Beauvais Wine (un) fair

Last weekend was the annual wine fair in Beauvais sur Matha, a small town in the Charente Maritime region of France about a 20min drive from our holiday properties. For the first time in a couple of years the weather was just right, sunny but not too hot. We have been going for around fifteen years although the fair itself has been going for 22.  We always head off fairly early, aiming to arrive for 10ish - the idea being that it is quieter and the producers are keen to chat and discuss the depth of their wines. By the afternoon and after having sold plenty and consumed their lunch of wine and cheese, they are tired and more occupied by the hundreds of people tasting their wines to be keen to talk. We tour around the town square tasting more than 50 + wines but also receiving tastings of Cognac, Champagne, cheese, bread, paté and snails, to name just a few of the hearty free portions of French produce there is on offer- you can understand why we are regular visitors.

So, is it a hard sell or a tourist trap ?   To find out everything about the Beavais wine fair and why it was so unfair visit our web site

The joy of yeast infections.... and Pinot noir.

If you have read my recent blog on my love affair with Bordeaux and Burgundy I left you with the choice of what to put in your cellar. It was either the difficult to find, expensive and fickle Burgundy's or the much more reliable and easier on the pocket Bordeaux's. My considered opinion was that with Burgundy, despite its huge variation in quality and inflated prices its principal red grape - Pinot Noir can deliver much more rewarding drinking in the short term; I have found most of my classed Bordeaux's are nowhere near ready to drink and may, if I'm lucky, just be ready to share with my now 11 year old when hes old enough to imbibe.

So, what should we put away in the very short term to enjoy ? Well I have recently fallen madly in love with a Pinot Noir from down under - no, not Oz, keep going and you will find another deep south outpost mostly known for its Sauvignon. The home of Sauvignon,  the Loire is only now just waking up to the world wide taste for fresh zingy well crafted wines of this ilk; they are not quite there yet but watch this space for modern Sauvignons from France. ( hopefully a few more of which I will discover at the 22nd Beauvais sur Matha wine festival on the 1st June )

The wine that has so charmed me is Coney Pizzicato Pinot Noir from the North Island New Zealand - not somewhere in the Otago but in Martinborough. This wine is one of the best Pinot noirs I have ever tasted and I've had more than my fair share as a wine judge for the IWC . How they get this young wine to express such maturity is a marvel of wine making; while retaining its classic Pinot perfume with  natural sweetness, it also has cherry/ violet notes, good weight with delightful umami; so much so, I think it has benefited from Brettanomyces  Once you have tried a wine with this so called 'yeast infection' you will be forever seeking it, out I know I do (something I had to explain carefully to my wife !). Sadly such epicurean delights don't come cheap as it sells for around £20 a bottle (Majestic) but I would rather have one bottle of this Pinot delight than a dozen insipid run of the mill Bourgogne reds in my wine rack .

Sadly I missed this vineyard when we visited Martinbrough Last spring, surprising, as Martinbrough is such a small place; the kind of charming rural town that shuts down on a Sunday night. Instead I spent my time drinking the famous Pinot noir from Ata Rangi - fantastic stuff but 3 times the price. Great ageing potential but I want to drink my Pinot now so its Coney for me thanks mate.

Now a quick update of the state of  UK Supermarket wine after my recent visit over Easter. Well wine lovers its more bad news. Since my last visit to the UK (October),  there are even more generic bland industrial wines on the shelves to fit the sub £10 bracket.  I don't think the supermarkets think we want interesting crafted wines anymore as they appear to of completely dropped these in favour of the bland factory wines that they can easily buy and sell at huge mark ups as long as its palatable and has the required alcohol content;  did you see the tv ad where a 'typical shopper' says " I don't care what it is I just like it " this should send a shiver down any wine lovers spine and just shows how a supermarket will lower its self to the lowest common denominator if we allow them to. So - demand more ! more taste, more diversity and better value for money .  Don't get me wrong I love British supermarkets, they are the best in the world, we just need to demand more from them when it comes to wine, don't let them leave it to the accountants who wouldn't know a good yeast infection if it hit them where it really hurts (and I don't mean their pockets !)

By Chris Blakeman

A road to nowhere ?

The family and I have just returned from our skiing trip to Les Angles in the southern Pyrenees. There was lots of snow and sunshine. It was our first ski trip to this particular resort and we found the slopes to be just right for us two long term scardey cat novice skiers and our ‘to the max 8 and a 11yr olds’. Fun was had by all, more for them than me as I managed to injure my foot, I don’t know how, maybe because of the new radical way I do parallel turns.  My other disappointment was the total lack of Spanish wines in the village shops and restaurants, despite Spain being less than a short Swallow flight away ( sorry just watched lots of Monty Python while resting the injured foot ) I was really looking forward to exploring some obscure Catalan wines, but no, all wines available were distinctly French even though half the skiers were  from over the border.

This got me thinking over every ‘too cool’ glass of red wine I was served in Les Angles, not to mention the biblical amounts of meat the restaurants dish out  (don’t get me wrong – I’m no veggie but even lions would think twice about that much meat),  that I had forgotten just how diverse French country wines can be. In one restaurant, much to my blushes, I did not know a single one of the wines on the list; I was aware of the AOC  regions but not the individual wines themselves. There were lots of Rousillion grenache based wines along withMourvedre Mauzac  and the better known Cabernets etc. 

Now its been a long time since I studied this regions country wines, in fact more than 30, so my opinion was rather tarnished by the unpolished rustic wines that were being produced back then in the 80’s and the fact that I have been having a love affair with my two mistresses of Burgundy and Bordeaux. (The latter mistress and I are not getting on at the moment – more on that next time).  So I have mostly overlooked trying out these obscure gems but much to my pleasure, I found all the wines I tried to be well crafted, polished yet still showing their rustic roots. A little expensive at restaurant prices (we paid just over 30 euros for most of them) I considered them to be about right if compared on taste to the more well known wines, but they need to bring the price down about 20% so more people from outside the region will give them a go.

As usual, on the last night of the ski trip there was a blizzard,  leaving us with 40 cm of fresh snow, now a Ford S Max in the snow is not a good place to be –  its big, heavy and has big summer tyres so it was a good thing we remembered to bring the snow chains.   Due to the weather we took the southern route home A9, A61 , A62, so sadly no Andorra shopping and according to the kids a 7hr road to nowhere going the wrong way. 

 Along the route I was treated to a whos who of the south wests great wine names – you could spend a month discovering many of these vineyards on this route but here are just a few in the order I remember – Rivesaltes, Corbieres, Faugeres, Minervois, Limoux, Fronton, Gers, Cabardes, St Chinian then on to Armagnac and then, the pinnacle of red wine, Bordeaux; so a  7 hour road trip can be very interesting indeed, it just depends whose eyes you see it through, not sure the kids were as enthralled as I was.

By Chris Blakeman