Wine for Christmas

New wine producer in Bray

When people stay in the gîtes or on the campsite, they often ask us, what good wine there is to buy round here. Well we are in Burgundy, so you would suppose that the red is good. Actually we are in the white Burgundy wine region and good local reds are few and far between. Having said that, there is a pocket of red wines that are quite superb and only well known to the locals. Those are the wines from Bray, a couple of kilometres from here.

When we first arrived, some French people staying on the campsite, invited us to join them for a glass of red wine they had bought from Bray and we were stunned by the quality. All of the local red wines we had bought had been unmitigated disasters and expensive to boot. At around 8 Euros a bottle, Henri Lafarge is not that expensive and is every bit worthy to be called a Burgundy.

Henri Lafarge has been selling off small parcels of his vineyards over the last few years and there are now two new, young producers of wine in Bray, who do an excellent job. Peter Gierszewski – Domaine de Thalie - was the first that we got to know. He is farming organically and surprisingly his bottles do not shout ORGANIC at you, nor does the price and even more surprisingly his wine is quite superb. At long last someone who is confident of his ability as a producer not to have to rely on a gimmick.

Jeweller showing his wares at the wine tasting

A few weeks ago another new viticulteur in Bray (Christophe Perrin) had an open weekend, you could taste the wines and he had invited local artists and food producers to join in the fun. Our favourite goats’ cheese maker La Trufière from Lys was there, along with someone selling oysters and other shellfish, a local painter, potter, jeweller and basket maker, but we were there for the wine.

Apparently he had bought four different parcels of land and he started making wine in 2009. He had two parcels for white and two parcels for red wine, he also combined the two different whites to make, in my opinion, a far superior wine.

Different soil types with their respective bottles

In the wine cellar where you could taste the red wine, there was a little display of soils samples from the four land parcels and I was amazed that the content of the ground was so very different for each parcel, despite the fact that the parcels are very close to the other. No wonder the wines all had a distinctive flavour.

Now here is some really good news for all those visiting here. Monsieur Perrin is moving the Chazeux next year - just at the end of our road - so we will even less distance to go to get some really good wine.

Merry Christmas everyone – we’ll be enjoying a good bottle of local Burgundy red this year!


For details of the accommodation we rent out near Bray and other excellent wine areas see La Tuilerie Website.