A wine for Friday

For some reason, failing to find the Pierre Précieuse I was looking for at reference 2, I tried looking for paradis and wound up with some of the wine snapped above. Checking this morning, it turns out that I had tried wine from this particular place before, as noticed at reference 1, but that was not in my mind at the time of this purchase.

I think Racines is about back to the roots of winemaking. Heritage wine.

BH was very puzzled by my rendering Les cailloux du Paradis as 'Stones of Paradise', which she did not think was much improved by swapping stones for flints, as suggested by Littré. While this morning, the usually helpful Linguee is no help at all.

While I was puzzled by the naked cork. That is to say the cork had been dated and shoved into the neck of the bottle, but there was no plastic or foil wrapper after that, something which I don't think I have come across before. Maybe something to do with being orgo & eco, for which see below.

Did rather better with Sologne which seems to be a flat, rather boggy area on the headwaters of the Loire, between the Loire and the Cher, with Orléans at its northern tip.

And Etienne Courtois turns out to be a well known organic wine manufacturer, who does not allow chemicals within 500m of his land. Which accounts, it seems, for the slight smell of cider, the slight fizz and the tendency to go brown if left open for any length of time. 'Claude [the father of Etienne] regards the soil on his farm as a living organism. He lives in harmony with nature and the wines he crafts are a pure and vibrant testament to outstanding Biodynamic winemaking'. Nevertheless, we thought the stuff rather good and look forward to having some more in the not too distant future.

PS: not to be confused with the painter Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois, a French gentleman in the same league as the painters mentioned at reference 4.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/tippett.html.

Reference 2: https://shop.lescaves.co.uk/lescaves-shopfront.

Reference 3: http://www.jennyandfrancois.com/wines-2/france/claude-courtois/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/through-glass-ceiling-again.html.