Loire Wine Tours

An afternoon spent in the lovely Loire Valley of France touring the Saumur and Anjou vineyards. Our guests Kim and Kim all the way from Australia were blown over by the wine and hospitality of the Domaine de L'Enchantoir near the pretty village of Puy Notre Dame. Firstly an introduction of the wines of the […]

  In France the appellation rules dictate a pruning of the vines through the growing season so as to maintain an optimum area of leaves to allow the right amount of photosythethisis to the amount fo berries on the vine determined by the pruning of the vine plant during the winter. Here for example the […]

Yesterday our guests spent a day exploring the delights of the Loire valley wines in France. If you have  not tried chenin blanc wines then you should right now because they are the white wine of the moment. We travelled to Saumur to a vineyard on the south of the river where the white wines […]

Well a lovely evening on the terrace at Manoir with our six guests enjoying the company, the occasion and the food and wine. We started with the goats cheese on puff pastry with beetroot (fresh from the garden), lambs lettuce and a balsamic vinegar dressing. Main was pork fillet with sauted mushrooms, caramalised apples, fresh […]

  This is an appellation in the central Loire Valley in France on the north side of the river between Saumur and Chinon.

Here we go with bottle sizes. Magnum 2 bottles Marie-Jeanne 3 bottles double magnum 4 bottles Jeroboam 6 bottles Imperiale 8 bottles Salmanazar 12 bottles Balthazar 16 bottles Nebuchadnezzar 20 bottles

An evening spent with freinds Sally and John allowed me to meet Gordon and Nicki again whom we met at Domaine de L'Enchantoir. Our joint appreciation of wine led to a discussion about drinking wine from other areas of France. Through Grainger FIne Wines I have a good network of winemakers from around France. A recent […]

Don't be fooled by the wine from the New World anymore. Its the same old fad of finding something new but it has gone on too long. Anyway what do you really know about them. What's in the bottle. Do you know? What's the vineyard practise? Do they spray? What do they spray? Have you […]

A leisurely morning out to Montsoreau on the Loire at the junction of Vienne river and a very picturesque town that comes alive on every second sunday when the centre of town and the quayside are full of market stalls selling food and clothing etc and the antiques fair arrives with many stalls selling all […]

An interesting story from one of our winemakers about a raffle prize. We were talking about the UK market and the discussion was about how people choose wines. Of course the majority of wine is sold in supermarkets and the one thing hardly anyone looks at is quality or whats lurking inside the bottle. You […]