Why Old World French Winemakers are Choosing to Grow in Napa Valley

The trend of French winemakers relocating to the New World – why Napa is their new home, and what it means for the future of wine.

Drill down into a vintner’s experience these days and you’ll find an internship in Bordeaux, a harvest in Australia, a year in Argentina, a progressive stint in California. The movement of winemakers around the globe resembles nothing so much as an in-flight magazine’s map of airline routes.

One path, though, has become more heavily grooved in recent years. More and more winemakers (many representing major houses back home) are traveling on a one-way ticket—from France to the West Coast of the United States. It’s a commitment to concentrate on land lesser known than the great domaines and châteaux of Burgundy or Bordeaux; to raise families an ocean and a continent apart from grandparents; and to risk entire careers on early promise and a hunch [ . . . ]

Continue Reading at ROBB REPORT: Why Old World French Winemakers are Choosing to Grow in Napa Valley – Robb Report

In the footsteps of Laetitia Dosch 

Actress Laetitia Dosch makes an appointment with Karine Vasarino for a night stroll in Lausanne. The Franco-Swiss actress lived in the Vaudois capital between 2003 and 2008.

Sur les pas d’une actrice aux multiples facettes. Sur scène, elle propose des spectacles qui expérimentent les limites. Chauffeuse de salle, animale, elle tourne actuellement avec “Hate”, pièce dans laquelle elle joue nue avec un cheval.Personnalité atypique, l’étiquette de dingue de service lui a longtemps collé à la peau. Mais depuis sa nomination aux César pour son rôle dans “Jeune femme” (Caméra d’or à Cannes en 2017), Laetitia Dosch découvre le côté paillettes et glamour de son métier.Elle sera prochainement dans “Nos batailles” avec Romain Duris. Mais la belle rousse qui se trouvait moche à l’adolescence ne se considère pas comme une star.Laetitia Dosch donne rendez-vous à Karine Vasarino pour une balade nocturne à Lausanne. L’actrice franco-suisse a vécu dans la capitale vaudoise entre 2003 et 2008.

LISTEN TO THE PODACST at: In the footsteps of Laetitia Dosch – rts.ch – Culture

Laetitia Dosch : la belle et la bête

It may be a story of skin, porous membrane between oneself and the world. The skin that Laetitia Dosch has diaphanous, like most redheads, but that’s not the reason why this delicate, almost transparent envelope seems to work as a sensor. Rather a matter of sensitivity, obviously. On this evening of June, the young woman vibrates with all her being , under the big pines of the Domaine d’O, in Montpellier, at the exit of the representation of Hate  : a creation of which she signs the text and the staging, in which she plays, and which, after Lausanne and Montpellier, arrives at Nanterre, where it is not necessary to miss it .

The show is in his image: a total singularity. The beautiful, out of a painting Botticelli, plays, skin against leather, with the beast. In this case a horse named Corazon (“heart”, in Spanish), with a gray trout dress. They are both naked, which is more noticeable at home than at home. It would seem that Laetitia Dosch does not do anything like another, from the beginning.

“I’ve always been the weird of the family,” she says. Its heterogeneous environment and Catholic ultratraditionnel 8 th arrondissement of Paris. “At the same time, my family was strange, in its way, we lived with my grandparents, uncles and aunts, and in the middle of animals, alive or dead. At home there were two parallel worlds: the adult ones, and the animals and me. But it’s good that I have fallen in the ” cathos ” , like that, I could not reproduce any scheme, “she says with this light humor, falsely naive, which characterizes it.

Squeaky Spirit

It is indeed in her private Catholic high school, however, that she discovers the theater, which saves her from a lonely and mute adolescence. And it is in the theater that she plunges, with lost body, she who appears today as one of the muses of the young French auteur cinema. With an eclecticism, a curiosity, an originality that make him make the difference between very different forms, which nevertheless still marks his identity.

She played Shakespeare alongside Eric Ruf, the boss of the Comédie-Française, or under the direction of the director Mélanie Leray, while ferreting into the much more experimental and performative world of choreographers Marco Berrettini and La Ribot. And she wrote her first show, Laetitia makes a fart … , parody of stand-up, where she plays a humorist a little weak, who makes jokes about the old, the Jews and the Blacks. Laetitia Dosch does not mind having a squeaky mind. [ . . . ]

Continue Reading at: Laetitia Dosch : la belle et la bête

9 Best Chilled Red Wines for Your Wedding 

chilled wineChilled red wine is officially a thing.

If you’re like most of us, you probably prefer your red wine room temperature, not chilled. But unless you’ve tried it straight from the fridge, you might be surprised to learn that some red wines are meant to be sipped this way—seriously! In fact, chilled red wines are officially a “thing” and are catching on more and more.

“It‘s a common belief that red wines should be served at room temperature, but unless the room is a pantry or cellar where it is normally cool and dark, most of our rooms are far too warm,” explains Benita Johnson, sommelier and owner at The Vine Wine Club. “Ideally, wine (all wine except sparkling should be served somewhere 52 and 55 degrees for tasting, but when we are simply enjoying a glass of vino, we typically aren’t looking for the specific flavor profile and nuanced characteristics of wine—we just want it to taste good.” Of course, personal preference reigns, so when choosing wines for your wedding, the most important consideration to make is the menu [ . . . ]

If you are open to and interested in trying out some chilled red wines for your big day, here are the ones that are trending and palate-pleasing, according to sommeliers.

Contine at BRIDES: 9 Best Chilled Red Wines for Your Wedding | Brides

Four classic French recipes, from beef bourguignon to cassoule 


French recipes Four hearty traditional dishes that owe more to the farmhouse kitchen than to haute cuisine, including poule au pot and duck à l’orange

Poule au pot (pictured above)

The story goes that France’s King Henry IV declared that every family in France should have the means to eat chicken every Sunday, and from this, the poule-au-pot was born.

Poule-au-pot is chicken simmered in water with vegetables and aromatics. The broth can either be served separately or with the chicken and vegetables. A spent hen – a chicken bred to lay eggs – is traditional for this dish. Tougher and more gamey-tasting than chicken bred for meat, such a hen would require a longer simmering time than is indicated below, at least two hours, to become tender.

Prep 15 min
Cook 1 hr 30 min
Serves 4

Beef bourguignon

Prep 15 min
Cook 2 hr 25 min
Serves 4

1 tbsp lard or oil
450g beef chuck or top round steak, not too lean, cut into large cubes
6 small onions, or shallots, peeled
150g lardons or streaky bacon, diced
1 tbsp flour
1 garlic clove, peeled 
1 bottle red wine, ideally a light red burgundy or red hermitage
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 bouquet garni – thyme, bay leaf and parsley tied in a bunch with string so it can be easily removed before serving
Salt and black pepper
12 small mushrooms
Parsley, leaves picked and chopped

Heat the lard or oil in a large pan on a high flame and fry the meat until browned on all sides, then add the onions and fry until those are also browned.

Meanwhile, in another pan, sweat the bacon in some oil or lard for a few minutes [ . . . ]

More recipes at THE GUARDIAN: Four classic French recipes, from beef bourguignon to cassoulet | Food | The Guardian