news - home - benefits - subscription - events - contact - links - aims

Each month we will be featuring some of our favourite wineries.This month we focus on Merchien Vineyard in the Quercy region of France.

Merchien’s winemakers, David and Sarah Meakin, have been producing some outstanding wines that are amongst the best in Quercy,

The setting of Domaine du Merchien offers spectacular views of both the vineyard and the beautiful surrounding rural scenery. Merchien is a family-run vineyard that embraces the spirit of innovation: David and Sarah enjoy experimenting with the final products, which range from Merchien Red, a dark red giving off scents of red berry fruits, and is rich, tannic, robust, full-flavoured and as it ages, develops delicate and complex aromas and floral notes. Merchien Rosé is a beautiful, fresh, crisp and surprising wine, it is both elegant and sophisticated, has considerable body for a rosé, whilst still keeping plenty of fruit. The winery combines the best of some modern techniques with traditional wine making methods.

Merchien are now also producing their own beers. The Merchien beers are hand crafted with only one criteria, that of taste .They do not use preservatives, and all of the beers are bottle conditioned 'live' beers. The brewery opened in May 2006, after a very long day when the system was delivered at the end of April.
Three different beers are produced: Doree (English Bitter), Bronze (IPA) and Noire (Porter) The Porter is an excellent beer, not unlike bottled Guiness and slips down extremely well!

Merchien also offer you the chance to become a 'Partner - in - Wine'. This allows you to 'own' a number of rows of grapes at the vineyard. The scheme runs for two seasons. Cultivation cost of £75/€115 (per row) is required at the start of the rental year. The number of bottles per yielded row and their cost is calculated on the previous years production. On average over the last three years 120 bottles are produced per row, at a price of £3.50 per bottle. A choice of wine from different vintages is possible depending on the stock levels available. Domaine du Merchien also offers the possibilities of creating your own label or have “bottled for” on your bottle . See their website for further details.

E-foodies Treasurer David Bowden visited the winery in September 2006 and was impressed by the quality of the wines and beers on offer, and the warm welcome given by Sarah and David. If you are visiting southern France, give them a look. Directions are available from their website.