A Wine Tasting Day

It's been a long time since we took the open top out for a spin. The weather has been far too wet and cold!  However  last Sunday  was our first day of beautiful warm sunshine this year and so all we needed was a good excuse to get out. What better excuse can one have but to head to a wine tasting!

A  wine tasting in our very own lovely local town of Dinan is not to be missed. The French do their wine tastings together with the  local food producers and so you get the best of both worlds. These small wine and food artisans offer products rarely seen in the big supermarkets so you get an opportunity to meet lovely people and  taste some extraordinary foods and wines.

Bringing the open top also means we can't go completely mad with the credit cards as the boot will only hold a few boxes at best!!

Our first wine tasting  was a local small producer Benoit Merias from Montlouis sur Loire. We tasted some great whites - La Loge 2014 semi sweet and a La Maisonettes dry more sweet 2015 which was full of flavour. Both wines had great taste and full bodied and would be a delight with fish or seafood.
www.benoitmerias.fr .

 Montlouis sur Loire is located just outside Tours about three hours drive from our cooking school.

We all love a good rosé on a fine sunny day and our next tasting with Philippe and Esméralda Laduguie did not disappoint. In fact it was bursting with taste. Philippe and Esméralda run a small vinyard called Domaine de Saint-Guilhem near Toulouse about 10 hours drive from the school. This was without doubt one of the best rosé wines we ever tasted and its nice to know they offer accommodation at their vinyard so we will be making tracks to their sunny rustic place very soon. www.domainesaintguilhem.com 

Rosé d'Emeraude - A fine rosé bursting with flavour with a full body.

We were also smitten by the dry white Vermentino grape wines (originally from Sardinia/Corsica) but now growing at the Domaine de Cantaussel near Siron in the Pays D'Oc about 8 hours drive from our school. Jean-Luc owns a small vinyard of around 10 ha on limestone soils which produce the intense fruity aroma and the unique  terroire of the region: www.cantaussel.fr.

Vermentino - a very rich dry white wine with lots of flavour  (citrus and wild fennel) 

Well very soon we reached our maximum storage space and had to call it a day! However what a wonderful day it was with the discovery of some excellent new wines too!!

Home to Kerrouet  to sample a few more of those delicious wines!