Vindic d'Or: best French wine blogs

Ryan O'Connell considers an Austrian wine during the 3rd European Wine Bloggers' Conference

The 2010 Vindic d'Or for the best French wine blogs have just been awarded. See the details here. Congratulations to all the prize winners especially to Ryan O'Connell (joint winner meilleur blog du vigneron) for Love That Languedoc), Eva Robineau (meilleur blog communautaire for Oenos), Philippe Rapiteau (meilleur blog voyageur for La Pipette aux quatre vins) and Olivier Grosjean (grand prix spécial du blog "increvable" for Blog d'Olif). Winner of the best blog of the year was Bourgognelive.

This is the first edition of these awards.

Two new ebooks: Georges Meekers and Ryan O'Connell

Two ebooks on lesser known wine areas have just been published: Georges Meekers' revised edition of his Wines of Malta and Ryan O'Connell's first venture into publishing with Wines of Carcassonne – The Cabardès AOC.

Georges Meekers@Medina, Malta

I have yet to see a copy of Georges' new book but details can be found here and it can be downloaded from Amazon here on a Kindle for £4.45.

Ryan O'Connell 

The Cabardès is a lesser known appellation just to the north of Carcassonne. Along with the Côtes de Malepère, it is on the border between the vineyards of the Mediterrean and those of the Atlantic. Naturally featuring grape varieties typical of both climatic regions.

Ryan's book can also be downloaded from Amazon onto a Kindle here for £2.21. It strikes me that this is still work in progress, although it is already a useful guide for someone visiting the region. He makes good use of the interactive map to Carbardès on page 9. However I would like more detailed profiles of the vignerons as some are rather perfunctory. Also more background detail would be good. Ryan mentions that Cabardès is cooler than the adjoining Minervois to the east. By how much? A few weather stats here would be illuminating. These details can easily be added in a later edition.
 
Also I'm not sure whether it is my screen setting but some of the text is squashed down – needing a few tweaks on the publishing programme to sort it out.

However, it is exciting to see the possibilities of self-publishing through organisations like Amazon.  

Epeigné-les-Bois: two January 2010 dates

Michel Mergot and his predecessor as Maire – Jacky Marchau@2009 Cérémonie des Voeux 

Saturday 8th January 2011: Cérémonie des Voeux, 18.00, Salles des Fêtes

The 2009 Saint-Vincent: Alain Tranchard (photo Mark Robertson)

Sunday 30th January 2011: Fête de la Saint-Vincent

Fête des vignerons
Messe
Danses de la Gidelle
Dégustation des vins
Banquet