Adopt a Vine and Make Your Own Wine

with the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience

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Archive from December 2018

Last minute Christmas presents for wine fans


Just a few days left for your Christmas gifts! If you haven’t yet finished your Christmas shopping and you’re looking for an original wine related Christmas gift idea, here’s some good news. The Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience gifts can be ordered right up until the last minute

The welcome packs will arrive in time for Christmas if they are ordered before 12:30 on the 21st December for France.  For the rest of Europe, the deadline is 12:30 on the 19th December.

And for the really last minute Christmas gifts, we can send an email containing the vine adoption certificate for orders received up until 17:30 on the 24th December.

Last minute Christmas wine gift.
The welcome gift packs to put under the Christmas tree contain a wine cooling bag, a DropStop, re-usable glass wine stopper, a personalised vine adoption certificate, and an activation code to access the customer portal and begin the wine adventure.

More information on the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience
More information on the Christmas delivery deadlines

 

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Wine Tasting. How to choose the perfect wine glass


Wine lovers are often faced with a dilemma when it comes to choosing the best wine glasses for bringing the best out of their wines. Ideally the perfect glass could be used for all types of wine. But unfortunately, it doesn’t exist! That’s why the crystal and glassware manufacturers have such wide ranges! Even if the universal glass can’t be found, we can still choose a glass that allows the aromas of the majority of wines to best express themselves. Here are a few factors to take into account.

The diversity of wine glasses

When looking around a wine accessory or wine glass shop, the first observation is usually that the choice is very or even too vast!  The glassmakers produce different styles of glass that are each best suited to a different style of wine, whether it be from France or another wine-producing country.

Some have ranges that cover different grape varietals, because a pinot gris from Alsace, for example, doesn’t have the same aromatic characteristics as a marsanne from the Côtes du Rhône.  But these glasses don’t cover the depth of the different wines, notably those that are blended as is the case in Bordeaux, the Côtes du Rhône or the Languedoc-Roussillon.

Adopt-avine and tasting experience in Burgundy

To bridge this gap you can find glasses that are best suited to a particular region such as Burgundy or the Médoc. But you can imagine the number of different shaped glasses that exist, just for the different wine growing regions in France, let alone the rest of the world!

Wine tasting gift box experience in France

You can then even find glasses that claim to be better for Premier or Grand Cru wines, or for differing ages of wines.  So perhaps the perfect glass does exist for a particular wine, but you’d have to have a very wide collection if you like different styles of wine.

And what if you don’t have the space in your wine glass cupboard?

So how to choose the glass that is best adapted to the majority of wine that you will serve?  The glass plays an essential role when tasting wines in diffusing the aromas.  Aromas are made up of molecules that are more or less volatile, that are released into the air, travelling from the glass to the nose.  The more that the glass allows the aromas to evaporate, the more you will smell them, that is unless they are diffused too widely before reaching the nose.

You therefore need to have a glass where the diameter of the base is wide enough to allow evaporation to take place, but with an opening that is a little smaller than the base.  This will help channel the aromas in the direction of your nose. Tulip shaped glasses are good for this.

Rent-a-vine experience in Frnce in an organic winery

Of course, not all aromas have the same volatility, so depending on the type of wine being served, you might want to help some aromas become more volatile by oxygenating the wine and using a glass with a wide base and large opening.  For others that are more delicate of already fairly volatile, you might want to have a narrower base and an even smaller opening, or else you risk not detecting any aromas at all with the nose.  By testing different ratios between the diameter of the base and the opening, you should be able to find an acceptable compromise for most of the wines that you serve.

By concentrating on the two or three styles of wine that you serve the most frequently, you can define the types of aroma that they most often contain: heavy aromas such as wood and spices, or lighter aromas such as fruit and flowers, and the need for oxygenating the wine, and so the shape of the glass best suited.

Then you just need to choose the maker and the price range before opening the next bottle, and savouring the taste... in moderation of course!

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End of year wine competitons and gifts


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.

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!

Day at the winery for making ones own organic wine

 

Christmas wine gift box for making your organic wine

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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The Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience

Adopt a Vine in France and Follow the Making of Your Own Wine !

From € 169

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