Some kids get the itch to become astronauts but when I’m grown up I want to be Harry Lester. Once I am I’ll open my perfect little bistro. A tear-the-paper-off-the-table, stoneware carafe and colourful brocante-deco affair, doesn’t matter where so long as it’s hard to get to, oh – and in France. I will dress
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Fear and pruning in Beaujolais
Hannah continues her winemaking adventures, but as she enters the 8th week of pruning in Beaujoalis, starts to suffer from increasing doubt about whether she’s made the right choice in life.
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Why you don’t need to learn to talk about wine
Hannah Fuellenkemper reflects on why she neither understands nor needs the technical language of wine
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What winemakers do in winter
The Ardèche isn’t just about saving dish water for the garden and sleeping out the heat. There’s also the time of year you butcher the pigs that keep the vendangers fed during harvest. Namely January. Casse-croûte was at 10, the breaking and dipping of bread into last year’s bacon, boudin and dark-ochre eggs still crackling
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Too much hoo-ha over glou-glou
I’m beginning to think that for something synonymous with natural wine, the concept of glouglou is actually a little incongruous.
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Best served with yachts and caviar – Cristal 2007
Hannah wins a bottle of Roederer Cristal 2007. She and her friends put together a unique tasting note for the iconic wine.
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Cellar hygiene über alles
The latest instalment of Hannah’s adventures in the Ardeche finds her developing a strange relationship with a pneumatic press. And realising that the hardest work at harvest was not in the vineyard, after all.
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Auberge de Chassignolles, my Hotel California in the Auvergne
Hannah’s further adventures off the beaten-track in South-Eastern France, as she’s abandoned in a hot, sticky Ardeche but reminisces about the perfect lunch
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How I ended up living in Andrea Calek’s barn by mistake
Hannah continues her adventures in France, trading in a winemaking apprenticeship in Banyuls for Andrea Calek’s estate in the Ardèche.
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Hashtag unicorn wines
Hannah rails against the dislikeable trend of bragging about #unicorn wines on social media