France Wine Tour Guide

We sat out in the garden on a lovely summer’s evening sampling wines from the south of France with our friends, Stephane Le Spit and Bernadette Bouquet. Bernadette and Mrs Vine wore exceptionally beautiful dresses, showing metres of lightly tanned skin upon which the wine reflected magnificently. Then suddenly almost in harmony, Stephane and Bernadette said that they would tell us a bit about how wine was made. I was immediately taken aback when they said that making wine is easy. Turning grape juice into wine is an entirely natural process. The yeasts, which create fermentation, the changing of sugar into alcohol, are on the skins of the grapes and in the air. All you have to do is break the skins and voilà you have wine.

There is a great deal of difference between making wine, making good wine and making great wine. It is not only the differences in the grape variety, the type of soil and the climate but also in the skill of the wine-maker.’ He then went on to explain the very basics of wine making.

To make red wine the red grapes are picked and then crushed. Then together with their skins they go into a fermentation vat. The wine draws out the colour from the skins and fermentation goes on for up to 14 days. The wine is then run off, put through a press to remove the skins and then goes into barrels, later to be bottled.