While visiting the folkeens, I had come across an article in the FT about wine and a wine buyer. Nicholas Lander (restaurant critic for FT and husband of Jancis Robinson, FT wine guru and Master of Wine as well as my favorite wine writer), was interviewing a restaurant wine buyer, and discussing what he does in general. The wine that he was drinking, and that both liked, was Les Obriers de La Peira.
My curiosity spiked, I decided to google it, seeing what we would be in the Languedoc and this winery was located there. Lo and behold, it would be only about 90 minutes away. Worth the drive as they say. So I rang them up and got the wine maker, Jeremie Depierre. We fixed a time and day, and off we went. We arrived at about 4h30pm, met Jeremie, a lovely chap and he drove over to the winery and we followed along the dusty backroads.
5 minutes later we were outside a new building that had all the trappings of an old church. It could pass for an old building from a distance, if you could get over the lack of windows. Sort of like if Sergey Brin and Larry Page decided to make wine but couldn't reign in their paranoia of people watching what they are doing.
Anyway, off inside we went, and Jeremie explained what they did, how they made the wines, the grapes involved such as syrah, mourvedre, cinsault and carignan; the barrels they use (wood with Bordeaux and Burgundy style barrels); their philosophy on corks (they like them) etcetera.
Then he started the step by step program. The Tasting.
Step one was Les Obriers de La Peira. Mmmm.
Step two is Las Flors de la Peira. Mmmmmmmm.
Step 3 was their $100 wine ... La Peira. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.
He poured some of each and then after we had finished tasting, he said "I cannot drink the rest of the (opened )bottles myself, so you might as well finish the wine".
Would you look a gift horse in the mouth? ;-) Noooooo.
A wonderful 2 hours and we bought a few cases, that my father promises will remain untouched in his safe care ;-)
The picture above is of the winery when we arrived, and Jeremie Depierre is behind Nikki.
Deirdre, and Dean, as well as Aidan, went to see U2. Deirdre, being hardcore, queued up for hours to get up front, and here are some pics that they took
Here's Deirdre. Of course DnD had to go to each of the 3 gigs
Up close and comfortable with they boyz
Ze Edge, doing his thing
