Peddling our wares

I just got back from a great weekend in Nürnberg, Germany, where I was pouring our wines at a big tasting sponsored by our German importers K&U.  This is the first time I've done this sort of event as a producer.  I've done many others in the past while working for Kermit Lynch and for Coaltrain, but this was a bit different. 

The atmosphere was great.  Several producers from southern France showed up, as well as some from the Jura, Alsace and Bordeaux.  Everyone was so nice and so much fun.  They happily offered advice and pointers and gave honest opinions of our wine, all quite positive, luckily!  The turn out was amazing! They estimated around 1000 people over two days.

I was sandwiched between Stéphane Tissot, an abosultely amazing producer from the Jura, and a group of producers from Bordeaux.  With each of them having at least ten wines to pour, poor little me stuck in the middle looked pretty meek with my one little bottle to sample.  We tried lining up three or four bottles on the table to make it look more important, but that just created confusion. People thought there were 4 different wines to taste. As Stéphane's table was so popular, he started telling people that they shouldn't miss out on tasting my wine, so that sent more people my way.  Stéphane Tissot is a bit of a super-star winemaker these days, and with good reason. It's rare to meet a person so passionate about what he does.  He is whole-heartedly dedicated to organics and bio-dynamics and loves to talk to people about it.  Always pushing the envelope with his wines,  he poured two new dessert wines he is making and talked openly about future projects. 

Then there were my new best friends, all of the winemakers/growers from the south.  Pierre Clavel of Domaine Clavel, Joel Foucou, of Plan de L'Om, Nicolas Croze another Côtes-du-Rhône producer, Isabelle and Remi Ducellier of Chemins de Bassac, Luc Bettoni of Domaine Les Eminades, and finally, Remy Pedreno of Roc d'Anglade.  Everyone was full of encouraging words and advice. They were all so much fun to spend the weekend with. We tasted each others wines, tasted some German and Austrian wines, and at the end of the day all we wanted to do was drink beer!  Thankfully Martin Koessler (co-owner and founder of K&U) had thought of this and brought in some mini-kegs of a friend's micro-brew. Yum!

There was much more than wine at this event. Organic artisan bread, an heirloom seed producer, a pasty chef and more were present.  Martin and Dunja's business is based on wine, but they also have wonderful vinegars, mustards, pasta, honey, jam etc. from all over Europe.  It's an amazing place to visit.  I can't wait to return next year!

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Comments

[Bri]

Hey, where's the picture of you at the tasting table??