Tag: wine

How To Pair Bordeaux Red Wines With Food

Food Pairing for Red Bordeaux Wines allows for a number of different dishes that serve to compliment and enhance both the food and wine. We take a look at both Left Bank and Right Bank Red Bordeaux Pairings, in addition to the recipes needed to make these delicious and savory dishes.

The Bordeaux region of France is one of the most noteworthy winemaking regions in the entire world.  It’s prized by both wine aficionados and newcomers alike due to its rich flavor, complexity, and refined characteristics.

While both red and white wines are produced in Bordeaux, it’s typically the red blends that are most prized by consumers.

Bordeaux red wines are complex, with rich mineral flavors, earthy tones, and refined red, black & blue fruit. Today, we’ll be looking at the best Bordeaux food pairings & recipes for various styles of Red Bordeaux Wine.

A “Bordeaux” red blend (also called a Claret) is typically made from at least two grape varieties, however, there are up to 5 grape varieties that are approved to be utilized when making red wine in the Bordeaux region. Those grape varieties include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec.

The Best Food Pairing for Bordeaux Red Wines – Left & Right Bank Red Blends

Also worth noting is that there are several sub-regions within the Bordeaux winemaking region of France.  Depending on location, some red wines may be more Cabernet Sauvignon heavy, while others may be more Merlot dominant.  For simplicity’s sake, we’re going to split Bordeaux in two and discuss two typical winemaking styles in the region that most commonly utilized

Continue reading “How To Pair Bordeaux Red Wines With Food” →

Francis Cabrel: “It’s killing me!” 

Installed in Astaffort, in Lot-et-Garonne, far from the grayness and the rumors of the capital, Francis Cabrel doubtless thought he could escape mirages. It is also his friend Jacques Dutronc who had advised him to stay on the sidelines of the system, as the singer has just confided to our colleagues from the Parisian. “I learned the lesson: it’s a dangerous job if you get too close to it. So, I am a bit of a lonely bear, reclusive far from Paris. And happy to be. “

But even keeping an eye on the grain, being careful not to be devoured by the demons of notoriety, Francis Cabrel could not totally escape his fate… Today, in fact, there is something in his existence which destroys him a little more each year, to the point that the singer declared that this activity was killing him! What is it about ? Well the harvest, in which he regularly participates, especially since his brother, Philippe, is a winegrower on the family estate! “We harvested a fortnight ago,” he explained. I had my kidneys broken for three days! It kills me every year! “

However, this participation in the work of the vine is not the only thing to undermine the artist. Indeed, when we listen to his last album, the fourteenth, we say to ourselves that Cabrel has perhaps never been so far in privacy. Never before, for example, had he spoken so clearly about his father and the ties between them. Nor the great guilt that inhabits him at the idea that the latter has toiled all his existence to support his family. “I feel guilty every day for having a life that is too simple and too easy, with a guitar, a notebook, a pencil, compared to my father’s. The money earned, it has always been cumbersome … I do not talk about it easily elsewhere … “he confessed to Laurent Delahousse, on October 11, at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, on France 2.

But if he finds it difficult to “talk about it”, Francis Cabrel has managed to write a magnificent song in memory of his father, Te resembling: “I would have liked to resemble you, I swear. But now, it is not enough to want, it was not in my nature. You must have really questioned yourself, I’m sure. And one day, I crossed a guitar, I lived as we have fun. You had your feet on the ground. And I was just the opposite… ”

A sublime declaration of love and admiration, which should free the son and touch the father, if he can hear him, from “up there”.

Source: Francis Cabrel: “It’s killing me!” – France Sunday

French warm to ‘impossible’ wine from Calvados country

When a solicitor from Normandy announced plans to make wine in his home region, connoisseurs were incredulous. “It seemed totally incongruous to them,” Gérard Samson, 62, said. “It wasn’t just that they thought the wine would be bad. They thought the idea was impossible.”

It has taken Mr Samson more than 20 years to overcome the deeply held belief that only a fool would create a vineyard so close to England, but, at last, he appears to have beaten the prejudice.

Sales of reds and whites from his Arpents du Soleil vineyard in the Calvados area have risen by about 20 per cent compared with 2019, and the demeanour of customers arriving for tastings has changed completely.

The French former lawyer Gérard Samson has found success with his Normandy vineyard
The French former lawyer Gérard Samson has found success with his Normandy vineyard [ . . . ]

Continue at The Times: French warm to ‘impossible’ wine from Calvados country | World | The Times

Bright and vivid, it’s hard to beat Beaujolais for ‘gluggable’ wines

 

Caves de Juliénas-Chaintré Villages Cuvée Six, Beaujolais-Villages, France 2018 (from £9.95, nywines.co.uk; eynshamcellars.com; butlers-winecellar.co.uk) It would be very hard to find a red wine region in the world offering better value for money than Beaujolais at the moment. I don’t just mean that the land north of Lyon provides some of the most reliably drinkable red wines you can find for not much more than a fiver. Wines that are relatively light and, with their soft to non-existent tannin and bright berry thirst-quenching juiciness, are the ideal incarnation of that onomatopoeic wine adjective, gluggable. Chillable, wines such as Tesco Beaujolais Rouge or Sainsbury’s House Beaujolais (both exactly £5). The region also regularly hits a thirst-quenching, prettily-scented spot for a couple of quid more, with “villages” wines, from superior vineyards, such as Morrisons The Best Beaujolais Villages (£6.50 until 4 October), Waitrose Blueprint Beaujolais-Villages 2018 (£7.99) or, in super-succulent, vivid, finger-staining, fresh-off-the-bush style, the Cuvée Six made by a 170-strong co-operative of local growers.

Continue reading “Bright and vivid, it’s hard to beat Beaujolais for ‘gluggable’ wines” →