FAQ — 518
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Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Pot-au-feu is French comfort food at its purest, boiled beef, root vegetables, fragrant broth. It needs a gentle red that won't overpower the delicate flavours: a Beaujolais cru (Morgon or Brouilly), an Alsace Pinot Noir, or a light Côtes du Rhône. Soft, fruity, and slightly cool.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Sweet crepes (Nutella, jam, sugar-lemon) love a Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise, a Breton artisan cider, or a demi-sec Champagne. Savoury galettes (ham-cheese-egg) pair best with farmhouse cider or Muscadet Sur Lie. Keep things light, fresh, and fun, crepes are casual and the wine should be too.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Apple pie needs a wine at least as sweet as the dessert — otherwise the wine tastes thin and sour. A Coteaux du Layon (sweet Chenin Blanc from the Loire), an Alsace Gewurztraminer Vendanges Tardives, or even an aged Calvados as a digestif. Look for honey, baked apple, and caramel echoes in the wine.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Forget the myth that big red wine goes with camembert, tannins clash with the bloomy rind and make everything taste metallic. The real matches? Normandy cider (the regional classic), a round Pommard Pinot Noir, or Champagne Blanc de Noirs. Bubbles, acidity, and softness are your friends here.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Comté is one of the greatest food-and-wine cheeses on earth. Its nutty, caramel, dried-fruit complexity pairs spectacularly with Jura wines: Vin Jaune (Savagnin under a veil of yeast), Arbois Chardonnay, or a red Côtes du Jura (Poulsard-Trousseau). Terroir meeting terroir, it doesn't get better than this.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Roquefort is one of those cheeses that completely changes how you think about wine pairing. Forget red wine here, the magic happens with sweet wines. A golden Sauternes from Bordeaux or a rich Maury from Roussillon creates an unforgettable sweet-salty contrast. Even a 10-year Tawny Port works beautifully, its caramel and dried fruit notes softening the cheese's salty bite.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Ribeye steak is the king of grilled cuts, richly marbled, deeply flavourful, and crying out for a bold red wine. Reach for a structured Bordeaux from Saint-Julien or Pauillac, where Cabernet Sauvignon's firm tannins cut through the fat beautifully. Northern Rhône Syrah from Cornas or Saint-Joseph adds a peppery, smoky dimension that's equally thrilling.
Accords mets-vins·Recommendation
Gratin dauphinois, those golden, bubbling layers of potato, cream, and garlic, calls for a wine with enough body to match its richness but enough acidity to refresh the palate. A round white like Saint-Véran (Burgundy Chardonnay) or a Côtes-du-Rhône Blanc hits the sweet spot. If red is your thing, a supple Crozes-Hermitage Syrah works beautifully when the gratin accompanies roast meat.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is a secondary process where bacteria convert sharp malic acid into softer lactic acid, giving wines a rounder, creamier mouthfeel. Nearly all red wines go through it, while winemakers may choose to block it in whites to preserve crisp acidity, think of the difference between a buttery Chardonnay and a zesty Chablis.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
The traditional method is how Champagne — and many other world-class sparkling wines — gets its bubbles. Instead of carbonating the wine in a big tank, a second fermentation happens inside the very bottle you'll eventually open. This slow, intimate process creates those famously fine, persistent bubbles and complex flavours of brioche, toast, and almonds.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Carbonic maceration is the winemaking trick behind Beaujolais Nouveau's explosion of juicy fruit flavour. Whole bunches of grapes are sealed in a tank flooded with CO₂, and fermentation begins inside each intact berry, no crushing needed. The result? Bright, gulpable reds bursting with cherry, banana, and bubblegum notes, meant to be enjoyed young.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Pet nat, short for pétillant naturel, is sparkling wine in its most stripped-back, honest form. There's no second fermentation, no added sugar, no fancy riddling process. The winemaker simply bottles the wine before its initial fermentation finishes, and the remaining natural sugars create gentle, playful bubbles. It's the darling of natural wine bars and the oldest known method of making sparkling wine.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Passerillage is the art of drying harvested grapes to concentrate their sugars, flavours, and acidity before pressing. Think of it as making raisins on purpose, but stopping just short. This ancient technique gives us some of the wine world's most intense sweet wines, like Italy's Amarone and Vin Santo, and France's Vin de Paille from the Jura.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Sauternes is liquid gold — literally. A beneficial fungus called Botrytis cinerea (noble rot) shrivels the grapes on the vine, concentrating their sugars to extraordinary levels. Harvesters pass through the vineyard up to six times, hand-picking only the perfectly rotten berries. The result is one of the world's most complex sweet wines, balancing honeyed richness with razor-sharp acidity.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Late harvest wines are made from grapes left on the vine well past normal picking time, letting sun and time concentrate their sugars naturally. The result sits beautifully between dry table wine and full-on dessert wine, rich and honeyed but not always syrupy. Alsace is the French heartland for this style, but you'll find stunning late harvest wines from Germany, Austria, and even Canada.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Soil shapes wine in ways that are still debated by scientists and romanticised by winemakers — but the effects are undeniable. A vine growing in chalky limestone produces a very different wine from one growing in volcanic rock, even with the same grape variety and climate. The main mechanisms are water regulation, mineral nutrition, and heat retention — and together, they're the foundation of what the French call terroir.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Bâtonnage is the French winemaker's secret to giving white wines that gorgeous creamy, rich texture. It literally means 'stirring with a stick', and that's exactly what happens. After fermentation, dead yeast cells (lees) settle at the bottom of the barrel. By stirring them back into the wine regularly, the winemaker extracts compounds that add body, roundness, and complexity.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Fining and filtration are the one-two punch winemakers use to make wine clear and stable before bottling. Fining adds a substance, egg whites, bentonite clay, even pea protein, that binds to unwanted particles and drags them to the bottom. Filtration then passes the wine through progressively fine filters. Together, they prevent cloudiness and off-flavours, though some winemakers skip one or both on purpose.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Aging on lees means letting wine sit on a bed of dead yeast cells after fermentation, sometimes for months or years. As those cells slowly break down, they release compounds that give the wine a richer texture, bread-dough complexity, and better ageing potential. It's the reason Champagne tastes toasty and why Muscadet has that distinctive yeasty freshness.
Vinification et terroir·Informational
Climate is arguably the single biggest factor shaping how a wine tastes. Cool climates produce wines with higher acidity, lower alcohol, and delicate flavours, think Riesling from Germany's Mosel. Warm climates deliver riper, bolder, higher-alcohol wines, like Shiraz from Australia's Barossa Valley. And climate change is redrawing the wine map as we speak, with English sparkling wine and Swedish vineyards becoming reality.