Starting today, you can adopt organic vines at Château Cohola for the 2022 vintage on the Gourmet Odyssey website, discover the work of the winemakers, and follow the making of your own organic wine.  Keep updated with the developments in the vineyard and cellar through the newsletters and photos from the wine-makers, from the skill needed to prune the vines right through to the bottling of your wine, complete with your own personalised labels.  You can also choose to add some days at the winery to meet Cheli and Jérôme, and help them nurture the vines, harvest the grapes, or work in the cellar.  Follow this link to learn more about the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience.

You can also learn more about Château Cohola, their wine and the region.  The winery produces a great range of red, white, and rosé Côtes du Rhône wines in Sablet, one of the 21 communes allowed to add their name to the Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation.  They are regularly selected for the wine guides and produce award-winning wines.  For example, the Côtes du Rhône Villages Sablet wine chosen for the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience won a silver medal at the 2020 Paris Agricultural Show, won a bronze at the Millésime Bio organic wine fair, and was selected for the 2020 Bettane+Desseauve wine guide with a rating of 16.5/20.

If you like Côtes du Rhône wines and are interested in organic wine-making, Château Cohola will be a real treat for your taste buds.  We can’t wait for the first wine experience days at the winery next year!

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This month we had the pleasure of organising two events to win some gifts to put underneath the Christmas tree or to share a good time with friends and family.

Our annual My Vine competition rewards the winners of the most original photo and the one that received the most votes on our Facebook page.  The photos were taken during the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience Days at our different organic wineries and submitted by the adoptive vine owners.

This year the prizes went to Philippe and Coraline.  A magnum of wine from the winery where their adopted vines are located is on its way to each of them!

 

And at the ViniBio organic wine fair we organised a prize draw to win some adopted vines at Château Coutet, our partner winery in Saint-Emilion.  The visitors to the stand had to try to identify the aroma contained in a small bottle.

Congratulations to Maxence who correctly identified strawberry, and who will be able to come and pamper his vines at the winery during the 2019 vintage!

And talking of gifts, it’s not too late to spoil someone special with an adopt-a-vine gift this Christmas  ! Click here to learn more about the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience and the Christmas gift delivery date limits.

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Adopt some organic vines

Adopt some vines and follow their progress as they produce the grapes that will make the wine for your personalised vintage, a Christmas gift that is sure to please all wine lovers. Via the customer portal, you can accompany the vines up to the harvest, and then you’ll learn about how the wine ferments and ages in the cellar. Each stage of the wine making process is explained in the newsletter, and you can also include wine experience days at the winery to spend the day with the winemaker and participate in helping to make your wine.
We have chosen to only work with winemakers who produce organically or biodynamically certified wines, who have been recognised for the quality of their wines in the most prestigious wine competitions, guides and reviews, and that have been selected for their enthusiasm and desire to share their passion for their profession. This all makes for an exceptional experience!

How to choose the right Christmas Wine Experience gift?

There are many different options for this unique wine-making present. First select if you want to give a red or white wine experience for your Christmas gift, then pick the wine-making region and winery. You can then choose the number of adopted vines and personalised bottles of wine that you wish to include. One vine gives one bottle of personalised wine.
You can also include up to three wine experience days at the winery with the winemaker and our oenologist. Each wine course lasts from 09:30 to 16:00, includes lunch and wine tasting, and is valid for two people. There are three types of day to choose from. The Discovery Experience Day focuses on the work in the vineyard to prepare the vines for harvest and includes hands-on participation in work such as pruning, de-budding, or training the vines. The Harvest Experience Day gets you involved in picking the grapes and learning about the work in the chai at harvest time to receive the grapes and start the fermentation process. The third option is the Vinification Experience Day which sees you participate in different workshops to discover the art of tasting, ageing, blending and bottling wine.

An unforgettable Christmas gift

It’s not just us who think so :-)! Take a look at the customer feedback we have received from our clients, press articles, or the wine reviews of our partner winemakers. We have been developing and delivering our Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience since 2009, forging strong links with our partner winemakers and our team of passionate oenologists to create the best possible experience for our customers.

Together we organise unforgettable, fun, and interactive days at the winery to learn all of the hard work and skill that goes into making a quality wine.

Order with confidence

Ordering is easy in just a few clicks, and then we do the rest:

- The welcome packs are sent out with 24 hours on working days
- There is a gift wrapping option with a personalised message possible
- For last minute gifts, we can send you the vine adoption certificate by email
- You can pay for your order in three instalments
The personalised welcome pack that we will send to your preferred address, contains some gifts to be enjoyed straight away: a DropStop, re-usable glass wine stopper, wine cooling bag, adoption certificate and personalised guide to explain the wine adventure that awaits!

Learn more about the Adopt-a-Vine Christmas gift

Visit our web site to learn more about the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience, to place an order, or to consult our Christmas delivery deadlines .

Further questions? We are available from 09:00 to 18:00 Paris time, Monday to Friday on +33 (0)1 46 27 05 92 or contact us on our web site.

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So, off we headed into the vineyard, in the direction of our adopted vines. We stopped for a quick photo shoot of our adopted vines, and spent some time learning about the terroir of the vineyard, and the work that has been carried out so far this year, including the organic treatments.

We then had a free sunbathing session as we trained the Syrah vines in the Mazet vineyard. Training the vines is important work at this time of year, as the vines are growing very quickly, and we need to help them support the weight of the leaves and grape bunches that are starting to form well now. It was getting very hot in the vineyard!

Luckily, lunchtime quickly arrived, and we returned to the winery to enjoy the meal prepared by Delphine. Over lunch we tasted the wines made at Domaine Allegria; Dolce Vita, Tribu d'A, Carignan Gourmand, Cousu Main and La Belle Histoire.

After lunch, we had a tour of the fermentation hall and barrel room to have an introduction into the vinification side of things, before filling the cars with a few cases of wine and leaving the winery with lots of memories.

Many thanks to all those who shared the day with us!

Other articles relating to the work in the vineyard

A review of the work in the vineyard for the 2015 vintage

Harvesting the Syrah grapes in the Languedoc

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After an introduction to the winery and the region by Jean-François Chapelle, the owner of the estate, we walked to the Clos des Cornières vineyard where our adopted vines are located.

Jean-François showed us the vineyard and pointed out the different geological strata that can be found around the winery and in the Côte de Beaune. This helps us to better understand the appellation system in the region of Burgundy generic, Village, Premier Cru and Grand Cru wines. We then took a few minutes to meet our adopted vines for the first time, a very emotional moment for the new parents!

It was then time to get down to some work. We're nearing the end of the pruning season, which is one of the most important phases in the development of the vines. You have to prune well to reduce the quantity of grapes produced by each vine, and so improve the concentration of sugar in each grape bunch. We learnt how to prune using the Cordon de Royat method and had a go on some vines which had been pre-pruned by a tractor to cut down some of the wood.

The vineyard on the other side of the road is planted with Chardonnay, and the Guyot Simple method is used to prune. Here there is no pre-pruning done, so once we had cut the branches, you need to pull them from the training wires as the tendrils have wound around them.

Back at the winery, we made the most of the sunshine and started the wine tasting in the courtyard with a Santenay 2013 white wine, accompanied by some gougères. The tasting continued during lunch with a Burgundy Pinot Noir 2011, a Santenay "Clos des Cornières" 2011 and a Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru Morgeot 2010.

After lunch, we went for a walk to one of the Santenay Premier Cru vineyards, the Beaurepaire. This gave us the chance to discover some of the different views of the Côte de Beaune and to learn more about the local geology.

The day ended with a quick tour of the vaulted cellar to see where the wines are ageing in barrels and where the bottles are stocked until ready for labelling. Many thanks to Jean-François for his passionate explanations, and to all of our dear clients.

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Rather than hesitating over which bottle of wine to choose, turn them into an apprentice winemaker. They'll follow the progress of their adopted vines and all of the work in the cellar until their wine is made and bottled, together with their own personalised wine labels.

 

And if they are the type that like to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in, why not send them to one of our partner wineries for one or more Wine Experience Days, where they will be able to meet the winemaker, see their adopted vines, and share a winemaker's meal with a tasting of the vineyard's wines?

 

All of the days are accessible to novices as well as those with a more in depth wine knowledge. Through hands on participation, the days are focused to give an insight into what it's actually like to be a winemaker, and to gain a better understanding of all the work and decisions necessary to make a quality wine. There are three types of Experience Days; the Discovery Experience Day to learn more about the work in the vineyard to produce the best quality grapes possible, the Harvest Experience Day to pick the grapes and follow their journey into the fermentation tanks, and the Vinification Experience Day to track the work in the cellar to ferment, age, blend and bottle the wine.

 

All of our partner winemakers are organically or biodynamically certified, and are passionate about sharing the love of their profession. They will welcome you with pleasure and will talk about their daily life, the methods they have chosen to adopt to make their wine, and their commitment to making their wine as environmentally friendly as possible.

To find out more about our unique and authentic approach to discovering the world of winemaking, take a look at our personalised Christmas wine experience gifts. Your recipient will be sure to remember this original and participative gift for a long time to come. And this year, it won't just be Father Christmas who'll need to get his boots on!

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More information on the Christmas delivery date limits

Turn you loved ones into an apprentice winemaker for a winemaking year! A very original Christmas gift that sees them adopted their own vines in a French organic vineyard. They'll follow all the key stages in making their wine from the work in the vineyard and cellar up to choosing the name for their personalised bottles of wine.

And to complete you Christmas gift, you can also include one of the Wine Experience Days at the winery. The Discovery Experience Day will allow them to get behind the scenes and learn about caring for the vines to bring the grapes to optimum maturity. The Harvest Experience Day will see them get involved in picking the grapes and following their path into the fermentation tanks. Or why not include a Vinification Experience Day to learn more about the work in the cellar and blending the wines.

Each Experience Day is valid for two people and lasts a whole day. You'll spend the day with the winemakers, get involved in one or more practical tasks, taste the estate's wines and share a meal of other local delicacies.

All of our partner vineyards are organically certified and the winemakers have been chosen for the passion that they share for their profession. They'll welcome you warmly and let you in behind the scenes to discover what it's really like to be a winemaker.

To have something to open right away in front of the Christmas tree, your recipient will receive a welcome pack containing a sommelier's apron, DropStop, personalised certificate and details regarding their chosen Wine Experience. A truly unique and hand's on experience to learn more about wine.

More information on the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience

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