough to have a sunny evening and found a place right in the centre of the Roman ampitheatre for a great night of Cuban music, notably the fantastic pianist Chuco Valdes. Next day we went wine shopping for a friend’s 50th birthday party and decided to go to the co-operative at St-Désirat (in appellation Saint Joseph). Some very decent and good value wines – we bought a red St-Joseph for about €7.50 and a bargain Gamay Rosé Vin de Pays de l’Ardèche at less than €3.

For lunch the next day we decided to test out a recommendation from John Wheeldon in the ‘Around Ampuis and Condrieu’ micro-region Guide. We went to ‘Bistrot d’Albert’ in Saint Vallier. It’s on the main street, but the terrace where we ate was sheltered and we had a great value lunch – a menu at €12 and plenty of choice à la carte, and as John writes, a good selection of half bottles. We drank an intense St-Joseph Domain Gouye 2005 at €19. This is what good value French restaurants should be about.

Escaped to Le Marche in Italy for a week, but that’s the subject of another post.

Don’t forget there’s a discount code D1BLG07 you can use for reduced subscriptions on my site – see the posting in June.