Terraced vineyards in the Côtes d'Auvergne

Last Tuesday the Cotes d'Auvergne (around 400 ha) was promoted to AC status. I need to check but I think this is another instance of the insistence that the red has to be a blend of Gamay and Pinot Noir, whereas under the previous VDQS regime it was possible to have a 100% Gamay or Pinot Noir.

'Vingt ans que les viticulteurs auvergnats attendaient ! Le vignoble des côtes-d'auvergne a obtenu, mardi, l'AOC (Appellation d'origine contrôlée), devenant le deuxième vin auvergnat à en bénéficier, après le saint-pourçain, qui l'avait obtenue en mai 2009.

Lire la suite ici.'

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Translayon 2011: Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th June

Participez à pieds ou à cheval à la grande descente du Layon!!!!!

Pour la 1ère fois dans la Translayon, en partenariat avec le Comité Départemental de la Randonnée Pédestre et Equiliberté49, descendez à cheval ou à pied toute la Vallée du Layon!!Du 3 au 5 juin 2011, 3 jours de randonnées exceptionnelles, au coeur des Coteaux du Layon, de la source de la rivière à sa confluence avec...

More details here

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My thanks to tweets from Eva Robineau of http://www.oenos.net/ for alerting me to these two items.

Vines@Chalus, Côtes d'Auvergne

While catching up on some blog reading this morning I see from Annie Sauvat's blog that the Côtes d'Auverge and its regional vin de pays has abandoned le ban des vendanges leaving it up to individual producers to decide when to start picking. Having an official starting date for the harvest may have made sense 50 or more years ago but not anymore when all serious wine producers regularly check the maturity of their grapes in the lead up to the vendange. It avoids the nonsense of having to get a special dispensation to pick before the official date if your grapes are ready early.

Annie Sauvat and Michel Boudes

Hopefully other appellations will soon follow suit.

Annie also has details of their successful 2009 harvest of her blog.

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Pierre Pichot's oyster bar: Le comptoir Saint Kerber is due to open in Tours in a week's time: Saturday 14th November. Fingers crossed!

L'ouverture du premier corner "Le comptoir Saint Kerber" prévu le Samedi 14 novembre.

Address: Place Gaston Pailhou, Les Halles Centrales, 37000 Tours

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News flash: Due to work delays and public holidays opening of Le comptoir Saint Kerber now fixed for Saturday 21st November

Boudes: current and past vineyards

In my posting of 19th August 2009 I quoted the claim by the Chambre d’Agriculture of the Auvergne that in 1895 the Puy-de-Dôme was France’s third départment viticole with 44,000 hectares of vines planted. I'm not sure that this is correct having looked at the tables of production and area under vine in Marcel Lachiver's seminal work: Vins, vignes et vignerons (Fayard 1988). Given the semi-mountainous topography of Le Puy-de-Dôme, it would be surprising even in 1895, unless it was an anomaly due to phylloxera, that there were more vines here than in places like the Midi and Bordeaux.


One of the most fascinating aspects of Marcel Lachiver's book is the appendix with the tables of statistics covering La Vignoble Français from 1788 (just before the French Revolution) to 1987. Here you will find details of the area planted per départment, production, yields and the number of producers.

According to the stats quoted by Lachiver for 1890-1899 there were 44,055 ha of vines in the Puy-de-Dôme départment. However, the Aude (115,998 ha), Gard (56,154), Gers (78,620), Gironde (139,035), Hérault (174,497) and Pyrénées-Orientales (54,240) all had more over that decade. Certainly around 1895 was the high point for Le Puy-de-Dôme, the following decade (1900-1909) the area had dropped to 26,003 and to 17,983 in 1910-1919. In 1788 there had been 17,112 ha. So it looks like le Puy-de-Dôme was the seventh largest French départment viticole in the last decade of the 19th century not the third. Still this remains a very significant area under vine. After all the entire Loire Valley has only 70,000 hectares of vines planted and it is the third largest French wine region. Muscadet, the Loire's largest appellation with around 13,000 ha covers only 29.5% of the area once under vine in le Puy-de-Dôme!

Nor can Le Puy-de-Dôme claim to have been the third départment in terms of wine production during the decade – 1890-1899 – when they produced 1,032,199 hls. They were outstripped by Aude (3,627,598), Bouches-du-Rhône (1,073,201), Gard (2,006,494), Gironde (3,996,586), Herault (7,521,051) and Pyrénées-Orientales (1,705,717), so they were seventh in production too.