It is the end of January and the diary for 2014 is looking pretty solid already! Take a look at the Facebook page to see how spring is shaping up….
We are kicking the year off with two important professional salons.

14110 – DOMAINE DE LA RENCONTRE goes to London
The French Independent Winegrowers Trade Day, on 6 February, finds us in the heart of Westminster and not far from the happy memories of winning « Best IGP Pays d’Hérault » – Sud de France Top 100 of 2013, during the Sud de France Trade Day at OXO last June, with our muscat sec « rencontre ». And of course our silver medal winner with Vignerons Indépendents 2013 – philosophe – will be on show too, along with éclat and l »hédoniste.
The Royal Horticultural Halls are part of the architectural jewels of London. Lindley Hall was born in the same year as my grandmother and I like to think that the Edwardian simplicity, lightness and elegance, that its architect Edwin J Stebbs achieved, is something that is continued in our wines and presentation today. True class is timeless and we hope that one day we can look back and feel that our first years followed the right steps.
Domaine de la Rencontre will be waiting for you at Stand no 56, under the streams of sunlight (we can hope). Along with our fellow independent winemakers, we will be hoping to tease your taxtebuds and tempt your daries into making space for further contacts. It is a courtship, trade business. London and the UK is an important market for wine, and we hope that it will become an important market for us.

The 2014 bottling is just round the corner, and we are busy finalising the « dry goods » orders – bottles, corks, labels and cartons. Each year the order is bigger and a little more complex. And this year we have a new bottler too, and so another working Relationship to establish.
But right before that, we are playing at home! Just along the road from Mireval and Vic-La-Gardiole, the Montpellier Exhibition centre, with its new tramway links to the centre of town, will be hosting wine makers, wine brokers and wine buyers from all over the world. VINISUD 2014. The south of France’s siren call to the international wine trade. It is also a big meeting place for the domestic wine buyers, from small busineses to the supermarkets. The wine makers will be pleased to see them all. Naturally, the South of France is well represented amongst all these players.
We have our own stand in Hall 4 at A4A93. Come and see us!
We hope to be giving the first tastes of our new cuvée – « poète » – a naturally sweet wine that keeps our signature freshness and acidity, on a base of mature fruit. It is not muted with alcohol and has half the sugar level of our award winning Vin Doux wines « l’hédoniste » and « éclat » – but all the power of our muscat grapes! We’re pretty sure that poète will mature nicely in the bottle and it might just make it into a couple of compétitions this year..
« esprits libres » our methode champenoise, won’t be ready until the end of the year, but the first stage winemaking promised very good things and so the second stage wine making in the bottle will really be like waiting for a baby – nine months! Just in time for the big autumn salons.

Epilogue: A fascinating salon, VINISUD. If you are a food and wine Professional and haven’t visited – see you in 2016, it is well Worth the trip!
poète had a marvellous reception and we think people really appreciated being able to taste it straight from the Vat. Thank you Rosemary for your positive words of encouragement on Taste Languedoc Blogspot.

Straight after VINISUD we got down to the business of bottling. We started off with clear blue skies and gradually watched them turn grey and bless us with a few drops of rain. Like a wedding, we will take it as a benediction. The pallets lined up along the circle to form an impressive audience before being shipped off to storage. You can see the photos on Facebook.
And we must have been wicked – because the day after, we got down to the very serious business of emptying the cellar building and the start of the cellar extension works…..Watch this space!