Filming "The Winemakers" in France - Part 2

Yes, of course those are olives rather than the grapes that you might think would be the focus of these posts, but unfortunately, by the time that we arrived in France, the harvest had already occurred.

To continue the story of the filming, we continued to be put to the test daily with challenges both mental and physical. 

We arrived at the Cave de Vignerons Rasteau for a blind tasting and blending challenge, a large cooperative winery (a winery that pools the vineyards and resources of a designated group of growers) located in Rasteau.  Rasteau Rouge is a new AOC or Appelation d'origine Contrôlée, meaning a delimited geographic location, in the Cotes du Rhone.  It received this elevation in status in 2010.  The other wines made in Rasteau, such as the Vin Doux Naturel or fortifed sweet wine has been an AOC since 1944.

The Cave de Rasteau was one HUGE winery.  They had more tanks and bigger tanks than all but the biggest wineries that I have visited in the past.  I believe that the head winemakers stated that they make about 800,000 bottles of wine per year.

The different type of tanks in the winery were resin lined concrete  and enormous stainless steel fermentation and aging vessels.  We never saw any barrels, but as the winery was very large and consisted of many buildings that we did not enter, I imagine that they also had a large barrel  room.

As they were setting up for the blind tasting challenge, I got to roam a bit.  The stainless tanks were so large that there was a 40 ft high walkway above the tanks, and I was able to snap a quick photo of some of my castmates.

The blind tasting challenge consisted five flights of wine.  Within these flight, we tried to find grape varieties, vintages, flaws and finally to use barrel samples of wine to recreate a finished wine.  All of this was done in a rather hurried manner, as the time crunch we were in made for some interesting choices!

Once this challenge was done, we retired, extremely fatigued back to our lodging.

The next day we were lucky enough to travel to Clos de Trias in the provençal town of Le Barroux.  An incredibly beautiful location, this winery is run by an American winemaker named Even Bakke married to a French lady with roots deep into the French Wine world (she is the daughter of Bruno Paillard of Champagne fame). 

Even (here seen in the blue vest) made wine for years in California and is making excellent wine mostly from Grenache.  His winery was a study in simplicity, in the French way, that is not often duplicated outside of the old world.

This castle is across from his wine making facility and his vineyards.  Really hard to capture in a photograph!

After taking in the amazing views we worked hard in the winery, doing typical tasks such as pumpovers, pressing, moving grapes and wines and generally making a mess that Even apparently was up until 3 AM fixing.  Sorry!

The final challenge was to create a wine business pan, label and sales plan and present it to the judging panel.  Difficult for me to say the least, as business is hardly my strong point.








As I cannot say how I or my castmates did on the show, I just want to urge everyone to watch the show, which should be on your local PBS station in beautiful HD sometime around April of 2011.

Doing this show was such a great experience.  I have such a strong connection to this area of France, and seeing it for maybe the 8th time just reinforces my love both of France and of the Rhone in general.  I highly recommend to try some wines from this region and if you can, go visit it.  It is truly one of the most beautiful areas in the world.