Loire Wine Tours

This year we continue our very popular fully escorted residential wine tours from Manoir de Gourin in th Loire Valley, France. If you are interested please log onto our website www.loirewinetours.com to see the range of tours we offer to guests from all over the world. Last year we had Canadian, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, Zambians, Irish and […]

We had a day out today and tried a new restaurant in Saumur. Le Pot de Lapin run by Oliver who is very helpful and friendly. Enjoyed the meal and a good pot of Saumur Champigny if a litle fresh. It needed another year in the vat to develop the tannins. Thereafter it was over to […]

The budget brought further duty levy on wine and now we pay £1.90 for a 75cl bottle of still wine and £2.43 for a bottle of bubbly. And do not forget that VAT is added to the total price so the £1.90  becames £2.28 and the £2.43 becomes £2.92. So thats before we even look […]

Its April and the pruning of the vines is well finished and now comes the  horizontal tieing of the pruned branches to the tie wires. With some flexibility in the vine now in spring the branches can be  bent from the natural vertical pose  into the horizontal and tie onto the wires. The vines have started […]

Any legitimate wine business will be relieved to hear about the government crackdown on illegal alcohol smuggling. According to a recent article the loss in revenue to the treasury is estimated at £1.2bn. The other side of the coin is the effect it has on legitimate businesses like ours. We have noticed on one occasion the […]

Today I ventured over to Domaine de L'Enchantoir to check up on the progress of the 2011 vintage. Pierre and Brigiite have been busy filtering the Saumur Blanc appellation ready for bottling on Thursday. They were topping up the 8000 litre vat with wine from a small vat with a floating top which is a […]

Any legitimate wine business will be glad to hear about the government crackdown on illegal alcohol smuggling. According to a recent article the loss in revenue to the treasury is estimated at £1.2bn. The other side of the coin is the effect it has on legitimate businesses like ours. We have noticed on one occasion […]

Today I ventured over to Domaine de L'Enchantoir to check up on the progress of the 2011 vintage. Pierre and Brigiite have been busy filtering the Saumur Blanc appellation ready for bottling on thursday. They were topping up the 8000 litre vat with wine from a small vat with a floating top which is a […]

France has always maintained its belief in promoting wine in the traditional way of appellation names. In France I suppose thats ok as many people know their own wines. Even that though may not be the case anymore. I mean if you saw a wine label with 'Appellation Saumur Controlee' would you know where Saumur was […]