Wine Life - Houston

Bandol, one of Provence's oldest wine growing regions, is located near the Mediterranean Coast.  Driving through the region, you see medieval villages, terraced vineyards on the hillsides and glimpses of the sea. It can only be described as picturesque.  In general, the topsoil is gravel and stone dominated lying over clay, limestone and sandstone.  Mourvedre is the most important grape when thinking about Bandol Red and   Rosé wine.  The climate is Mediterranean and during my time there, the locals actually apologized for what they felt were unusally high temperatures but, of course, it was not even close to the brutal heat of Houston in August. While I was in Bandol, it was blue skies and sunshine with gentle breezes making for a most beautiful day. After a couple of extra spins through a roundabout, we finally made it to the Chateau Romassan estate of Domaines Ott. This estate lies at the foot of the village of Le Castellet in the ce...

During our recent vacation on the French Riviera, my husband and I decided to rent a car and drive to Bandol which is located about an hour down the coast from where we were staying in Cannes. Bandol is one of Provence's oldest wine growing regions and is considered by many to be the most important AOC in the area especially when looking at the Mourvedre-based red wines. The region is known for its terraced vineyards called restanques built from the local river stone. The climate is Mediterranean as the region lies close  to the sea with long sunlight hours. The Mistral winds and mountain breezes protect the grapes from rot and cool things down at night. I was interested in visiting Domaine La Suffrene as it is very available in the Houston market. Winemaker Cedric Gravier took over his grandfather's business in 1996 and when he heard that I was in town, he was kind enough to show up himself to taste with me and give me a tour of his winery and cellars...

My husband and I have recently returned from the French Riviera in Provence where we, of course, drank buckets of rose wine in between sight seeing, sun bathing and eating. We also sampled some of the local red and white. Despite all of my wine studies, I really had not had that many wines from Provence. It seems to be a somewhat overlooked region when it comes to the various wine classes and I admittedly had not sought out much of the wine on my own.  I was on vacation so I didn't spend my time writing up tasting notes but I did try to take pictures of the different bottles that we liked or make a note of what we drank. Originally, I was not intending on writing up this portion of my trip in regards to the wine. We did spend some time in Bandol and I will be writing that region up more in depth in my next posting. My husband is not one to get all geeked up at the thought of pink wine so it was interesting to see how quickly he got on board with all t...