Jenny in Paris

Francois Ecot and Jenny Lefcourt tasting wines along with other sommeliers at Le Mauzac in Paris

A wine importer story (Jenny and Francois Selections).
When young New-Yorker Jenny Lefcourt first visited Paris in 1991 for a 6-month exchange from Cornell U, she met both Francois and the wine world. She had not the smallest idea then that the course of events would one day make her open a wine-import business from France to the U.S.. Her academic interest was primarily culture, litterature and cinema and not wine, but what was to be her future career all came by itself: just by enjoying great moments in local bistrots like le Passavent (a bistrot/restaurant with a great wine list), drinking wine "à la ficelle", a new and magical way to serve wine for her (a bottle of your choice is brought to your table and you just pay for what you drink). They also used to go eat at Le Baratin, a restaurant with great food and a selection of natural wines (maybe one of the first in Paris then with such an exclusive wine list). She spent these years between Paris, New York and Harvard (where she studied the french cinema), and several grants helped her stay in Paris. She did not know at the time what natural wine was about, but the difference in the way these wines tasted began to raise her awareness and curiosity on the subject. [ Upper left picture: Jenny with Claude Courtois at a tasting of his wines plus book-signing, at Café de Flore ]

Jenny Lefcourt listening to a vigneron

One day as she was waiting for the bus in front of L'Ange Vin (the Paris wine bistrot owned then by Jean-Pierre Robinot), she noticed a poster about the coming Groslay wine fair (a small professional wine fair near Paris). She didn't know Robinot or the Groslay fair and just walked in the bar to ask. Unexpected encounters like this one were the beginning of new friendships with passionate people. Henri Milan, the winemaker of St Remy de Provence, for example : she recalls how, as they were discovering his wines, he said to both of them "if you work in wine someday, we'll work together" (they had actually no plans for wine business at the time)... With Hervé Souhaut too, it was a story of an encounter and immediate friendship: they had stopped at his place in Ardèche to taste his Rhone wines. They did taste his wines, and talk...for 10 hours.

Source:http://www.wineterroirs.com/page/10/

Sebastien Riffault (Sancerre)

Sury-en-Vaux (not Riffault's vineyard)

Sury-en-Vaux (Sancerre, Loire).
If you visit the Paris wine bars, you may find Sebastien Riffault's Sancerres on the blackboard-list of a few of them. The first time that I tasted his generous Sancerre whites was precisely in a wine bar and he was there in person. His grapes are organicly grown and his wines are vinified with a slow-vinification approach. His unfiltered Sauvignons have a beautiful turbid-gold color with an onctuous mouth feel. I told him at the time that I would drop one day in Sancerre for a visit
Aged 25, he is working on a 2-hectare vineyard near Sury-en-Vaux in the Sancerre Appellation area. The hills near Sury en Vaux overview both Sancerre (the town) and the Loire. Sebastien Riffault vinifies his wines at his father's winery (Etienne Riffault), a recently-built facility just outside the village, and the 2-hectare vineyard plots were intially part of the 10 hectares of the family estate.
If I trust my sense of smell as I ride my bike on the winding roads near the village, some vignerons of the area aren't growing organic, to say the least, but that's another story. The weather today is like it has been most of april in France this year : bright, warm, sunny and dry. The vines are everywhere in advance and it raises some worries about the unknown impact on this millesime of an ongoing exceptional warm and dry spring. The good side for organic growers like Sebastien Riffault is that the transition between winter and spring has been extraordinary healthy for the vineyard and lifted the risk of disease.

Source:http://www.wineterroirs.com/page/8/

Winery & Vineyard For Sale

Mr Chevet in front of his chai Touraine, Loire. No, wineterroirs isn't interested in competing with ebay, although I could consider a change of philosophy for the website if a buyer rewards me for finding his dream-winery...
My friend Michelle tipped me about an estate in Touraine going on sale by its owner, and I thought it might interest some of you. By "you", I mean not only the prospective buyers but also people like you and me who never really think of setting up a winery but have some curiosity about such property sales. Michelle heard about it by word of mouth and the owner didn't put the sale on any specialized website.Jacques Chevet in front of his Sauvignon vineyard I'll try to give you a description as complete as possible of the estate, along with its price tag. The estate is located in Chatillon sur Cher, along the Cher river (north bank) in the Loire, not far from Saint Aignan. The facility includes this fully-renovated building [picture on top] with a new roof, this building having a ground surface of about 300 square meters (3300 square feet) and including a large chai, a separate vat room, the tasting room and 2 surface bottle-cellars, with additional surface in front- and behind the building.
The vineyard, which is very close to the facility, makes up 18 hectares (44,5 acres) : Sauvignon, Gamay, Cabernet and Cot (Malbec) the oldest being planted in 1964.
Source:http://www.wineterroirs.com/page/8/

Wine

"бар веэде, где ты", meaning "the bar is where you are"

Moscow, Russia.This giant advertising poster for a beer brand could also illustrate the growing appetite of russians for wines. Russia is as you know primarily a vodka-drinking country but the vodka here has new competitors, first with beer, then with wine. Vodka consumption reached a low in 2002 with 19,7 liters of hard spirits (source : Vedomosti), even if the official stats show only part of the reality because of the scale of home-brewed vodka (samogon) in Russia. Beer and wine made respectively 49 L/capita and 5,5 L/capita in 2003 according to the Russian daily Vedomosti, and growing. With the present robust growth, Russia could be only a few years away from reaching the US level (9 liters/capita), France being still far with its 57 liters per capita. With the booming economy and a middle class with an ever-growing disposable income, wine sales have seen a sustained growth even with the difficulty of importing in Russia and the implementation since july 1st 2006 of a special tax stamp on each bottle of wine or spirit.
Welcome to the New Frontier for wine producers of the world...

Link to the Video News-Stream of Ros Business Consult
You want to check the popularity of President Putin in Russia? Look at the sales figures of the vodka bearing his name: Putinka (here with Roman-alphabet labels_but most bottles are in cyrillic) which was launched in 2003 makes now the 2nd best vodka sales in Russia with 8 million bottles in 2006, which is not bad for a new product in this vodka-drinking country. The vodka is made by Vinexim without direct approval from the Head of State (but without opposition neither). Of course the love story of Russians for their president is only part of the story here and the quality of the spirit also helped make it become the 2nd best selling vodka.
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Paris Wine Bars : Le Mauzac

Kathleen Pouring a Michel Juliot 2003 (Pinot Noir)This is a quiet street in a corner of the 5th arrondissement in Paris, far from any metro station, and the short, leafy stretch of street where Le Mauzac is located has the serenity feel of a french-province town. The neighborhood owes its character to the universities and publishing houses, this is an intellectual center of gravity which unlike the lower Saint-Germain-des-Près has not been disturbed by the invasion of fashion/apparel stores and cheap tourist eateries. wine
The Mauzac name comes from a Southern-France grape variety, the Mauzac, which is used to make lightly-sweet white sparklings, the most well-known being the Blanquette de Limoux, a sparkling which was already famous more than a century before Champagne was invented. Much more cultivated several hundreds years ago, it is now a minor grape variety mainly grown in the Gaillac region. You can spot the Gaillac region on the map showed on the lower part of this
Source:http://www.wineterroirs.com/page/5/