Salon des Vins arrived to Lyon

Salon des Vins …’wine feast’…arrived to Lyon

I wanted to share with you my latest experience with the so called ‘ French lifestyle’. Because when I think about French people I always have in my mind…cheese & wine 😉 Don’t get me wrong. I love the way French people live, enjoy life & love their food & wine. They are the greatest example of content and happy people when it comes to eating & drinking. So I pay a great respect to them and observe French people when it comes to wines & cheese especially as I feel and I am a real novice here.

I came to France after eating only the yellow cheese and I thought that the world is all about yellow cheese only. I came to France with the preferences for rose wine from California…and I learned this is embarrassing 😉 So from the day number 1 when I was made fun of…and when everyone was making jokes on my (and they had the right do it..) cause now after just

few months living here …J’adore Blue Chesses and St Marellin

and the red wine …white is not my favourite as yet…but after my latest experience which I want to share with you now I am changing my taste slightly and started to appreciate the white wines as well…so here it comes…Salon des Vins – a place where French people love to be & will pay to be and wake up early in the Saturday morning to come!

Salon des Vins event took place in Lyon this March 2015…and here I have just proved to myself (and others) that I do know so little about the style of the event, the (very popular lynnonoise) venue and obviously I know nothing about wines…

I got a free ticket and invitation from Gautier Hatmann who is a proper independent wine producer from Alsace specializing in white wines.

Not only he has provided me with a free entrance but also presented and explained all the types of white wines they produce. I had a chance to taste all the varieties of white wines and got my favourite ones and ended up with the case of 6 bottles! I learned about the soil when it comes to producing wines, I learned about different types and colours of grapes the way the wines are being named. I learned that you don’t need to drink everything when tasting the wine but you can split it in a special black basket and this is not a waste but a way of keeping you going when it comes to wine degustation 😉 Otherwise I will be totally drunk just after the first stand and there were so many more to explore…

So to sum up quickly I really enjoyed my first proper Wine Tasting experience here in Lyon! But as a good observer (I hope)

I have noticed NEW few things about French lifestyle that surprised me:

• You get a free wine glass and there is a black basket for splitting
• There is always cheese, Saucisson de Lyon & baguettes around to feed you well….but also top class chocolates and nugat which is tempting all women who are chocolate’s lovers!
• There are kids to come & taste the wine…
• And the best one is….French people have special trolleys to carry the wine. So I would never though you need it, in Poland I don’t think they produce something like this. But here in France I think each proper French person has it as it has as it is so useful. You buy lot of wines as you drink a lot of wine and the bottles are very heavy. But as long as it is helpful and useful it looks so silly and funny 😉

But anyway – it was a very good day, I caught up on my knowledge with wines and got encouraged to learn more about the venue and event and the organizers. So, firstly about the venue – Eurexpo Lyon – the Lyon city exhibition and convention which was created in 1984 and is constantly being developed to ensure that it remains a world-class venue. To get there you can check on details here.

And the event which took place there from the 13th to the 15th march 2015, it was the 9th exhibition of Vignerons Indépendants de France. It has been organized by The Vignerons Indépendants de France (VIF) . VIF is a viticulture trade association located in Paris. Currently it consists of about 6000-10000 members throughout France. They formed the association to promote and assist small and independent winemakers within France. Members may use the association’s logo on their products.

Each year, VIF arranges a number of wine fairs (Salon des vins) in different cities in France. If you want to take part in such an event, I can see that they are organized in other cities and the calendar of their events is here

So do you think you will go?…or you can wait one year as I think they should return to Lyon! I will come back for sure!