Category: Culture

The Rebellious French Village Making Wine Banned by the E.U

ON A SLOW SUNDAY NIGHT at Virginia’s La Table Provencale restaurant, sommelier Christian Borel unveils a prized bottle of Cuvée des Vignes d’Antan. In a hushed, conspiratorial tone, he calls it a “borderline mythical, quasi black-market wine.” It’s made from outlawed jacquez and herbemont grapes, he explains, and is produced by a coop of rebellious vignerons in the Ardéche region of southern France.

Filled with dark garnet-red liquid, the bottle is sealed with shrink wrap. Its label is stamped with vintage information and a line-drawing of a sultry wine goddess. All in all, it looks indistinguishable from something you’d buy at the supermarket.“This cuvée hails from the tiny, remote village of Beaumont, where it’s been perfected by five generations of local winemakers,” whispers Borel. For the past 84 years, the French government and, most recently, the European Union, has sought to eradicate Beaumont’s grapevines due to their American “blood.” Although the vines are French-American hybrids, they are more than 140 years old. Beaumont’s Association Mémoire de la Vigne makes just 7,000 bottles a year.

Swirled in a glass, the wine offers a floral, fruity aroma of blackberries and what Borel describes as “hues of violet and peony.” Letting it breathe, hints of “vanilla, mild spice, and licorice” emerge. A sip brings thick, pleasantly rounded flavors “backed by firm structure, a finish of supple, smoothed-out tannins …” and a taste that is uncannily “like its bouquet.”

In a word, it’s good

“This wine should be celebrated as others are,” says Hervé Garnier, the 66-year-old Association Mémoire de la Vigne president and founder. Garnier loves Beaumont, which is Continue reading “The Rebellious French Village Making Wine Banned by the E.U” →

Jacques Cousteau, an Example for Lovers of the Oceans

Mexico City.- Jacques-Yves Cousteau had several passions: underwater life, exploration, film and photography, disciplines in which he scored numerous successes, many of which he inherited for posterity in his approximately 120 documentaries that, currently, they are subject of study.

Born on June 11, 1910 in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France, the most important explorer and underwater researcher of the 20th century made contributions in the fields of science and the arts that today are subjects of forced analysis in schools of Cinema and Marine Photography throughout the world.According to his most severe biographers, from his childhood he became accustomed to travel because his father, Daniel Cousteau, constantly toured the world for work reasons, as he served as secretary of the American billionaire Eugene Higgins.

Jacques was a very sick child, probably because of the continuous change of eating habits and environments, in addition to the constant coming and going in different countries.His parents attributed the deteriorated health of the boy to the tight schedule of the continuous trips; for that reason, with the idea and the hope of changing his life, he was enrolled in a French boarding school where he was not a good student although he approved his courses. Continue reading “Jacques Cousteau, an Example for Lovers of the Oceans” →