Saint Valentine’s Day is fast approaching.  Here is the perfect St Valentine’s gift for wine lovers.  Adopt some organic vines in France with the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience and follow the making of your own bottles of personalised wine!  It’s an original way to discover how wine is made and to share a fun time together for a wine-making year.

 

Receive a welcome gift pack to give on St Valentine’s Day, containing a personalised vine adoption certificate in the name of your loved one, an access code to their customer portal, and a few surprise gifts.  For last minute St Valentine’s prsents, we’ll send you the certificate by email.

Your Valentine will follow all the key steps in making their wine through the newsletters, articles and photos published in the customer portal, explaining all of the work involved to nurture the vines, pick the grapes, make the wine, and age it before being ready to be bottled with your personalised labels.At the end of the experience, you’ll get to taste and savour your special St Valentine’s wine with your loved one!

Add a Wine Experience Day at the winery and head off for a weekend break for two in France. 

You’ll get to spend the day with the winemaker and participate in one or more of the wine-making days at the winery.  The Discovery Experience Day teaches you the care taken in the vineyard to nurture the vines and you’ll get to help the winemaker work with the vines.  The Harvest Experience Day gets you involved in picking the grapes and following their journey into the fermentation hall.  And the Vinification Experience Day reveals the winemaker’s secrets in making your wine, ageing, blending, and bottling it.

Each day is spent working alongside the winemaker and the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Expert, and lasts from 9:30 to 16:00 to give you the time to discuss with the wine-maker, get involved in the work, share a meal of regional delicacies and taste the organic wines from the winery.

Gourmet Odyssey chooses their partner wineries with care.  They are all organically certified with winemakers that are passionate about their profession.  They’ll welcome you warmly for the day and share their knowledge and love of wine.  You can select where to adopt your organic vines from Alsace, Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Languedoc, Loire or Rhone valleys!

The Wine Experience is sure to me a unique and memorable St Valentine’s present!

More information on our St Valentine’s gift for wine lovers

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During the spring of 2020, whilst we were all in lock-down, the vines were soaking up the plentiful sun in the Loire Valley, growing rapidly and abundantly.  And so we were impatient to get back to Château de la Bonnelière for a Wine Discovery Day, to learn about all of the work that goes on in the vineyard to grow and nurture the best possible grapes for making organic wine.

Even though the organisation of the day called for a few changes to comply with the current situation, we were still able to meet one another over the traditional welcome coffee, to start learning about the winery, the wine-maker, Marc, and the progress of the year so far.
The main tasks for the day were leaf removal and green harvesting, jobs that are more normally done in July, but the precocity of the vines has decided otherwise this year.  The 2020 winter was mild for the most part, causing the vines to start growing earlier than usual, and that, combined with the warm and sunny spring, has meant that the vines are at least 3 weeks ahead of the stage that they would normally be at.

The first task was simple. It involved removing the leaves from in front of the grapes, so that they can get more sun.  This also allows for a better airflow around the grapes to avoid rot setting in on the grapes. 
The second task to green harvest was more technical and impressed our apprentice winemakers of the day!  The sun and warmth had also meant that the vines had been very productive.  In fact too much so!  We therefore had to reduce the number of bunches, to avoid disease or rot setting in, and to improve the quality of the grapes left on the vines.
You have to be careful to only remove the grape bunches that are growing too high up the vine, or from where there are too many bunches growing on the same vine.  A detailed but decisive job!  But as usual, the mission was perfectly accomplished by our apprentice winemakers as you can see. 

And what’s more, we finished just before the rain arrived!  We headed to the barn for lunch, a hearty beef and carrot stew that had been slow-cooked by Mme Plouzeau and was sure to recharge our batteries for the afternoon.

We enjoyed some of Marc’s delicious wines over lunch, including some of the older vintages of the Clos de la Bonnelière, where the Gourmet Odyssey adopted vines are located.
The weather cleared in the afternoon, and so we went for a little walk to see the young sauvignon blanc vines that have been recently planted.  Along the way, we discussed the organic and biodynamic methods used to nurture the vines.  The walk finished with a quick tour of the fermentation hall and the chai used for bottling and storing the wine.  These are both places that we will spend more time in during the Harvest and Vinification Experience Days.

We’re looking forward to returning in September for the harvest and to see whether the 2020 vintage turns out as good as it is promising to be at the moment!

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Are you looking for a great online birthday e-gift idea that you can give to a wine lover without waiting for delivery?  Adopt some vines with the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience and this original birthday present will give the birthday boy or birthday girl the unique chance to follow the making of their own personalised bottles of organic wine in an award-winning vineyard in France.

Gourmet Odyssey will send an e-gift card and certificate by email to get their Wine Experience started straight away after they receive their birthday gift.  In their customer portal, they’ll discover more about the winemaker, wine, and winery, and will learn about all of the work carried out in the vineyard and cellar to nurture the vines, harvest the grapes, ferment and age the wine before it is ready for bottling.  The Gourmet Odyssey e-birthday Wine Experience also includes one personalised bottle of organic wine for each adopted vine given. 

You can also choose to include one or more Wine Experience Days at the winery.  There are three courses to choose from, each day covering the three main stages of wine-making.  The Discovery Experience Day focuses on the work in the vineyard to learn how to produce the best grapes come harvest time.  The Harvest Experience Day sees you pick the grapes in the morning and follow their journey into the fermentation tank.  And the Vinification Experience Day is focused on all the decisions that the winemaker takes to ferment, blend, and prepare the wine for bottling.  Each day gets the participants involved in the work of a winemaker, is valid for two people, and lasts a full day, lunch and wine-tasting included.  The Wine Experience Days can be included in the original birthday gift, or can be added at a later stage, something that is particularly useful for those group birthday gifts for a special 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70 birthday where you don’t know in advance how much the birthday kitty will reach.

Each of the partner wineries, hand-picked by Gourmet Odyssey are organically certified, and are chosen for the quality of the wine as well as the friendliness and charm of the winemakers.  So you can rest assured that the wine included in the Gourmet Odyssey Wine Experience and the welcome at the vineyard will make for an unforgettable birthday gift that every wine lover will cherish for many years to come.

Learn more about the Gourmet Odyssey online Birthday Wine Gift Experience.

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