It's March and this month 'Les Tres Riches Heures de Duc du Berry' shows the peasants working hard in the vinyards cutting the canes back and getting underway with the spring ploughing. In the background, hovering over one of the castle towers, is a cute little golden dragon. It is details like this which make the miniatures so fantastic.
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| March |
Over the weekend we noticed that our wine rack was looking a little empty and quite sad, so today we decided to replenish. Although we buy in the supermarket and direct from other producers we buy most of our 'everyday' wine at the co-op in Francueil.
We first came across it on holiday in the early 1990's. Then, most of the wine, if not all--we really can't remember--was sold 'en vrac' [you bring your own containers of 5 or 10 litres and fill up like at the gas station]. Certainly that's the way we bought it then. Towards the end of our holiday we'd buy some specifically to take back to The Hague where we were living at the time. This meant decanting it into bottles [cleaned empties provided by the gite owner, Margaret], sealing the bottles with plastic corks you could buy in the supermarket and writing out sticky labels.
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| One of each |
When we were based in Loches during our house hunting last year, we decided to revisit the co-op and buy some wine to take back to the UK. The local signposts, if you come via the small road from Luzillé to the south still say 'cave cooperative' but they now market themselves under the name 'La Gourmandiere'. Most of the wine is now sold in bottles, although they still do it 'en vrac' as well. They also sell great bernache - more about this in the Autumn.
Now that we live here we drive up once every couple of months a buy 2 or 3 1/2 cases. Sometimes we combine it with a visit to Vouvray. Today we just went to Francueil and bought 1/2 case each of rosé, sauvignon and cot.
6 comments:
Another one for the list. Do you know of a till roll supplier, by any chance!
What do you mean by a 1/2 case?
LOL!
A half case is 6 bottles, a full case is 12--which you see less & less.
Antoinette, on my area it said that there is a message for me from you about half term. I can't find how to access this message. Do you want to send it directly to my email address
gaynor@saltschool.fsnet.co.uk
Very useful info... just printed the flyer out for the noticeboard.
Have you used Very-Frais [in the old firestation in Descartes]? Excellent food in there... local, very fresh and some rare items... carp rillettes from the Brenne par example!
Gaynor... different size till rolls can be found in Staples.. there must be one near you; or try Rymans [Partners, if they haven't changed their name back to Rymans yet]
@Tim: never heard of carp rillettes. Might get a little to try. Niall very allergic to anything with fins [shellfish is fine] so we tend not to buy fish as I can only cook it for myself.
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