Not only do you have vinyards and chateau’s offering wine tasting practically around every corner, but you may also purchase wine at the ‘wine – station’ or ‘co-operative vinicole’, very similar to how the rest of us fills up our car tank with petrol. Instead of unleaded, leaded and diesel, the pumps at the French wine-cooperatives are labelled rouge, rose and white. And one of the best things is the price: typically in the range of 1,3 Euro pr. litre. That is approximately half of what we pay for a liter of Coca Cola in Norway… Go figure!
Another good thing is that you are usually allowed to taste the various quality levels of coop wines before buying as like elsewhere it is free of charge. What is interesting is that you can taste not only their bottled wines but also their bulk ones!
There are several wine-stations to chose from in the various villages around the house, the closest one being approximately 10 minutes away by car. Here is a map showing all the wine co-operatives.
“When we dropped at the coopérative’s shop, there were several customers who brought like us some containers for the bulk wine. The outside temperature was very high in august and rosé was a good sell, you wouldn’t think to drink red wine by this kind of heat, white maybe, but everybody seemed to choose pink. I was lazy and in order to not have to re-bottle later, I had brought four empty 1,5-liter plastic bottles for my rosé. The lady at the shop said that they don’t accept to fill bottles usually (too long and spills too much wine I guess) but she accepted exceptionally as this was the first time she saw me as customer (I had already bought from this coop in the past though). The other people brought 5 – 10- or 20-liter containers, glass or plastic, and bottled probably it all once back home. The bulk section of the shop looked like a gas station with the pumps of the different qualities, not unleaded or diesel here, but red, rosé, white, either in AOC or Vin de Pays. The amazing thing is that a liter of rosé happened to cost exactly the same as unleaded gasoline these days in France : 1,2 Euro a liter. And we could add that the price of bottled water is very close, and even higher than that for certain brands…”
Read more in this blog article about ‘cooperative vinicole’.
Villa Soleil 