Wine for an absolute noob: France part 1 (2011-2015)

How I moved to France for Erasmus, discovered cheap wines, visited first wine cellar and somewhat started improving my taste

The first bigger eye-opening came when I moved to study in France in 2011. I had an allowance from university so I had more money than I had ever had but I was raised to save whenever possible. Wine was one product to hold back on. I was shocked about how cheap French wines were. Even the cheapest and nastiest wines in Estonia were over 2 euros but in France, you could (and still can) find bottles for less than 1.5 euros. The cheapest wine that I have ever bought was 80 cents a bottle. Well… you could not buy the quality for it though.

This wine cost 1.36 euros. It was so bad that I tried to improve by adding Coke to it but it was still undrinkable.  And to qualify as undrinkable for my standards back then, it had to be really terrible.

One other wine that was a tad more expensive (2.30 euros) was a rosé from Languedoc-Roussillon that I luckily enjoyed more than the previous one.

Score in Vivino, 2.8 though

I lived in Rennes, in Bretagne. More than developing my wine taste, I developed my taste in ciders. So far, in Estonia, I had appreciated colourful chemically tasting ciders (raspberry, blueberry, cranberry, you name it). In Rennes, the cider available was mostly dry apple, less semi sweet pear. At first muddy, rotten-apples-in-compost flavours seemed unusual, but became the only acceptable cider taste once back in Estonia.

During the second semester, we visited Bouvet-Ladubay wine cellar in Saumur (founded in 1851). They produce sparkling wine using traditional method (same method used for Champagne).

 

It was the first time for me to visit a wine cellar. I was pretty impressed plus I had a chance to try sparkling wines that I rarely bought. From that visit, I learned and remembered the difference between Champagne and other sparkling wine. Even if they are made the same way, only sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region and respecting certain rules can be labelled as Champagne. Others can say that they have produced their wine using traditional method (fr méthode traditionnelle). Most famous is probably Spanish Cava but there are also wines made that way in South Africa, California, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, England and South America. At least something stuck and it was not just drinking and feeling fancy.

The wine that I remember the best was a red sparkling wine, something that I had never had before and did not know existed either. It was so good, that I spent 9.10 euros for a bottle and told myself that it will be the most expensive wine that I will ever buy. I took it with me to Rouen to share with a friend who studied there.

According to Vivino, the score for this sparkler is 3.6. Not too bad.

View to the city of Saumur

Back in Estonia, I understood that my taste in wine had changed despite consuming the cheapest options on the market. I did not like sweet strong Eastern European wines anymore (some years later, I discovered my liking for Port though) as I had had some pretty decent experience (for my standards) with dry wines. I also realised that almost all affordable wines were rather sweetish. In order to avoid drinking the same wines that I drank during high school, I started buying wines during discounts. That helped me to discover new brands but I didn’t bother much remembering what is what and what I actually liked. I had completely lost my liking for white wines. I had an impression that all whites taste the same and I just stopped buying them (they did taste the same as I had had a very limited range of white wines that I had been buying before). I was also convinced that I am strictly a red wine drinker, maybe a bit rosé sometimes as well.

This conviction lasted some years until I bought Johann Brunner’s Riesling with a discount and while feeling adventurous. I was just amazed how good it was. Still careful, I decided that white wines can be fine but so far only those from Johann Brunner. I also tried Gewürtztraminer but I did not bother to remember or even learn to pronounce the grape name so I just knew that it is fine to drink and has a light blue label if I ever wanted to buy more.

I went through my older blogs and looked for wine pictures to understand what I was drinking and when. There was definitely wine for my birthdays.

Clearly influenced by my stay in France, I enjoyed Savoy sparkling wine from Bourgogne for my 22^nd birthday. Vivino score: 2.8

I got my bachelor degree in 2013 and enjoyed a red Luciente for that occasion. Vivino score: 3.3.

For my 23^rd birthday a month later, the selection was getting pretty diverse.

There was an unidentifiable red wine, a white local quince wine and my new birthday favorite, sparkling and strawberry-tasting Fragolino. To buy that for my birthday morning became tradition for some years. Vivino score: 3.5 (we’re getting there!)