Photo credit: Gabriel Meffre
Hi folks. Here is the second installment in the “Throwback Thursdays” republication of my 2010 Rhône Canuck blog. This brief post details my move from Burgundy to the Rhône Valley. Enjoy!
So here I am happily ensconced in the foothills of the majestic Dentelles de Montmirail (the range of craggy mountains that towers over the sleepy hamlet of Gigondas). My new job? To sing the praises of the noble marriage of Grenache & Syrah.
Please don’t think that I have forsaken my first loves, Pinot & Chardonnay. They still stand mightily on their pedestals and I make the pilgrimage back to the motherland regularly! But somewhere around my 3rd winter in Beaune the endless winter fog got the better of me. The locals scoffed at a Canadian complaining about the cold, but these people don’t heat their lofty 17th century homes. The damp seeps in every corner and you can only put on so many sweaters before you start feeling like the Michelan man. Sure the vin chaud helps, but what with the glass or so of petit Chablis at lunch, a kir or three for the apéro, a nice bottle of Pommard with dinner and maybe a Poire Williams for the digéstif…Beaune was definitely having a wee effect on my young liver!
So what’s a wine-loving Canuck to do? Go home and work for one of our beloved monopolies, scheming up ways to bring the next Fuzion to Canada? Certainly not! A stint in South Africa as a lowly winemaking assistant for Hamilton Russell Vineyards, that was the solution. What an incredible place…the endless blue skies, the breathtaking sunsets, the generosity of spirit! Almost, but unfortunately not quite, makes you forget the endless shantytowns, the breathtaking inequality…
A few months and a pair of callused, purple hands later, I realised what a great job sales is! So off back to France, to start anew, in the sunny and WINDY southern Rhône as a proud footsoldier for the maison Gabriel Meffre.