It’s not France without wine

Sherry and I enjoy wine.  We even have a small cellar at home and are fortunate to live in Sonoma County, the very heart of California’s more traditional wine country.  Our cellar has a good representation of both Sonoma and Napa wineries, which we love to share with friends.

Being true Francophiles, we also drink French wines.  These have been mostly from Bordeaux, perhaps France’s most celebrated wine region.  However recently, we are starting to explore some of the lesser known wines and our vacation was the perfect opportunity to continue our research.

So we thought we would take you on a little Tour de France based on some of the wines we enjoyed while we were there.  How about we start in Provence?

Rosé wines are very popular in Provence.  They are also very good.  Almost all wine regions in Provence produce rosé wines so there is a wide range of options.  We prefer the lighter, fruitier versions that go great with an afternoon of reading and relaxing.

Gigondas is a full body red wine from the Southern Rhone region on the border of Provence.  We visited the village of Gigondas were we purchased an excellent 2003 Domaine du Pradas, which we drank with dinner one evening.  We are actually big fans of the grenache grape so this wine really appeals to us.

Cotes du Ventoux is in Provence in the area surrounding Mont Ventoux.  It is a very fruity red wine.  To be honest, it is not my favorite but I always drink a bottle in honor of Mont Ventoux which I have cycled up twice.

Cassis is a beautiful white wine from Southern Provence where the land meets the Mediterranean Sea.  We drank both a white and rosé while having lunch in the village of Cassis.  The rosé, a 2008 Domaine du Paternel Rosé de Cassis, was especially good.

Chinon is a lighter red wine from the Loire Valley.  We drank a couple of bottles while in Paris.  One was particularly good and I must have enjoyed it too much since I forgot to write down where it was from.  C’est la vie!

All of these wines are readily available in the US.  They are also relatively inexpensive.  You can find excellent bottles of Gigondas and Chinon for less then $20.

Of course, while in Paris we drank a fair amount of Bordeaux.  Our favorite appellation is Saint-Émilion.  Then there were the numerous bottles of house wine that were excellent even if we did not know where they originated.

We jokingly started our vacation with the mantra – A bottle a day.  In the end, it wasn’t as much a mantra as a goal.  A goal that we were happy to accomplish.

Au revoir!