We went to a winery in a cave near Les Beaux and it was super fun!! I spoke enough to translate for my grape-growing husband and we all laughed at our funny hand signals between broken French and English. In the end, its all for the love of wine and having that in common makes fast friends.
I organised a wine tour in Burgundy in 2019 when I was Treasurer of the Wine and Spirits Club at HEC Paris. I highly recommend calling ahead and making advance booking, as well has having a designated driver. In our case I rented a full-sized bus.😅 French fluency also helps, but isn't always needed, as a lot of wineries export, and so are set up for the international crowd, i.e. they speak English.
In Beaune we visited Patriarche for a large experience (bought a case) and visited a small father/daughter owned winery in Pommard, Moissenet Bonnard. When we arrived she was filling an order for a local, literally bottling on demand. We then had a personal tasting in her cellar. We bought a case and had it shipped. Would love a primer on intl shipping, and combining across multiple wineries to save costs. Driving around Bourgogne was amazing.
My family and I visited champagne back in march and it was amazing. We had to book the tours early. We got to do three tasting with two tours. I use a Coravin all the time for tastings for learning. Would love to the Loire valley and more wine regions in Italy. I found your channel searching for videos on Vouvray.
I grew up in Bordeaux... I do not know anything about wine....but everytime i come back to Bordeaux , i must do a visit to St Émilion village...it's a so nice place...quite crowdy in summer, but a must if you are visiting south West of France
I definitely need that Coravin in my life!! I have a liver condition that makes it a bad idea to drink more than a small glass at a time, more than 1-2 times a week, and even if he wanted to my fiancé couldn't finish the rest of the bottle if I had to open a new one each time. I've only been buying the small bottles because of this. 😭We weren't planning on having a registry for our wedding but maybe we will just to put the Coravin on it. 😛
Domaine Rabiega in Southern France last year. Such a little jam. We had a private tour with one of the owners who happened to be a chef, Yohan Adell. Got personally signed cookery book and few bottles of wine. The roses are splendid for french summer and not only. Highly recommend the restaurant. And the place. And the overall experience. Thanks for the wine luggage tip!
Diane, ne jetez pas une bouteille abandonnée, faites en du vinaigre. Ne dites pas que le Crémant et le Champagne sont identiques (surtout à moi qui suis champenois), il y a une différence : le TERROIR. Certes un bon crémant vaut largement un mauvais champagne, les cépages sont les mêmes, la méthode est la même, mais la terre de Champagne n'est pas la terre des autres régions. Or ce qui fait les caractéristiques d'un vin c'est son terroir. Sinon vos conseils sont excellents pour découvrir nos vignobles quand on y connait rien au départ. Certains français devraient s'en inspirer. Un conseil perso pour vos compatriotes : ne mettez pas de glaçons dans le vin, ce n'est pas un vulgaire soda. Mettez le blanc et le rosé au frais dans le réfrigérateur, le rouge dans une pièce pas trop chaude. Des glaçons dans le vin, mais c'est criminel ! Et n'oubliez pas, avec modération.
Champenoise agrees here! Champagne et Cremant ARE NOT the same! And no ice in the wine, please! Not even in the Rose or the Gris. As for a "fond de bouteille", besides making vinegar, you can always cook with it.
Hi Diane. May I ask a question which I hope won't be too personal ? I'm french and I was wondering where in the US your accent comes from. I'm working on improving my oral comprehension and among all english speaking contents I'm listening to every day, you're the person I can understand the most, with no subtitles and with no efforts. Love your contents.
Hi there, not too personal at all! I'm originally from New Jersey and went to school in NYC. When I make videos, I do my best to "present" the content which includes speaking clearly, enunciating properly, and pacing in a way that adds energy (on the faster side). I don't speak strangely or anything but I make an effort to speak clearly and strongly. I took some public speaking classes back in the day and try to apply those tips to my YT content, so no mumbling, etc. Glad you're able to understand!! Thank you again for the kind words.
Wine, mmmm. Thanks for the Coravin tip! Never heard of it. I have a client that often gives me bottles of wine (wonderful lady) even after several talks of how I can't drink them, even over a few days, & most goes to waste. I should invest in Coravin! (Though other people enjoy receiving the re-gifted bottles)!
I haven’t visited wineries in France but visited a couple small wineries in the Tuscan Coast and Emilia-Romagna and they were wonderful with great wine tastings. Depending on the winery they may be able to ship wine back home for you. I'd only recommend this if you'll be sending home multiple bottlea, 5-6 bottles I'd say minimum to make it worth the cost of shipping.
Just went to a tasting at Domaine Huet in Vouvray on Saturday. Excellent Chenin Blanc. The sec is very tasty. Interestingly the winery is actually owned by folks from New Jersey USA. The cellar master that we talked with at the tasting spoke fluent English.
Thank you so much for the added recommendation. I will visit France for the first time to visit the relatives of my bf. I have no idea about wineries in France. I just know I want to go to one. I want to have wine and cheese tasting =))))
This was excellent , thank you. My sister in law and I are staying in Tours July12-15 and will definitely check out Le tasting room. Any other great things to see and do in Tours? We do not have a car but would like to visit local wineries. My go to wine at home is Cremant and I tell everyone. This is why we are visiting Loire Valley
Bonjour, Diane. The tips in your video are good, though I would state that, while it may be nice to buy a bottle or two, you shouldn't be obligated to do so, no latter wgat rgw size of the winery. May I suggest Kanpai Tourisme Wine Tours for Cote de Rhone, Beaujolais, and Burgundy? Olivier runs the company out of Lyon and leads the tours of from 1 to 8 people. He's super knowledgable and can also get into small wineries. I've been on 3 of his tours and found them terrific! For Bordeaux, I've found Viator 1/2-day tours to Medoc and St. Emilion to be excellent. The tours are from 2 to 8 people and the leaders have been quite knowledgable. I've been on 4 of these tours over my 2 trips to Bordeaux; the areas have been the same, but the wineries have been different. Kanpai has its own website, while Viator can be reached via TripAdvisor. Unfortuanately, I've not been to the Loire, Alsace, or Champage regions; that's for another trip.
Jura is an other wine region, small but with great wines like vin jaune, savagnin. Poulsard, Chardonnay, Savagnin grapes. Enjoy the Jura mountain too with his waterfalls, cliff, forests and the food ! ( Comté cheese, and lots of other cheeses, smoke porc meat, poultry, mushroom, raspberry...)
Another comment and a small story. Once I was in St emilion and I sat in a restaurant, for a beer ( yes beer not wine !)on a very hot day, and overheard an English speaking guy complaining about his meal. He was complaining that the chicken leg he got can't be a chicken leg. I understood that he had chosen, in the English menu: chicken in wine.... in the French menu it was written: Coq au vin (rooster in wine).😄😄😄😄😄
Bonjour Diane! If you are willing, please do a video on how blind and visually impaired people are treated in France. I am writing a novel that includes blind characters, and one of them goes to live in France for a few months. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance! From one of your fans: Frank Leonard Eller
When you visit a winery and do a tasting, never compare what you're drinking to something you've tried before. Never say: "This reminds me of Rioja" or "I've tried similar wines in Napa".
How about buying wine and having it shipped back to the US? I've been to Minerve, Fontfroide Abbe, Quillan, Foix, Puivert, Montsegur, and several others in Languedoc. I love the pinot noir.
Yes, shipping it is sometimes an option but not always offered at smaller wineries. In recent times since the pandemic, costs have gone way up, so between $200 plus to ship a case (on top of the cost of the wine itself) plus hefty customs fees, most casual wine drinkers find it cost prohibitive in my experience, if it's even an option.
Languedoc region sometimes makes wine from Pinot noir, but Burgundy will be the place to be for this grape. Quite more expensive, but the reds are spectacular there, as well as the whites (birthplace of Chardonnay)
So at a winery in France it's not gonna be like the dump of a bar I go to in America where for a 2 dollar tip customers can tilt their head back on the bar and the booze is poured right in the patrons' mouth?
in my personal opinion I think French wine is overrated, of course everyone has a different taste but I prefer Italian wine rather than French wine and the Californian wine is superior to the European wine.(this is my personal opinion)
Funny ! Do you know that a wine from Burgundy is totally different from a Bordeaux wine, totally different from a Champagne wine, totally different from a Loire valley wine, totally different from a Languedoc wine, totally different from a Beaujolais wine, totally different from an Alsace wine, …. So as a wine lover I can tell you that Italian wines are not better than French wines or Spanish wines or… it is only different and you have to try and taste a lot and a lot of different wines from everywhere in the world.
I’m trying not to drink! But I live in California so we have plenty of wine. 😅 My Swiss brother in law actually preferred CA wine. 🥹 I don’t know. I lean towards Prosecco. 😊
Prosecco is an absolute wine horror, drink California wine it's often excellent, their copy of Champagne is often very good, that's a champagne Frenchman telling you.
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We visited a cider farm in Normandy, not wine, but just as interesting and tasty.
Really interesting, i'm French but never tried wine, I don't really drink, but seems fun to do a tour
We went to a winery in a cave near Les Beaux and it was super fun!! I spoke enough to translate for my grape-growing husband and we all laughed at our funny hand signals between broken French and English. In the end, its all for the love of wine and having that in common makes fast friends.
Glad you were there to help! Love Provence wines
I love this story! ❤
I organised a wine tour in Burgundy in 2019 when I was Treasurer of the Wine and Spirits Club at HEC Paris. I highly recommend calling ahead and making advance booking, as well has having a designated driver. In our case I rented a full-sized bus.😅 French fluency also helps, but isn't always needed, as a lot of wineries export, and so are set up for the international crowd, i.e. they speak English.
In Beaune we visited Patriarche for a large experience (bought a case) and visited a small father/daughter owned winery in Pommard, Moissenet Bonnard. When we arrived she was filling an order for a local, literally bottling on demand. We then had a personal tasting in her cellar. We bought a case and had it shipped. Would love a primer on intl shipping, and combining across multiple wineries to save costs.
Driving around Bourgogne was amazing.
My family and I visited champagne back in march and it was amazing. We had to book the tours early. We got to do three tasting with two tours. I use a Coravin all the time for tastings for learning. Would love to the Loire valley and more wine regions in Italy. I found your channel searching for videos on Vouvray.
I grew up in Bordeaux... I do not know anything about wine....but everytime i come back to Bordeaux , i must do a visit to St Émilion village...it's a so nice place...quite crowdy in summer, but a must if you are visiting south West of France
I definitely need that Coravin in my life!! I have a liver condition that makes it a bad idea to drink more than a small glass at a time, more than 1-2 times a week, and even if he wanted to my fiancé couldn't finish the rest of the bottle if I had to open a new one each time. I've only been buying the small bottles because of this. 😭We weren't planning on having a registry for our wedding but maybe we will just to put the Coravin on it. 😛
Domaine Rabiega in Southern France last year. Such a little jam. We had a private tour with one of the owners who happened to be a chef, Yohan Adell. Got personally signed cookery book and few bottles of wine. The roses are splendid for french summer and not only. Highly recommend the restaurant. And the place. And the overall experience. Thanks for the wine luggage tip!
Sounds so fun!!
Always love your videos thank you for sharing your experiences 🙏
Diane, ne jetez pas une bouteille abandonnée, faites en du vinaigre. Ne dites pas que le Crémant et le Champagne sont identiques (surtout à moi qui suis champenois), il y a une différence : le TERROIR. Certes un bon crémant vaut largement un mauvais champagne, les cépages sont les mêmes, la méthode est la même, mais la terre de Champagne n'est pas la terre des autres régions. Or ce qui fait les caractéristiques d'un vin c'est son terroir.
Sinon vos conseils sont excellents pour découvrir nos vignobles quand on y connait rien au départ. Certains français devraient s'en inspirer.
Un conseil perso pour vos compatriotes : ne mettez pas de glaçons dans le vin, ce n'est pas un vulgaire soda. Mettez le blanc et le rosé au frais dans le réfrigérateur, le rouge dans une pièce pas trop chaude. Des glaçons dans le vin, mais c'est criminel !
Et n'oubliez pas, avec modération.
Champenoise agrees here! Champagne et Cremant ARE NOT the same! And no ice in the wine, please! Not even in the Rose or the Gris. As for a "fond de bouteille", besides making vinegar, you can always cook with it.
Nice to see you, Diane!
Hi Diane. May I ask a question which I hope won't be too personal ? I'm french and I was wondering where in the US your accent comes from. I'm working on improving my oral comprehension and among all english speaking contents I'm listening to every day, you're the person I can understand the most, with no subtitles and with no efforts. Love your contents.
Hi there, not too personal at all! I'm originally from New Jersey and went to school in NYC. When I make videos, I do my best to "present" the content which includes speaking clearly, enunciating properly, and pacing in a way that adds energy (on the faster side). I don't speak strangely or anything but I make an effort to speak clearly and strongly. I took some public speaking classes back in the day and try to apply those tips to my YT content, so no mumbling, etc. Glad you're able to understand!! Thank you again for the kind words.
Have you ever visited Alsace's wineries? It is almost only small businesses, and there is a quite large diversity of wines.
That too is a great choice and the region is simply magnificent with its typical half timbered houses
Wine, mmmm. Thanks for the Coravin tip! Never heard of it. I have a client that often gives me bottles of wine (wonderful lady) even after several talks of how I can't drink them, even over a few days, & most goes to waste. I should invest in Coravin! (Though other people enjoy receiving the re-gifted bottles)!
Merci Diane--super video !
Coravin is such a game changer! Revolutionary stuff!
Great video and love the Loire valley and its very diverse wines :)
Thanks very much!
Great audio on this très bien
I haven’t visited wineries in France but visited a couple small wineries in the Tuscan Coast and Emilia-Romagna and they were wonderful with great wine tastings.
Depending on the winery they may be able to ship wine back home for you. I'd only recommend this if you'll be sending home multiple bottlea, 5-6 bottles I'd say minimum to make it worth the cost of shipping.
Italy has great wines too, like Switzerland.
In France, almost each county have their specific vineyard, and cheese 😅
Just went to a tasting at Domaine Huet in Vouvray on Saturday. Excellent Chenin Blanc. The sec is very tasty. Interestingly the winery is actually owned by folks from New Jersey USA. The cellar master that we talked with at the tasting spoke fluent English.
So glad you had a nice experience!!
Good call, Huet is a great winery, and chenin grape makes for a different experience from more international grapes
Thank you so much for the added recommendation. I will visit France for the first time to visit the relatives of my bf. I have no idea about wineries in France. I just know I want to go to one. I want to have wine and cheese tasting =))))
You're very welcome. Have a great trip. Cheers!
This was excellent , thank you. My sister in law and I are staying in Tours July12-15 and will definitely check out Le tasting room. Any other great things to see and do in Tours? We do not have a car but would like to visit local wineries. My go to wine at home is Cremant and I tell everyone. This is why we are visiting Loire Valley
Margaret, please post a follow up.
Thank you so much! Salut
You're very welcome!
Bonjour, Diane. The tips in your video are good, though I would state that, while it may be nice to buy a bottle or two, you shouldn't be obligated to do so, no latter wgat rgw size of the winery. May I suggest Kanpai Tourisme Wine Tours for Cote de Rhone, Beaujolais, and Burgundy? Olivier runs the company out of Lyon and leads the tours of from 1 to 8 people. He's super knowledgable and can also get into small wineries. I've been on 3 of his tours and found them terrific! For Bordeaux, I've found Viator 1/2-day tours to Medoc and St. Emilion to be excellent. The tours are from 2 to 8 people and the leaders have been quite knowledgable. I've been on 4 of these tours over my 2 trips to Bordeaux; the areas have been the same, but the wineries have been different. Kanpai has its own website, while Viator can be reached via TripAdvisor. Unfortuanately, I've not been to the Loire, Alsace, or Champage regions; that's for another trip.
Jura is an other wine region, small but with great wines like vin jaune, savagnin. Poulsard, Chardonnay, Savagnin grapes. Enjoy the Jura mountain too with his waterfalls, cliff, forests and the food ! ( Comté cheese, and lots of other cheeses, smoke porc meat, poultry, mushroom, raspberry...)
Another comment and a small story.
Once I was in St emilion and I sat in a restaurant, for a beer ( yes beer not wine !)on a very hot day, and overheard an English speaking guy complaining about his meal. He was complaining that the chicken leg he got can't be a chicken leg.
I understood that he had chosen, in the English menu: chicken in wine.... in the French menu it was written: Coq au vin (rooster in wine).😄😄😄😄😄
Bonjour Diane! If you are willing, please do a video on how blind and visually impaired people are treated in France. I am writing a novel that includes blind characters, and one of them goes to live in France for a few months. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance! From one of your fans: Frank Leonard Eller
Thanks for the video suggestion. Noted. ;-) I've seen you make similar comments a few times now that I've replied to.... are you getting the replies?
When you visit a winery and do a tasting, never compare what you're drinking to something you've tried before. Never say: "This reminds me of Rioja" or "I've tried similar wines in Napa".
How about buying wine and having it shipped back to the US?
I've been to Minerve, Fontfroide Abbe, Quillan, Foix, Puivert, Montsegur, and several others in Languedoc. I love the pinot noir.
Yes, shipping it is sometimes an option but not always offered at smaller wineries. In recent times since the pandemic, costs have gone way up, so between $200 plus to ship a case (on top of the cost of the wine itself) plus hefty customs fees, most casual wine drinkers find it cost prohibitive in my experience, if it's even an option.
Languedoc region sometimes makes wine from Pinot noir, but Burgundy will be the place to be for this grape. Quite more expensive, but the reds are spectacular there, as well as the whites (birthplace of Chardonnay)
@@Opeez78 Thank you for your response. What is the grape(s) in Languedoc they grow for red wine?
So at a winery in France it's not gonna be like the dump of a bar I go to in America where for a 2 dollar tip customers can tilt their head back on the bar and the booze is poured right in the patrons' mouth?
La plupart des francais n'ont pas toutes ces infos...
in my personal opinion I think French wine is overrated, of course everyone has a different taste but I prefer Italian wine rather than French wine and the Californian wine is superior to the European wine.(this is my personal opinion)
Funny ! Do you know that a wine from Burgundy is totally different from a Bordeaux wine, totally different from a Champagne wine, totally different from a Loire valley wine, totally different from a Languedoc wine, totally different from a Beaujolais wine, totally different from an Alsace wine, …. So as a wine lover I can tell you that Italian wines are not better than French wines or Spanish wines or… it is only different and you have to try and taste a lot and a lot of different wines from everywhere in the world.
I’m trying not to drink! But I live in California so we have plenty of wine. 😅 My Swiss brother in law actually preferred CA wine. 🥹 I don’t know. I lean towards Prosecco. 😊
I love sparkling as well! ;-))))
Prosecco is an absolute wine horror, drink California wine it's often excellent, their copy of Champagne is often very good, that's a champagne Frenchman telling you.