What is terroir? It’s a little word with a big meaning. It sums up all the various factors the vine experiences in the environment where it is growing and in turn this affects the style of the wine. Wine without the influence of terroir will just be deliciously fruity whereas terroir driven wines will express a sense of the place where they come from.The two most influential factors of terroir are the climate and the soil. Also included is the altitude the vines are grown at. Is it flat or sloping land? If there is a slope which way is it facing? Does the soil drain freely? Does the soil trap heat? Is there water nearby and if so is it a large body of water such as a lake or the sea or is it a trickling stream or a great river. What is the microclimate in that place? What else is growing in the area? All of these factors affect the growing conditions for the vine and will shape the characteristics of the wine. However there is one further, highly important element of terroir. Man. How is the land being farmed? Has the terroir been matched to particular grape varieties? How have the vines been pruned and trained? What yield is being achieved? Is the land being farmed sustainably and in deference to terroir or highly commercially using pesticides and herbicides?
Update on The Old Winery - Over the last couple of months we have spent our time clearing out The Old Winery which has taken a lot of work. It was full to the brim with junk, piles of rotting vegetation,
The Wines of the Languedoc-Roussillon by Wendy Gedney - Chapter 1
I remember the first time I came to the Languedoc-Roussillon. It was the summer of 1990 and in those days I could hardly be described as a wine connoisseur, in fact quite the opposite. Yes I liked to drink wine but my taste had not developed beyond a glass of good Sancerre. It was a family holiday that brought me to the region, I was attracted by the Mediterranean climate and the ‘good value’ accommodation and my husband was attracted by the wine. He was the wine buff in the family and had heard that the wines of this region were undergoing great change which he wanted to discover for himself.
2017 was a wonderful year for Fisher and me. We met in January and very soon knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and so Fisher came to live with me in France.The village where we
Not that long ago I knew very little about wine. Fate brought me to the subject and opened up a new life for me, one I never imagined living and one that introduced me to people that I could never have met in my old life. And it brought me back to the Languedoc-Roussillon, this magical and very special place where I now live surrounded by vines and earning my living from and with them. Plus I wrote a much needed book about the region called The Wines of the Languedoc-Roussillon.
New to our range of offerings this year is our Wine Cellar Dinner Party and as with all new products there has to be a premier and this week we welcomed 14 wonderful people for the first time into the wine cellar at Domaine de la Senche in La Livinière.
The Languedoc region is blessed with many things but I think three of the most enticing things for visitors is the climate, the wine and the history and here at Vin en Vacances we have devised a tour that guarantees all of this.
Catharism was a religious cult that spread through many parts of Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries but it was in Languedoc where it flourished and was openly practised. As it took hold the Pope tried to control the people and bring them back to the Catholic faith but his efforts failed and he realised he needed armed men to crush the Cathars in Languedoc. He eventually persuaded the King of France to join him in a Holy War, a crusade against Catharism. The king wanted Languedoc to be part of his realm and saw the crusade as a chance to achieve this dream so he raised a massive army led by the Dukes of France and the warrior Catholic churchmen who marched on Languedoc.
During the first months of the year, a walk through a vineyard is like visiting a cemetery. The vines look dead, standing like rows of headstones and it’s hard to believe they will resurrect to produce juicy grapes in half a years’ time.The vines are dormant and have been since their leaves fell after the first very cold spell, usually just after Christmas. It was then that the pruning began. The farmer must hand prune every vine and ideally this job must to be finished by the end of March, before the warming of Spring wakes them from their long winter slumber. Pruning is an important and skilled job as it will determine not only the shape of the vine but the amount of fruit the vine will yield.
This year Vin en Vacances is joined by Gregg Meesters who will be running tours and tastings in the Pézenas and Capestang areas. Here, in his first blog since joining our team he tells us how it all came about.
A New Year, a new chapter…That’s what 2017 represents to me. In 2015 I moved to the beautiful Occitanie with my wife and 2 girls, looking for a different lifestyle and new challenges. And boy did we find challenges. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the administrative challenges that come with moving from one country to another. I am here to talk about a much more interesting challenge… Wine of course!Although wine has always been a part of my life - I still remember my dad bringing up his “good” bottles of wine from the cellar and me peeling the labels off the bottles to put in my scrapbook but it wasn’t until we decided to move to the largest wine producing area of the world that I became a wine enthusiast.