Rhône wine region

And the analogy I make there is the soil is the culture.

So if you've ever been to any wine producing region in the world, Napa, Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Rhone Valley, Piedmont, Tuscany, wherever you like your wine from, the grape is going to taste a certain way, but it's all relative to the soil in which it's planted.

And the grape has to be the right grape for that soil.

There's a reason that they don't grow Cabernet Sauvignon in the Rhone Valley, but they do grow Syrah.

There's a reason that they don't grow Syrah in Piedmont, Italy, but they do grow Nebbiolo.

Call it the genius of the Etruscans thousands of years ago to know which grapes worked in which soil.

So I got connected with an importer who specialized in French wine.

He was doing only high-end stuff, mostly Burgundy and Champagne and Rhone Valley wines.

And I brought this whole portfolio of French country wines, which were just becoming popular.

This is back in the late 90s.

And the same styles in your wines.

So areas where herbaceous wines are prominent, southern Rhone, where you have that beautiful Grieg, which are fields of herbs.

And all of the wines from that region kind of represent that.

Earthy wines, rustic wines are going to pair beautifully with anything with that herbal note.

Yeah, the history of Beaujolais is truly fascinating.

It's been a vineyard which has been planted like Rhone and Burgundy are two neighbors for 2,000 years, you know, with the Romans invading France.

The story is huge and actually what is very interesting is that when you look at old books, and that's something that I've done these last 20 years, you can see that Moulin Van all the time is considered as a Grand Cru, has entered the Château at Versailles with Louis XIV because of its quality.

There are so many stories about this very premium and noble crew of Moulin Van.

And the advantage of the asset of this trealization is that we have a better... leaf surface available for the sun and so for the photosynthesis because the Gamay doesn't produce a lot of these leaves so that's also a specificity of the Gamay and after what I can tell you else the Gamay is very very sensitive to mildew not so much to Oidium, so that's also something that we are happy with.

And very simply said, in comparison to the Syrah, which is planted 80 kilometers south from here, the Gamay is a little bit earlier in terms of development, so that's why it needs...

The soils of Rhone Valley, like Côte-Rotie and here, are very, very similar.

both the result of the erosion of the Massif Central, this very old volcanic part of France.

It was 50% Grenache Blanc, 45% Roussan, 5% Marsan.

And, you know, you can't say this is a Rhone wine because it's not made in Rhone, right? So marketing was like,

let's call

it white wine.

That it's red, that it's drinkable, that it's balanced, that it's not trying to be anything in particular.

It's very fairly priced for what you get.

It is what I like to call a Bordeaux because it's a combination of Bordeaux varieties and Rhone varieties.

And what's in it? I have no clue because I make sure to