All posts tagged: France

Freedom wine for France

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It was no surprise. The country whose motto is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité wanted out of its shackles. Too many rules and regulations, no wiggle room, not enough space for creativity. Winemakers in France had had enough. They had been dreaming of possibilities that they couldn’t realise. They requested carte blanche. And they got it. They got it in the form of VDF. Vin de France. They nickname it the Freedom Appellation. France is one of the five most important wine producing countries in the world. Along with Spain, China, Italy and Turkey it holds 50% of the world’s total vineyard area (including vineyards for the production of juice, table grapes, raisins as well as wine). France’s share is 11%, Spain’s 13%, China’s 11%, Italy’s 9% and Turkey’s 6% (OIV, April 2017). As far as wine is concerned, France produced last year 43.5 million hectolitres which is  less than Italy (50.9 mio hl) but more than Spain (39.3 mio hl), the USA (23.9 mio hl) and Australia (13 mio hl). France does well on the export side. …

Fair Maidens and Cowboys – Part 1

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Stockholm has a lively drinks and restaurant scene. Nevertheless, the city is fairly small and consequently the number of trade and tasting events that occur here are quite limited. Earlier this month, however, not only one but two tasting events took place in the same week – luckily not on the same day. Each set up was totally different in style to the other. The first event was organised by Lars Torstenson and his team at Terrific Wines. A charismatic, maverick Swedish winemaker, he spent many years in the South of France producing idiomatic wines. Nowadays, as well as making wine, he consults all over the world and imports wine to Sweden. And he writes, quite a bit, mostly books on wine. He also publishes a daily blog (www.vinifierat.se), humourous, rock’n’roll, at times irreverant yet topical. In the second week of March he showcased a selection of his wines. He did better than that however, he invited winemakers along to present them. He may also be promoting women and wine, or maybe he simply enjoys …