Before the End of the Year Try French Dessert Wines

In the course of a good year, a wine lover tries dozens of new regions, maybe even hundreds of new bottles. Generally speaking, few of them are likely to be French dessert wines, or dessert wines at all.

It is true that they don’t have any sort of quaff-ability, but that’s the nature of the game with these bottles. There is always something special, a set-aside feature that creates a level of texture of flavor often detected in just a sip of these wines. Botrytis, noble rot, late harvest, residual sugar…terms to sort out as we uncover what makes a certain wine a dessert wine in our upcoming articles and posts.

The French Winophiles

As our last installment of 2017, the French Winophiles will feature dessert wines from France. It seems a fitting end to a year in which we covered a wide scope of topics that took us around the country through food, travel and history as much as tasting wine. Just as a dessert wine beautifies the winding-down of dinner, this experience eases us through the end of 2017 to a new and bright 2018.

A Look Back on L’occasion Winophiles 2017 Stories

A selection of Beaujolais from Cru to Villages. Credit: Jill Barth

The cave in Ventenac-en-Minervois is part of an effort to replant diseased trees along the Canal du Midi. Credit, Jill Barth

Statesmen and literary leaders gathered here – soak up the energy, Credit: Jill Barth

Martine Bonnavenc pours a selection of Minervois wines in the tasting room at St. Jacques d’Albas

A scope of the Château de Duras, highlights of the Sud-Ouest region. Credit: Jill Barth

A neolithic formation keeps watch over the famous rocks of Vergisson and Solutré and their vineyards. Credit: Visit French Wine

Janvier: Savoie The Biodynamic Vineyards of Savoie
Février: Corsica Making Wine on an Island
Mars: Champagne Wine Stories: Bernard de Nonancourt of Champagne Laurent-Perrier
Avril: Cross-Cultural Food Pairings for French Wines A World of Flavors in Marseille
Mai: A drive thru Bourgogne PART 1 Thomas Jefferson in Burgundy
Juin: A drive thru Bourgogne PART 2 Historic Vineyards of Mâcon
Julliet: Southwest France (Sud-Ouest) Périgord Wines: Bergerac and Duras
Août: French Wine Finds Under $25 Mapping France in Wine Bottles: Where to Get Affordable French Wine
Septembre: My French Wine Dream or Memory: Travel Stories from Wine Writers A Château in Provence
Octobre: Languedoc-Roussillon New Roots Along the Canal du Midi
Novembre: Beaujolais No Sleep ’til Beaujolais: The French Wine That’s Been Keeping Us Up All Night
Décembre: French Dessert Wines

If you are a wine blogger – will you join us by sharing a post on French Dessert Wines? On Saturday, December 16th at 10am we head to twitter to share our discoveries and tell the stories behind them (hashtag = #Winophiles). Food and travel are always a part of the chat, so join us for all the dimensions that affordable French wine can open. If you are a blogger, You Are Invited to participate.

HOW TO JOIN US

Contact me to tell me you’re in: Include blog url, Twitter handle, and any other social media details. If you know your blog post title, include that…but you can also send that a bit closer to the event. We’d just like to get a sense of who’s participating and give some shout-outs and links as we go. Contact me here.

Send your post title to me by Wednesday, December 13th to be included in the preview post. I will prepare a preview post shortly after getting the titles, linking to your blogs. Your title may or may not include “#Winophiles.”

Publish your post between 12:01 a.m-8:00 a.m. EDT on Saturday, December 16th. You can always schedule your post in advance if you will be tied up on the morning of the chat. If you prefer to post earlier in the week, that is acceptable but be sure to wait until the preview post with the collaborating bloggers has been released.

Include links to the other #Winophiles participants in your post, and a description of what the event is about. I’ll provide the links to other participating blogs in a preview post (published around December 14th) that you can easily put in your initial post — which will link to people’s general blog url.

Get social! After the posts go live, please visit your fellow bloggers posts’ to comment and share. This is an important feature of this collaboration! We have a Facebook group for participating bloggers to connect and share, too. If you need an invitation please let me know.

Sponsored posts are OK if clearly disclosed. Please be sure to disclose if your post is sponsored or if you are describing wine or other products for which you have received a free sample.