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| Vineyards overlooking Pinhao, Douro Valley |
Saturday 30 January 2016: Spain and Portugal one-day workshop £90
Including at least a dozen wines tasted with your tutor, two-course lunch at the hotel and course manual - "We'll taste and talk about a selection of quality red, white, rosé and fortified wines highlighting the very different regions, grape varieties and wine styles found across the 'Iberian peninsular'.
I get lots of emails around this time of year crammed with lengthy serious vintage reports and piled high with photos of happy harvesters at work, handsome bunches of grapes, fermenting juice, winemakers sniffing it and barrels awaiting... Nadia and Cyril Bourgne at Domaine La Madura in Saint-Chinian have simply declared this year's wines from their neck of the Languedoc so comfortingly "fleshy," that the Madura team just couldn't resist stripping off in their new shiny winery. Full-bodied and tasty? There's something there for everyone! More on La Madura on this site HERE or www.lamadura.com.
I've updated my Cahors special supplement exploring one of south-west France's most exciting wine regions and 'home of Malbec,' as the PR slogan goes. This report has now expanded to nearly 20 pages of words, wines and photos including new profiles and my notes, views and reviews on/of these ten leading organic châteaux and wineries: Lacapelle-Cabanac, Chambert, Haut-Monplaisir, Le Clos d'un Jour, Cèdre, Mas del Périé, Cayrou, Tour de Miraval, Marjolière and Les Hauts d'Aglan.
It's now available as part of a massive French wine e-magazine HERE.
Photo: "150 to 200 year-old" cedar tree in front of curious round-tower outbuilding next to Château du Cayrou.
Thursday 26 November 7-8.45pm: Italian wines £28.95
"At this wines of Italy evening tasting, we'll take you on a guided tour around several of this very varied country's wine producing regions by tasting and talking about a carefully selected range of tasty red and white wines. These will probably include classics from northern Italy, such as Piemonte and Veneto, central Italy such as Tuscany and Umbria, and the deep south e.g. Sicily, Campania, Puglia..."
Google has launched a new website / blog funding scheme called Contributor, where readers can make a regular financial contribution to the publisher (that's me). Click on the logo below for more info:
'RED'
'Red is for wine, blood, revolution, colour... Time-warped slices of mystery, history, fantasy, crime, art, cinema and love...' Buy the e-book or paperback novel on
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Header image: Château de Flandry, Limoux, Languedoc. Background: Vineyard near Terrats in Les Aspres, Roussillon.
