la gramiere

Changing of the Guard

The finalists for the American Wine Blog Awards have been announced over at Fermentation, and sadly I wasn't among them this year!  BUT, what is exciting is that there are lots of new names out there.  Except for Tablas Creek all of the finalists are new to the blogging scene in the past year or so, that's very exciting!  Jason Haas writes a great blog, that's why he won last year, but now he is joined by newcomers from Dry Creek Vineyards, Michel Schlumberger, and Bedrock Wine Co.  It's exciting to me that no matter how many wine blogs there are, there's always room for a few more, for those who have something to say and who say it well. As you can imagine, I'm casting my vote for the little guy, the one that is working his butt off to make his dream come true, getting his hands dirty and tying to make a name for himself.  Go take a look at these great blogs and vote for the blog you enjoy the most!  Oh, and there are other categories too!  So vote for your favorites!

Slide show deleted, sorry!

I've deleted the slide show from my last post, I tried to get rid of that awful music, and didn't succeed. I turned it off on my computer and then forgot about it when I saved my post!  The other day Matt said, "hey you've got music on the blog now!"  Yikes!  I absolutely hate it when websites have music, so I apologize to everyone.  Now there are fewer pictures, but I think the over all effect is better, you can see more details.  So much for slide shows from www.slide.com, if we have to have the music, I don't want the free slide show.  Then again, maybe it's operator error and there's a way to turn it off, but I couldn't figure it out...

A visit to Castillon du Gard

I have a long history with the village of Castillon du Gard, I'm not sure that I've ever shared here on the blog.  You see, one of my first trips to France, back in 1992, I spent the summer as a luxury bike tour guide for a small company that does trips similar to those of Backroads and Butterfield & Robinson.  We were based in a magical location in southern Burgundy, actually the converted stables of an old château, the kind of stuff 20 year old Americans dream of.  It was right at the time when Peter Mayle's first books about life in Provence came out, and I was lucky enough to be assigned to the Provence tours.  One of our stops in Provence was Castillon du Gard!  We spent two nights there at the Relais Châteaux hotel called Le Vieux Castillon. 

I was recently reminded of all this when, thanks to FaceBook, I found one of my old tour guide partners, Matt Desmond.  So for him and for all of you I thought it would be fun to show you around this beautiful village, among the most beautiful in France in my opinion.

The village of Castillon dates back the the 12th century when it depended upon the church of Uzès for protection, its  strategic hilltop location led the people of two nearby hamlets to desert them and move to the safety of the village.  It was at the center of a struggle between Protestants and Catholics during the religious wars in the 16th century, and was even occupied by the Germans during the second world war.  Today the houses of Castillon have been restored by locals and many foreigners who live there both full-time and some who use their properties as vacation homes.  The results are breath-taking and every year more renovations take place and the village becomes even more beautiful.

Back in 1992 when Matt and I came here on our tours, there were only two businesses as far as I can remember, the local café and the hotel.  The rest of the village was a sleepy, yet undiscovered Provençal village, today there are several restaurants, a butcher, a Tabac-Presse, even a beauty salon.  It's bustling in the summer, loaded with tourists who come to visit the nearby Pont du Gard, and can't resist stopping by this beautiful hilltop village.

In all honesty we don't go up into the village that often, we just don' t need to.  I run up sometimes to the town hall, or to visit with the previous owners of our vineyards.  During pruning season though, we tend to head up quite often for a coffee at the café.  It's a typical southern French café, where the locals stop in for a quick coffee, or a petit blanc (a glass of white wine) or even a pastis, this at 9 am!  The place hasn't changed a bit since we were there 17 years ago.  As an American I look at it and think, what a shame, this place could be so awesome, buy it, remodel it and make it into a café-winebar, what an opportunity!  But no, this is how it should be, and the owner refuses to change it or sell it, even though it's worth a fortune.  His family has always run the village café and always will, while he's around anyway.  We go there though, not for the charming atmosphere (I say this tongue-in-cheek)  but because they have the best coffee in the region.  I'm not kidding.  Coffee in France is almost always disappointing, just ask David Lebovitz, so when we tasted the coffee here we were overjoyed!  Now we tend to take too many brakes while pruning, but for us it's typical, if there's some little gastronomical treat to be had, we'll go out of our way to get it.

So there you have it a little visit to this beautiful village and a little more insight to our lives here!  People laugh about FaceBook, but I think it's such an amazing tool to get in touch with old friends again.  I would have never been able to find my old tour guide buddy Matt, and so many other people.  So if you're on FaceBook and would like to be my friend, invite away!

Vinus TV

Last August during the European Wine Bloggers Conference, there were two guys seemingly always behind a camera and a microphone. I really didn't get a chance to meet them until the last day, but I am so happy I figured out who they were. Edgar Mendoza and Eduardo Benito started VinusTV.es in 2007, the idea was born when a group of friends and colleagues got together every Thursday to taste wine after work. They decided that it would be fun to create a video blog focusing on Spanish wines, and they have done an amazing job! My Spanish is pretty good, but I wish it was better so that I could get more from these great interviews. The subjects are varied and include winemakers, trade shows and tastings, awards events, and even some talk about viticulture. It's a great showcase for Spanish wines and the Spanish wine trade.

Eduardo and Edgar interviewed everyone at the Blogger's conference, I had completely forgotten about it until today when I looked up their site, and saw my interview. Matt thought it came off pretty well, so I decided to post it here! I cringe a bit, because, as is often the case when you watch yourself, I feel pretty silly. For those of you who have never met me, you can get a pretty good idea of my personality from this! This was on the last evening of the conference, when we had an amazing tasting of top Spanish wines that were gathered by Ryan and Gabriella of Catavino. I happily show you few of my favorites, funny, they were all whites, maybe it's because it was a hot evening and the whites went down easier than the reds!

If you understand Spanish I highly recommend you spend some time browsing the clips on their site, they also make it easy for you to share them if you have your own website. If it's only English that you speak, there are lots of interviews with the Wine Bloggers Conference Participants that are just as much fun to watch!

A Very Wet Winter

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a winter with so much rain.  Last week it rained almost every day here, and I mean pouring rain.  It seems like it has rained regularly since the month of November.  The road from Uzès to Nimes via the Pont Saint Nicolas has been closed for a month now due to falling rocks and landslides.  Driving from here to Avignon past Estézargues and Domazan, there is actually water stading in the vineyards, a very rare sight for us here.  We are back in a pruning cycle this week, and luckily there is no rain forecast for the next week.  Yesterday it was a beautiful day, I didn't even have to wear a coat.  This morning though we woke up to more rain showers.  Just passing though.  The sun is now out and I'm off to the Wednesday market in Uzès, the to the vineyards to prune, and to  look at this beautiful view all day.

At this point, the amount of rain we are getting is good news for the vines, of course it hinders farmers from working in the fields, but it is also filling up the aquafers which badly need it.  We've had such little rain since 2005, our reserves are dangerously low.  So even though we might feel like we're living in England, this summer we'll be a lot better off for it.  Who knows what the weather has in store for us this spring, but for some reason I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be a great year.  We'll see if I'm right!

Matt's got a "new" tractor!

I say Matt, because, I still lay claim to our 63 Massey-Ferguson.  Last week Matt pulled the trigger and bought a slightly newer tractor so that we don't run the Massey into the ground. The "new"  one is an 83 Case/International Harvester, it has a whopping 50 horse power as opposed to our current 35.  It's still only a 2 wheel drive, but we really didn't want 4 wheel drive.  Even with all of the rain we had last spring we still didn't have any trouble getting into the vineyards to spray, so Matt felt that it wasn't necessary and that we didn't need to have the extra weight of a 4-wheel drive.  Still no power steering either, but I drove it in circles around our back yard, and it's much easier to turn than the Massey.  With the Massey I have to put all my weight on the brakes and pull the steering wheel with both hands to be able to make a tight turn, this one should be much easier.  Matt found it at a garage just outside of Nimes, it's in really good shape and only has 4000 hours. It also has a roll bar, which the Massey doesn't, safety is good, I really don't want to become fertilizer for our vineyards, though if it were to happen at least there would be some good to come of it!  

So it should be a good tractor for us, with just enough more power to comfortable run our sprayer, and of course, the WEED BADGER!!!  Which we fully intend to use to its full potential this spring. Maybe with this new tractor, I'll even be able to operate it, though I'm not sure I want to, it may become a "Vine Badger"  with me behind the wheel...  Our poor vineyards may suffer a bit too much, and that's definitely not what we need !!

Back to back Biodynamic seminars- Part 2

As I said, the second seminar I attended was just one week later at La Ferme Saint Martin , a winery in Suzette, which is in the heart of the Beaumes de Venise appellation. Guy Jullien, who has now been joined by his son Thomas, has been farming his vineyards organically for several years now, he is a very talented winemaker, and uses very low doses of sulfur, if any.  The wines are very good, pure expressions of their terroir, but every so often, you get a bottle, that in my opinion, might have been better if they had used a bit more SO2.  Like many farmers that choose to farm organically, after a few years, they wanted more, wanted to go that one step further in agriculture, and that lead them to bio-dynamics and to Jacques Melle.  Based in Champagne, Mr. Melle is one of the top bio-dynamic consultants,  he consults with many of the top wineries in the southern Rhône, as well as all over France.  I will admit that I don't know that much more about his background. This session was more of an exchange of ideas, not really a presentation on bio-dynamics.

There were a few outsiders present like myself, my friends Even and Marie-Caroline Bakke, and some others that wanted to learn more about bio-dynamics, but most of the participants were winemakers/grape farmers that have been working with Mr. Melle for at least the past year.  Many familiar faces filled the room, from the top wineries in the southern Rhône, Marcel Richaud, Frederic and François Alary from Oratoire Saint Martin, Jerome Bressy, Jean Marot from Vindemio, and certainly there were other well-known people there, but I didn't recognize them all!  Everyone talked about their experiences employing the various techniques and preparations that are the basis of bio-dynamics, what they found really worked, what they had trouble with and how they came out in 2008.  If you don't already know, 2008 was one of the most difficult years in recent history in the south of France. Some say they haven't seen the constant, heavy rain we had in May and early June for at least 40 years.  Organic and conventional farmers alike saw substantial crop loss due to mildew, so it was quite interesting to hear their experiences.  Overall, no one claimed that, thanks to bio-dynamics, they made out any better than their neighbors, they mostly focused on how it improved the quality of the soils and the health of certain vineyards that in the past had been problematic.  This is the first time I have attended an exchange of ideas and experiences between farmers, and it was a very enlightening experience, and something I think should happen more often around here. 

Of course, keeping with French customs, there was a meal planned at the end.  We all crowded into another, smaller room to start tasting each other's wines while tables were set up and the caterer began to serve.  Corks were pulled, jokes were told and we all got the chance to get to know one another a little bit better.  As we moved through the evening, the bottles kept arriving, everyone having brought at least one, if not two or three of their wines.  From the small producer of Vin de Pays, to a bio-dynamic olive and olive oil producer, even a couple of delicious Châteauneuf-du-Papes, we tasted and discussed each wine that was put in front of us.  All of this in the name of bio-dynamic agriculture.  If nothing else, it brought us all together to exchange ideas and taste each others wine, it doesn't seem to happen very often, but it is signaling a change in the attitudes of some vignerons in the region, and that is definitely a good thing!