Tous pour un vin, un vin pour tous (All for wine, and wine for all!)

The title for this posting is the tag line "des Vignerons Independants."  Now that's a marketing slogan we can get behind!

Imagine hundreds of independent vintners under one roof, and you have the 20th annual Salon des Vins Des Vignerons Independants in Lyon October 28th through November 1st.

 This event is so huge that it’s housed in Halle Tony Garnier, a 17,000 square meter (well over an acre) hall, built over a century ago with no interior pillars for support. (This was quite an engineering feat in those days and one of the reasons Tony Garnier is revered even today as an innovative and exemplary architect who just happened to be based in Lyon.) 

Our French “daughter”, Estelle, had lots of free tickets so we met at the hall, and the three of us went in together. I have never seen so many winery booths in one place before!

David took a couple of pictures in hopes of giving you an idea of how it looked.

 

The regions represented were Alsace-Lorraine, Bordelais, Bourgogne - Beaujolais, Calvados, Charentes - Poitou, Jura - Savoie, Languedoc - Rousillon, Provence-Corse, Sud-Ouest - Armagnac, Val-De-Loire – Vendee, and Vallee du Rhone. The wineries were not organized by region, but there were signs above each booth that showed the region (as well as color-coding by region), name of the winery, their typical wines, and the names of the winery owners. We also got a program to help us choose winery booths to visit and navigate to them.

One of the things that made this event so enjoyable was that the wineries represented were all independent; they have come together as vignerons independants to market their wines and set standards for all in their group. The Charte du Vigneron Independent is as follows (translated):
• Respect the land
• Work with his/her vines
• Harvest his/her grapes
• Vinify and nurture his/her wine
• Make his/her brandy
• Bottle his/her wine at his own premises
• Market his/her products
• Improve his/her product while respecting tradition
• Welcome and advise on the tasting of his/her products
• Take pleasure in presenting the fruits of his/her labor and of his/her culture.

We can definitely vouch for the last item! The owners themselves were often the ones manning the booths, and many were enthusiastic and enjoyed talking about their wineries, their wines, the regions, the vintages, etc. (2009 was a great year, by the way.)

We would have loved to stock up and cellar several of the wines we tasted, but we are just here a year, and our “cellar” in the apartment is a closet in the living room. We didn’t walk away empty-handed though! We managed to carry eight bottles (from Champagne, Alsace, and Burgundy) home on the metro.