French Vineyards
If you consider yourself to be a connoisseur of wine drinking, you know that French wines are considered to be amongst the finest in the world. Even if you just have the occasional sip, you must have heard about the high quality product that French vineyards produce. For hundreds of years French vineyards have been perfecting their methods constanly superior vintages.
French vineyards can be found in every corner of the wine regions, and each region has its own specialty. This is one of the most exciting parts of the wine culture in France. Some of the major wine producing regions include, but are not limited to:
- Alsace
- Beaujolais
- Bergerac
- Bordeaux
- Bourgogne (also known as Burgundy)
- Champagne
- Jura
- Loire Valley
- Rhone Valley
- Languedoc-Roussillon
Have you ever heard the word terrior? It may not mean a lot to the average man on the street, but it’s a very important term to wine experts. It’s what’s known as the soil and climate of a region, and every grape grower worth their salt knows that this can either make or break the quality of your grapes. French vineyards are lucky in that their soil and climate tend to exhibit the ideal conditions for grapes to grow and mature well.
Let’s take an example. That’s why Champagne style wines always taste better when they’re from the actual Champagne region. That’s because French vineyards in this area are blessed with the exact mean temperature and chalky soil that is favored by champagne grapes. The rainfall is an average of 25 inches per year and this, coupled with cool temperatures, encourages the needed acidity of the grapes.
By now you should have noticed that many French wines are named after the regions they’re from and not the types of grapes used in their production. It’s the other way around in many parts of the world so it’s a good way to tell your wines apart. That’s just a little piece of trivia to keep you entertained.
The ideal climate of the French wine regions has lead many a wine producer to consider buying a vineyard in France. That’s not a bad idea. Who can argue with the prospect of getting up in the morning and watch the sun rise over a laden vineyard? While there are many benefits to this, one of the things that need to be considered is the price you’re willing to pay for your own little slice of heaven. The price of French vineyards depends on:
- the location
- the quality of the terroir
- the quality of the wine produced,
- whether there are established buyers for the wine
- the type of buildings, if any, on the land
For example, if you’re looking to buy French vineyards in Provence you can expect to pay a high price, but that’s because property values here are higher than elsewhere. Areas such as Burgundy and Bordeaux will also fetch high prices, but because their vines are generally thought of as being of the best quality. So, in this case it’s really the grapes that you’d be paying for.
Even if you’re not interested in buying property but would just like to visit, French vineyards are quite a place to be, and the experience is likely to be unrivaled. Many of the vineyards are family owned and they often offer tours of the premises. If you’re lucky, they might even offer wine tasting. Now wouldn’t that be something? What’s a visit to France without tasting the heavenly wine that French vineyards are known for?
Tags: Alsace, Beaujolais, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, connoisseur of wine, french vineyards, French wines, grape grower, Jura, Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire Valley, Rhone Valley, terrior, vineyards, wine regions
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