MIREPOIX, France (Reuters) – With the Pyrenees mountain range firmly set on the southern horizon, a few enthusiastic vintners are trying to resuscitate a local wine-growing tradition that has been lost for many decades.

“We were four at the start. Only one of us was already a wine-maker, I was in agriculture. We just could not understand why Ariege was the only area in France without vines while it had been an important producer in the past,” said Philippe Babin, one of the pioneers and a former vegetable seed grower.

He said the fledgling movement had little support at the start but that older local people would tell them how vines used to run everywhere in the region. Abandoned wine presses and barrels for making wine can still be found on many local farms.

“We encountered a lot of skepticism but in the end, wine is the noblest product of a region and we felt that Ariege merited wine,” Babin said.

On the other side of the Pyrenees, the sunny side in Spain, there are the wines from Navarra and Rioja. To the east lie the French vineyards of Corbieres and the cotes de Malepere, while Irouleguy in the Basque country and Madiran lie to the west.

Here in the Ariege region, the vines had been uprooted to make place for grain farms for bread in Toulouse and to feed the cattle in the gentle plains along the river Hers, which meanders past the Mediaeval town of Mirepoix, best-known for its carved wooden arcades along the central square.

The Ariege’s Mediterranean climate provides good conditions for growing vines with its warm days, while the cool mountain air helps to concentrate flavor in the grapes.

PARIS (Reuters) – French film and stage actor Alain Delon sold a thousand bottles of his wine collection on Saturday with a big Chinese buyer pushing the auction results well above pre-sale estimates.

Delon, once called “the male Brigitte Bardot” for his good looks, is one of France’s best-selling film actors with Jean-Paul Belmondo and comic Louis de Funes. While he never made a big splash in Hollywood, he has fans in Europe and Asia.

The sale raised more than 250,000 euros ($333,800), compared to an auctioneer’s estimate of 100,000 euros, with Chinese media businessman Dong Guo pushing up the prices for the main parts of the sale. He acquired 70 lots and fell short of his goal of acquiring the entire collection due to other bidders in the room at Fouquet’s hotel and restaurant on the Champs Elysees.

Buyers from China, Russia, United States and South America were active via Internet and phone lines and competed with the some 200 people in the stately room in the hotel, decorated with gold-colored curtains, dark wood paneling and black-and-white pictures of film stars and scenes.

Auction house Cornette de Saint Cyr, which sold wines of the cave of the Tour d’Argent restaurant in 2009, said Guo was president of the Yubang media group in Shenzhen and aimed to invite Delon to come to his city.

Delon was not present at the sale. Guo, with heavy-rimmed glasses, was sitting relaxed on a front-row seat, constantly lifting his hand with finger-signs to indicate his price increases.

Other buyers, like Paris-based wine trader Guerda Brahim, said some prices were ‘crazy’. “I came here to find some bargains to put in my cellar and sell them on to my clients,” he said.

BEAUNE, France (Reuters) – Celebrities, business people and the wealthy bid for casks of fine wine in the world’s biggest annual charity auction at the Hospices de Beaune this weekend in an annual ritual for Burgundy winemakers that stretches back more than one-and-a-half centuries.

The total value of the sale, at 5.8 million euros ($7.8 mln), broke the 2009 record of 5.5 million on face value and was more than the 5.1 million euros of 2010.

There were, however, more lots for sale and average prices were down on last year by 6.2 percent for reds and 12.9 percent for the whites as the financial crisis and economic worries hurt even the steadiest asset values in the global wine trade.

The main item, the special President’s lot of 460 liters of red Corton Clos du Roi, Cuvee Baronne du Bay, was auctioned by actor Christian Clavier and fashion model and designer Ines de la Fressange. It raised 110,000 euro for two charities and the buyer was Stephen Williams of the Antique Wine Company.

“This year’s auction takes place in a difficult financial and economic context,” said Alain Suguenot, chairman of the hospices and mayor of Beaune.

The second-highest buy was a 228-liter barrel of white Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru Cuvee Dames de Flandres at 56,710 euros by an anonymous ‘Asian amateur’ according to auctioneers Christie’s.

Prospective buyers were given tastings and dinners by top wine merchants such as Albert Bichot while three-star Michelin chef Michel Troisgros of Roanne made some signature dishes.

BEAUNE, France (Reuters) – A sale of Burgundy wine at the world’s biggest charity auction Sunday drew lower bids than in previous years as economic jitters hit home.

The sale of the so-called President’s Lot is a highlight of the annual “Hospices de Beaune” auction, at which rich wine enthusiasts bid for fine Burgundy wines in a yearly sale whose proceeds are donated entirely to charity.

But economic worries crimped enthusiasm at Sunday’s sale. Most auctioned bottles drew less than their expected bids, while the President’s Lot — a 460-liter barrel — raised 110,000 euros, a steep drop from the 400,000 euros it raised last year.

“This year’s auction takes place in a difficult financial and economic context,” said Alain Suguenot, chairman of the hospices and mayor of Beaune, home to a striking medieval-era hospice in the midst of wine-growing country.

The auction is a meeting place for jet-setting millionaires and wine trades set on obtaining quality wines and funding charitable organizations.

Fashion figure Ines de la Fressange and comic film actor Christian Clavier presided over the sale of the special lot according to the traditional candle-flame method — where bidding continues until the flame dies.

The revenue goes to the French Alzheimer’s disease research association and a charity that funds cardiac surgery in France for children from poor countries.

PARIS (Reuters) – Wine lovers will get their first taste of the much-talked about 2011 harvest on Thursday as the “Beaujolais Nouveau” hits the bars and shelves of France and the wider world.

Proud of a 60-year tradition that has been propelled to global renown by a sleek retailing campaign, Beaujolais seeks to burnish its image as a wine to celebrate the new vintage and dampen criticism that its popularity lies more in the marketing than in the quality of the wine.

“At the start of my career, the arrival of the new Beaujolais was a pretext to share and have friendly parties,” said Emmanuel Delmas, a consultant-sommelier wine-expert.

“Today, the event is out of fashion. Consumers no longer accept bad wine and are looking for drinking pleasure, even if this means paying a bit more,” he added.

At an average 4 euros ($5.41) a bottle for a wine made in less than 10 weeks, Beaujolais Nouveau remains a profitable operation for many producers.

Beaujolais Nouveau is made from the Gamay grape. The 2011 vintage, a year characterized by unusual weather leading to relatively early harvests, appears to have provided higher quality wine from fewer grapes. The 2011 Beaujolais Nouveau was harvested early and could mature a bit longer until the traditional third Thursday of November.

Christophe Pacalet is based in Ville-Morgon, part of the Beaujolais area, and produces several kinds of wine as well as some Beaujolais Nouveau. He is respectful of nature on the vineyards he acquired in 1999 with his uncle.

PARIS (Reuters) – If you can’t afford a top bottle of Grand Cru from Bordeaux, you might be delighted to learn that most leading chateaux also make less expensive “second wines”.

In the quest for quality, Bordeaux vintners such as Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Latour and many other famous names have become more selective in order to obtain a signature taste and avoid vast differences between various vintages.

Bordeaux wines are blended wines and a vintner composes a vintage by using various grape varieties in changing proportions and increasingly keeps the juice from specific parcels apart up to the mixing stage. There is also a difference in age of the barrels used for ageing. New oak leaves a different imprint on the wine than older wood.

That means that a large part of the “unfinished” wine production does not end up in the main label bottles. Rather than selling all this in bulk to the wine trade, the best of the leftovers is bottled on the grounds with a different label.

Often these so-called second wines mature less well than the first wine and need to be drunk at a younger age. They can also use grapes from younger vines than those destined for the main wine as a result of regular replanting in the vineyard.

Sometimes, the estate may also decide a vintage does not make the cut for a first wine and presents it as a second wine.

Chateau Rauzan-Ségla did not sell a first wine in 1987 and the best juices went to its second wine Ségla. Rauzan-Ségla, a Margaux Grand Cru, celebrates its 350th anniversary this year and marked this with a label designed by Karl Lagerfeld for the 2009 vintage which was bottled this year.

PARIS (Reuters) – Unpredictable 2011 weather has divided French vintners into cautious early harvesters keen to avoid early autumn storms and nail-biting gamblers willing to risk catastrophe for more mature grapes in a year that has been flagged as exceptional for wine.

A dry spring, a wet start to summer, which has eased into more clement seasonal conditions and warm temperatures has persuaded some vintners to start harvesting in late August, while others have bided their time, measuring grape maturity with modern science and old-fashioned chewing and tasting.

Traditionally, the associations of vintners in a wine region set an official start to the harvest with “la levée du ban des vendanges” or the end to the harvest ban, which has its traces in the Middle Ages.

The ban allowed individual wine growers to benefit from the combined wisdom of a region in setting the harvest date, usually 100 days after the first flowering in the vineyards.

For the last few years however, this ban has no longer been universally compulsory but is still upheld in several areas for AOC wines and is a popular way of attracting wine tourists after the summer rush, such as in Saint-Emilion.

The Jurade de Saint-Emilion run a Medieval-style pageant with members of the Jurade in long red robes and square hats who attend Mass in the church, walk the cobbled streets and clamber to the top of Tour du Roi (King’s Tower) and then release balloons symbolizing grapes to mark the harvest.

The ban des vendanges in Saint-Emilion is on September 18 this year. The same weekend as in 2010, but a week later than 2009.

PARIS (Reuters) – Holidaymakers may deplore the wet weather in France this summer but the silver lining to all those cloudy days at the beach may eventually be a good to “exceptional” year for French wine.

Many wine experts say only the return of heavy rain, storms, hail or locusts in the latter part of the growing season will interrupt what appears to be a harvest set to benefit from some unusual weather this year.

Vintners all over the country have found a new spring in their steps after a dismal start to the growing season that made them fear for the worst. France is the world’s biggest wine exporter in value and the sector employs 120,000 people and generates 18 billion euros ($25 billion) in revenues.

During a dry spring, the vines searched for water and their roots burrowed deep into the ground while the growth of grapes was given lesser priority.

When the rain did come, at a time when July tourists were hoping for the sunny beaches, the water irrigated the vines and put the harvest back on track.

Jérôme Despey, the head of the wine sector at France AgriMer, an agriculture and fisheries body, said the harvest would be 10 to 30 days early and be superior in volume to 2010.

He told Europe 1 radio recently that the harvest was estimated at 47.6 millions hectoliters, which is more than the 45.3 millions hectoliters of 2010.

By Marcel Michelson

PARIS (Reuters Life!) – A group of southern French monks adhere strictly to the centuries-old rules of their monastery as they pray and work in a small community. But with modern marketing techniques they are lifting the wines they make to must-have items on exclusive tables in France and abroad.

The 20 or so monks of the Lerins Abbey on a small island in the Mediterranean near Cannes make about 30,000 bottles of wine per year, in between their regular religious duties.

The monks have been making wine on the islet since the Middle Ages, living in a monastery founded in the year 405 by Saint Honorat.

Over the centuries, the island and the abbey have seen many changes. They have been raided by pirates with the monks taken away, they changed from Benedictines to Cistercians and the monastery was closed by the French king in 1788 when there were just a few monks left.

The island was nationalized during the French revolution and the monastery sold to an actress who lived there for 20 years. The bishop of Fréjus bought the island in 1859 and 10 years later, Cistercian monks started a new community, using its ideal climate for growing vines to make wine.

In the 1990s, however, the monks decided to overhaul their wine-making process for better quality and marked five different ‘terroir’ areas on the island.

BORDEAUX (Reuters) – In the shadow of the big Vinexpo wine and spirits industry fair here last month, a group of international wine-makers gathered to promote wines that go against the mega-commercial trend to sell ever larger uniform quantities to big markets such as the United States or the growing markets of China and Russia.

Under the banner “Return to Terroir” several vintners presented their wines, made according to biodynamic growth rules and in small quantities, in the Bordeaux theatre as a fringe event to the Vinexpo in big halls outside of the city.

Biodynamic wine was once the preserve of alternative lifestyle types, but increased consumer concern about genetically modified food and the use of chemicals in agriculture has made organic farming and its more specific cousin biodynamic agriculture a mainstream pre-occupation for consumers in Europe and elsewhere.

Consequently, a long queue of people waited in the hot Bordeaux sun to sample the wines and attend films and lectures.

“It is about abandoning the Malthusian race towards overproduction and going back to the roots. It is about respectful wine-making, about ethical wine-making, about linking man closer to nature again,” said Jean-Michel Deiss of the Alsace region in an explanation of biodynamic wine-making.

But how does a biodynamic wine-maker survive financially with a smaller production.

“It is clear we provide wine to a certain elite,” Deiss said.