Fine French Wines Tasting Box
🍷 Please note: the wines or vintages may change depending on availability from our partner winemakers. We’ll update this page accordingly!
Château de Saint-Martin Grande Réserve
- Estate and wine name: Château de Saint-Martin Grande Réserve
- Appellation: Côtes de Provence Cru Classé
- Region: France, Provence, Côtes de Provence
- Grape varieties: Grenache, Tibouren, Cinsault, Carignan, Syrah
- Vintage: 2021 -2022 (depending on the wine available from our partner winemaker)
- Colour: Rosé - A rosé wine with a peach-coloured hue and golden highlights.
- Colour intensity: Light and clear, with a lovely sheen.
A delicate, enticing nose. Initial aromas of violet, jasmine and rose petals, alongside notes of ripe vineyard peach, lychee and mango. An elegant nose.
- Body: 2/6 - Supple
- Tannins: 0/6 - None
- Sugar: 0/6 - Very dry
- Acidity: 4/6 - Lively
- Alcohol: 2/6 - Subtle (12.5%)
- Finish: 4/6 - Medium (6 sec)
The palate offers old rose and blood orange on the mid-palate. A velvety rosé with a beautifully long finish, a food-friendly wine ideal for summer meals.
To accompany Provençal-style sea bream, salmon cooked on one side, duck breast with cherry compote, or quail stuffed with grapes.
Hauts d'Artigny Plou & Fils
- Estate and wine name: Domaine Plou & Fils, Cuvée Les Hauts d'Artigny dry Chenin
- Appellation: Touraine-Amboise
- Region: France, Loire Valley, Touraine-Amboise
- Grape variety: Chenin Blanc
- Vintage: 2022
- Colour: White - A light golden hue with green highlights.
- Colour intensity: Beautifully bright and clear.
A mineral, almost earthy nose. Plenty of fresh vegetal notes. The scent of morning dew.
- Body: 2/6 - Supple
- Tannins: 0/6 - None
- Sugar: 0/6 - Very dry
- Acidity: 5/6 - Sharp
- Alcohol: 3/6 - Generous (13.5%)
- Finish: 3/6 - Medium (5–6 sec)
Rich on the palate, with plenty of volume and texture. Its viscosity promises a lovely long finish dominated by citrus and exotic fruit aromas.
Grilled or steamed fish (turbot and sole are particularly suitable), mild soft cheeses...
Maison André Goichot - Naudin Tiercin
- Estate: Maison André Goichot - Naudin Tiercin
- Appellation: Hautes-Côtes de Beaune
- Region: France, Burgundy, France
- Grape variety: Pinot Noir 100%
- Vintage: 2019 - 2021 (depending on the wine available from our partner winemaker)
- Colour: A purple hue with violet tones reminiscent of a peony flower or the depth of certain roses.
- Colour intensity: Beautifully bright, with a fairly deep colour.
A nose revealing notes of jammy black fruit, "cœur de pigeon" cherry flesh, kirsch, liquorice and spices.
- Body: 2/6 - Powerful
- Tannins: 1/6 - Silky
- Sugar: 0/6 - Very dry
- Acidity: 5/6 - Fresh
- Alcohol: 2/6 - Subtle (12.5%)
- Finish: 4/6 - Quite long (7–8 sec)
The fruity nose evokes sour cherry and raspberry, developing into blackcurrant and liquorice, then woodland notes, often with a hint of spice.
Roast meats, pork fillet, mild cheeses...
Château Valade Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
- Estate and wine name: Château Valade Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
- Appellation: Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
- Region: France, Bordeaux, Libournais, Saint-Émilion
- Grape varieties: Cabernet Franc, Merlot
- Vintage: 2019
- Colour: Red - A deep red hue with purple highlights, typical of Saint-Emilion wines.
- Colour intensity: Beautiful brightness and intensity.
A highly concentrated nose, with notes of blackcurrant and cocoa, and smoky, roasted notes of cedar, tobacco and vanilla. A second sniff reveals light mint aromas.
- Body: 5/6 - Powerful
- Tannins: 4/6 - Firm
- Sugar: 0/6 - Very dry
- Acidity: 3/6 - Fresh
- Alcohol: 4/6 - Warming (14.5%)
- Finish: 6/6 - Very long (>10 sec)
Despite its roundness, the wine is lively on the palate. There’s fruit, well-structured tannins and a cocoa finish. The whole is very elegant, remarkably refined and full of character.
Delicious with roast duck, tournedos Rossini or mature Comté...
Calculate your score:
You love wine, but wine doesn’t love you back. However much you sniff corks for possible faults, all you smell is cork. You look but see nothing, sniff but smell nothing, slurp but taste nothing… Is rosé a blend of red and white? There’s a long road ahead, but with practice and plenty of tasting, you’ll get there!
It’s not the desire to become a true master of wine tasting that you lack, but practice. You clearly aspire to be a sommelier, but your senses aren’t quite sharp enough yet and all wines taste alike. Don’t despair, though: if Bach could become a musical virtuoso despite being deaf, there’s hope that one day you’ll be able to tell a Chardonnay from a Champagne. Train your nose and your taste buds — that’s the only way!
Perhaps you spend too much time deciphering the label and not enough analysing what’s in your INAO tasting glass. But you have a taste for adventure: you’re curious about everything and fearlessly hack your way through the vineyard jungle with a machete. You make mistakes, get lost and fall down, but you always get back up. You have the enthusiasm of a budding wine expert: don’t despair, you’re on the right wine trail!
You’re an initiate of the order of fine bottles. You may not yet be a grand master of wine tasting, but you have the discipline and curiosity to become one. You might not yet pick out subtle notes of yuzu at the end of the second sniff of an obscure little wine with pronounced minerality, but you know exactly what you like and what you don’t — and that’s already a lot!
Your tasting precision is almost witchcraft. You’d think you fell into an oak barrel as a child! You’ve mastered the art of wine tasting, you know the most advanced techniques inside out, and your senses are as sharp as a professional sommelier’s. You have plenty of experience under your belt, to say the least… You’re not far from absolute perfection!
You’re the Mozart of wine tasting, the Picasso of the cellars of Pomerol, the Einstein of pairing aged Savagnin with 36-month-matured Comté and a few grains of salt! At a glance, you can tell Mourvèdre from Tannat. Your senses have reached divine heights: you can pick out the most unexpected aromas in any bottle in seconds. You’ve crossed over to the other side: you no longer just taste wine, you write its destiny.
The connoisseur’s corner
A caudalie is the unit of time wine experts use to measure how long a wine’s flavours linger on the palate.
For example, if you can still taste the wine’s flavours 6 seconds after swallowing (or spitting it out), the wine has a finish of 6 caudalies. Can you count the caudalies of the wines in this tasting box?