When in France there are few chores I rush to, but.... I DO like to rearrange my wine supply and write notes on the boxes: where we bought the wine, when it should be opened (some will wait 10 years), how long it should breathe (four hours for the meaty reds), the price. It's all improperly stored in the attic, our only spare locked space; it's survived the rough handling.
These are memories by the bottle. We buy only from vintners in our region, the Languedoc-Roussillon; mostly from vineyards where we've done a tasting. The region is a quiltwork of tiny winemakers tucked away in small towns, where they produce limited quantities that seldom travel further than some discriminating restaurant in Paris, if that far.
In the U.S., wine was marketed as a snob's pursuit. Here, it's part of the diet. A 9 euro ($12) wine in France is expensive.
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