The second WLDGer tells his French wine story in the French Wine Examiner.
Mark Lipton was born and raised in Richmond, CA. Educated in Claremont, CA, and New York City, he has lived for the past twenty years in Lafayette, Indiana, with his wife Jean and son Andrew, where he is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University.
Mark is also well known in the wine community for his appreciaton of all wines. But it is clear that, for Mark, there is a special appreciation for the wines of the Rhone Valley in France. This is his French wine story:
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and '70s, I was first exposed to the wines of Napa and Sonoma and became quite well acquainted with the wines of California.
It wasn't until I relocated to New York City for graduate school that I first became acquainted with the wines of France, but on the budget of a graduate student I wasn't able to do more than scratch the surface of the famous wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy while also beginning to learn about the wines of the Rhone Valley. I was aided in this exploration by my future wife Jean, who shared my passions for food and wine.
As we advanced in our careers as academic scientists, our wine budget increased and we began to explore the wines of France a bit more; but our true epiphany didn't arrive until 1998, when we traveled to Nice for a scientific conference.
While in France, we rented a car in Lyon and drove down the Rhone Valley, seeing the steeply terraced slopes of Côte-Rôtie and the fabled Hermitage Hill. As impressive as the landscape was, though, it was our encounters with winemakers on that trip that created our lasting love affair with the wines of France.
In the small commune of Chateauneuf-du-Pape outside of Avignon, we visited two domaines that made some of our favorite wines of the area. Our first stop was at the Domaine du Pegau, where we began by ringing the front doorbell of the home of the Feraud family, the proprietors of Domaine du Pegau.
The door was answered by the wife of the winemaker, Paul Feraud. As she spoke no English and our command of French is poor at best, she quickly summoned her daughter Laurence, who spoke English.
Laurence Feraud, who since has succeeded her father as winemaker, conducted us down to the cellar of their home where the large oak foudres containing their latest vintage were stored. There, under their home, Laurence and Paul Feraud opened up a bottle of their '96 Chateauneuf-du-Pape and poured us samples to taste as they spoke to us about the year, their vineyards, how they treated their wine.
Because her father had mistakenly opened a bottle of their '95, too, Laurence also gave us a sample of the earlier year. The wines were spectacular, but the personal connection with the people making the wine and the perceived generosity of the winemaker in sharing his wine and his time with us was even more impressive. How unlike any California tasting room!
Although Laurence spoke to us in English, her father Paul spoke only French (with a strong Provençal twang); nonetheless, he wanted to talk to us about our rental car -- a Lancia sedan -- so we carried on a multilingual interpreted conversation. When we purchased wines at the end of the visit, we were again reminded of how unlike any of our Californian winery visits this was: the wines at the domaine were a third of the price that we pay for them in the US!
Our next stop, at Clos des Papes in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, was much the same, with the Avril family pouring their wines for us in their bottling shed. As we continued our trip, we encountered similar experiences touring the wineries of Bandol with a friend.
Since that first trip, we have returned to France and visited other wine regions such as Beaujolais, Chablis and the Northern Rhone Valley. In all of these regions our experience has mirrored that of our first visit: meeting with the winemaker at his or her home and being personally conducted to the vineyards and the cellar, tasting the wines in the cellar, spitting the wine onto the crushed rock of the cellar floor, sampling wines from the barrels and discussing all the aspects of grapegrowing and winemaking with the person responsible for making the wine that we're drinking.
It is often a magical experience and we have found that the wines from those producers we've visited never taste quite the same afterward. There are always those lingering memories of time spent in the cellar with the winemaker that make the wine taste even better, more rich and more complex.
Those memories will also keep us coming back to France to visit other winemakers in other regions for as long as we can.
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Mark Lipton's French wine story: exploring Chateauneuf-du-Pape - National French Wine | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/french-wine-in- ... z1G4jdK5LI
