July 2009
51 posts
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French Wine's Growth Potential - TIME →
It took but a handful of small, yellow insects hitchhiking on an American grapevine imported around 1850 to change French wine forever.
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Obscure Wine Grapes: Carignan →
Carignan is one of the world’s most successful warm-weather grapes. It was transplanted to Algeria by the French. When Algeria won its independence, French wine growers began to plant Carignan in the South of France.
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Crisis provides France with homegrown... →
Beaujolais, best known for its light red wines, is the only French region outside Champagne where grapes are still hand-picked, a low-paid, back-breaking job that used to be done by foreigners but now attracts more and more crisis-hit French.
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Who said French wines weren't worth it? -... →
“If the French stopped being so bloody-minded for once, everyday shoppers might just fall in love with them again…”
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Fromages de Normandie « Croque-Camille →
Neufchâtel, which tastes like a slightly milder Camembert, has a slightly grainy texture and a thin, very edible rind (this coming from someone who often eats around the rind – I know I probably shouldn’t admit that – la honte!).
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France's 'cookery bible' gets English edition |... →
The British, long scorned by the French for their lack of ability in the kitchen, will be offered a chance to redeem themselves this Christmas when the bible of traditional French cooking, Ginette Mathiot’s Je Sais Cuisiner, is published in English for the first time.
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French Winery Tests The Market With Huge List... →
The French wine world is buzzing with the news of the listing of Chateau de Malle in Sauternes for an incredible 68 million euros. Decanter reports that the chateau appeared anonymously in the Financial Times last Saturday. The listing, by estate agency Maxwell Storrie Baynes, does not name the property and says that it “will furnish complete details upon the customary signing of...
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Sales of French table wine and Vin de Pays fall -... →
Sales of 2008 French table wine and Vin de Pays have plummeted by nearly a quarter this year, according to statistics released this week. National agricultural organisation AgriMer estimated that overall sales of last year’s wines could drop by as much as 23%, compared to last year’s figures.
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Le Big Mac Seduces France as Haute Cuisine Slides:... →
Go out to eat in France and you can be assured of a certain standard of food, from restaurants on the boulevards of Paris to corner eateries in provincial towns. Yes, we’re talking McDonald’s Corp. A total of 1,130 outlets serve 1.3 million customers a day. As of 2007, France was the most profitable market for McDonald’s outside the U.S. and annual sales there were growing at twice the rate of the...
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Who still drinks Dubonnet? - BBC NEWS →
The Queen’s love of Dubonnet had staff at Lord’s cricket ground frantically searching for a bottle ahead of her attendance at the Second Ashes Test. Apart from Her Majesty, who still drinks Dubonnet?
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French wine thief caught in police sting -... →
The 44 year-old man was arrested as he was transporting 262 of the bottles in his van just west of Paris. Among the fine wines was a bottle of Romanée-Conti, with a sale price of 7,000 euros (£6,000), as well as several Pétrus and Lafite-Rothschild, amounting to 250,000 euros (£215,000). The average price per bottle was 1,000 euros (£860). Police found gloves and mobile telephone scramblers used...
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Meatless in Paris: Dining for vegetarian visitors →
Cote de boeuf, foie gras, escargot. French cuisine is hardly the stuff of vegetarians’ dreams. In Paris restaurants, vegetarians often are met with looks of pity, headshaking incomprehension, even snorts of disgust. Eating out can mean endless “salades au chevre chaud,” the warm goat cheese salads that are the only reliable meat-free menu item. But veggie visitors need not...
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Why France still makes the world's best wines -... →
These are grim days for the French wine industry. It is hemorrhaging market share abroad, domestic consumption continues to plummet, and thousands of vintners are in desperate financial straits. Compounding the crisis, the appellation system that regulates much of French viticulture is a shambles, and French politicians are exhibiting bizarrely prohibitionist tendencies. The problems in...
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In Lyon, a Day Devoted to the Stomach -... →
In the city of Lyon — France’s gastronomic heartland — no name is more important than that of Paul Bocuse. Father of nouvelle cuisine, holder of three Michelin stars, one of the first superchefs of the modern era, Mr. Bocuse, now 83, can see his name adorning the city’s edenic marketplace, Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse, and attached to the international culinary Olympics, the Bocuse d’Or.
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Nonstop Eating in Paris by Christine Muhlke -... →
Last week, in Paris to research a story for the fall issue of T Travel, I was lucky enough to try some great new restaurants, as well as be introduced to a few Parisians’ favorites. Over the course of four days, I had to visit almost 40 places, but that still left time for nine meals and countless snacks.
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Should the U.S. Re-Legalize Horse Meat Production?
According to a recent study, U.S.-based rescue organizations are turning away 38 percent, or roughly 100,000, unwanted horses each year. Part of the reason for this appears to be the elimination of horse meat production at a limited number of facilities in U.S.
After the forced closure of the last remaining horse slaughterhouse in the U.S. at the hands of Rod Blagojevich in 2007, the domestic...
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What’s Wrong With France: Au Revoir to All That by... →
Is France truly at an end? Steinberger tries to make the case for it, but I walked away from this book unsold.
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“Happy Bastille Day!”
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boucherie
dailyfrench:
|boo’zhree| f - butcher shop
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The inflexible hours of Parisian restaurants -... →
Paris may boast the world’s densest concentration of wonderful restaurants but why do these have such frustrating opening hours? Many (including my favourite, Chez Michel, near Gare du Nord) close all weekend and a few stretch that to include Monday lunchtime, scuppering what could be the perfect finale to a long weekend in Paris.
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French wine country, on the cheap - The Globe and... →
During the 1300s, the papacy moved from Rome to the southern French city of Avignon. For decades, a series of popes, cardinals and clerics led lives of luxury in the fortress-like Palais des Papes overlooking the Rhône River – and after a split in the church, epic battles between kings and cardinals, the French papacy reluctantly gave in and returned home to Rome.
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“A French chef with a sense of humour and three Michelin stars? Rose Prince is...”
– Pierre Gagnaire: all the fun of the fare - Telegraph
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An American Winemaker in Burgundy Feels the... →
This is not what Blair Pethel bargained for when he uprooted his wife and two young sons from Washington in 2003 to fulfill his dreams in the Burgundian vineyards. Making wine is a perilous, capital-intensive enterprise completely at the mercy of capricious weather, global economic upheavals and unpredictable consumer preferences. It is especially difficult for an American within the heavily...
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Alive and Evolving - the Paris Bistro -... →
WHETHER the Parisian bistro is dead depends largely on how you define “bistro.” If you need pigeonholes for your napkins, no wine choices because the owner’s brother-in-law makes Beaujolais, a dependable blanquette de veau every Tuesday, and the neighborhood plumber sitting in the corner, you’re out of luck. But if you want a small, cozy place, reasonably comfortable, with reliable and affordable...
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Downturn dining - FT.com →
Alain Ducasse, the global chef, says: “Too much talk of an economic downturn is counter-productive … and everyone’s response has to be to work harder.” But he goes on to say that customers can expect different menu choices in future, with “fresher, healthier menus where vegetables and cereals are the key components. Not vegetarian menus per se but menus that are genuinely modern and do not...
Elizabeth David, the Queen of cookery who gave her... →
She was the doyenne of food writers, credited with bringing French and Italian cuisine into British dining rooms. But an extraordinary study of private notes made by Elizabeth David in her collection of cookery books has revealed exactly what she thought of her rivals.
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Corsican wines fight their corner for survival |... →
Corsican wine growers are seeking recognition beyond their faithful band of followers as European Union uprooting plans and high transport costs in crisis times threaten to sound a death knell for the sector. Corsica is the third wine producing island in the Mediterranean, behind Sicily and Sardinia of Italy and its production of some 350,000 hectoliters (9 million U.S. gallons) of wines make up...