I have the good fortune of living not far from Ansonia Wines, an excellent importer of small-batch, artisan French wines made by 40 winemakers around France. Although Ansonia has been in business for all 16 years I’ve lived in my current house, I placed my very first order with them (an introductory six-pack) just this summer. The wines were all quite up good, and they delivered to my house during the pandemic, so A+ for convenience. Their prices are generally $16 – $30 a bottle, with a few offerings higher than that. Especially with current tariffs in the US, this is quite reasonable for good French wine.
Last weekend I participated in an Ansonia organized, Zoom-mediated online wine-tasting and really enjoyed it. I’m not much of a wine expert, though I like drinking it and learning how it is made. I can count on the fingers of one hand the total number of wine-tastings I’ve ever attended, and the online Zoom aspect of it was a first for me. Apparently 40 people signed up in advance for the event, which featured five white wines from Bourgogne and the Loire valley.
Just before noon, Ansonia opened eight bottles of each and redistributed them into 40 sets of five five-ounce bottles. Customers (including me) came by the store between noon and 2pm to collect their bottles and put them in the fridge at home. The tasting started at 4pm over Zoom and lasted an hour. I set out my bottles and my laptop on the living-room coffee table and settled in for a pleasant afternoon goûter (my cheese and bread are out of the frame).
Here are the wines we tasted:
- Martin-Luneau Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine “Clisson” 2016
- Paget Chenin “Mélodie” 2018
- Garenne Sancerre “Bouffants” 2019
- Maillet Mâcon-Verzé 2017
- Collet Chablis 1er cru “Montmains” 2018
The tasting was conducted by Tom Wilcox, the younger member of this father-and-son (or rather Père et Fils) business. He had a prepared slide presentation with maps showing the region of France each wine was from, photographs of each specific vignoble, and often photos of the winemakers themselves talking with Mark Wilcox (père) (Tom is in the small picture-in-picture box at the top right of the laptop screen, while Mark Wilcox appears in the sweater-vest on the left half of the slide). Tom narrated the whole thing while directing viewers when to taste each wine, explaining the micro-climate, the soil, and the winemaking process that went into each wine.
The first three are from the lower-, middle-, and upper-Loire valley. The last two are from Bourgogne (Burgundy). The presentation contained these handy maps to show the sources more clearly:
Tom followed up with a pointer to a series of short YouTube videos by winemakers in Bourgogne talking about their wine, their work, and their history. Many of these videos are available both in French and in English. Here, for example, is Nicolas Maillet talking about his vineyard in Mâcon-Verzé:
The whole series of them can be found here: « Rendez-vous avec les vins de Bourgogne »
I’ve never been to Mâcon, but as it happens, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the other regions represented by the tasting. Here’s a few pictures I took in 2017 in Beaune, a part of Bourgogne just outside Dijon:
The photo shows an old, no-longer used, massive press used to squeeze the juice out of grapes. An unknown tourist standing next to the press gives a handy reference for scale. The cisterns (cuve) that held the wine during fermentation are in the foreground, massive oak tanks with steel bands.
Of course, the outdoor scenery in Beaune is stunning, especially in the summer. Here’s an example:
A few years earlier (2014), I spent a couple weeks working in Paris and took a one-day weekend tour of the upper Loire which included a visit to a wine cave (Caves Duhard) and a tasting. Caves have very regular humidity and temperature, which makes the great for storing wine over long periods. Apparently, this has been known for centuries, and so when the stones were quarried for the châteaux that line the Loire, they were careful to leave usable caves behind. Really big ones. Here’s a few photos to give you an idea:
The major city at the mouth of the Loire is Nantes, which I visited in 2020. I didn’t travel to wine country, but I did encounter some really cool street art inspired by Jules Vernes, favorite son in those parts:
My other big wine encounter was a 2020 winery tour in St Emilion, but that’s in Bordeaux, so not rightly part of this weekend’s wine tasting. I’ll have to wait until Ansonia features a Bordeaux tasting to share that story…
Wow, this sounds like a really great event that was well executed. I could easily imagine this being repeated for other drinks, but it also sounds like an interesting framework for a community meal.