{"id":335,"date":"2016-07-29T14:32:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T14:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=335"},"modified":"2016-07-29T14:32:15","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T14:32:15","slug":"meeting-the-winemaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"Meeting the Winemaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we state on our front page, Power Tasting<\/em>\u00a0is not about wine as such, but about visiting Wine Country.\u00a0 We offer advice to travelers, not connoisseurs.\u00a0 The people we generally talk with when we go visiting are servers and tasting room managers, not winemakers.\u00a0 Still, over the years we have had the occasion to meet many winemakers who just happened to be in the tasting room while we were there.<\/p>\n

Perhaps our warmest memory was meeting two generations of the Charavin family at their winery in Rasteau, Domaine des Coteaux de Travers (www.coteaux-des-travers.com\/index.php\/en<\/a>).\u00a0 We were already familiar with their wines and made a point of visiting them.\u00a0 The winery had only a simple bar in front of the production area.\u00a0 The young woman who served us was the both the wife of the present winemaker and the daughter of the family that had owned the estate in previous years.\u00a0 While we were talking with her, her father-in-law, Robert Charavin stopped by and we learned a bit more about the history of the winery.\u00a0 And then his son, also named Robert, came by in his mud-covered boots.\u00a0 They were all excited to meet Americans who loved their wines, but not as excited as were to meet them.\u00a0 It was a unique and educational experience.<\/p>\n

Also in the Rhone Valley, we visited Chateauneuf du Pape, an area famed for its hearty and expressive red wines.\u00a0 Traveling through the sector, we stopped at a winery we had been told was up-and-coming, Domaine Paul Autard (www.paulautard.com<\/a>, in French).\u00a0 The woman serving us recognized that our accents were from North America and when we asked a few questions decided to introduce us to the winemaker, that is, her husband Jean-Paul Autard.\u00a0 He explained that his father, Paul, had started the winery and that he was setting about to create world-quality wines.\u00a0 We discussed his trips to New York, invited him to call us when he was there the next time (he never did) and he gave us a nice corkscrew that we use to this day.<\/p>\n

\"autard\"<\/p>\n

Jean-Paul Autard (Photo courtesy of Domaine Paul Autard)<\/em><\/p>\n

One more story.\u00a0 We have been drinking the wines of David Cofaro for quite some time and visit his winery often.\u00a0 We\u2019ve gotten to know him and his wife Pat a bit over the years.\u00a0 In 2015, we got to meet his new assistant winemaker, Josh.\u00a0 He\u2019s an earnest and thoughtful young man who has some great ideas about how he could improve wines we already thought were pretty terrific.<\/p>\n

In all three of these stories, there\u2019s a common element.\u00a0 There\u2019s more to wine than barrels and terroir.\u00a0 There are the people and the way they think about wine, their personal histories, their way of approaching what they do for a living with passion and intelligence.\u00a0 We are not oenologists or critics, so our interactions with winemakers is necessarily irregular.\u00a0 But when we do get the chance, it adds enormously to our understanding or wine and to the pleasure we get going wine tasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we state on our front page, Power Tasting\u00a0is not about wine as such, but about visiting Wine Country.\u00a0 We offer advice to travelers, not connoisseurs.\u00a0 The people we generally talk with when we go visiting are servers and tasting room managers, not winemakers.\u00a0 Still, over the years we have had the occasion to meet … Continue reading Meeting the Winemaker<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}