Well, is the market on the wine shopper’s rounds?  This query from a visiting American friend prompted me to think about how we find our way to the wines we like best.  For years, our wine-shopping options have run from trips to regional winemakers, buying bottles or boxes of wine at the hypermarché, popping into a local wine shop for a lovely selection (at a price), or buying wine in weekly markets.  Which shopping mode do we follow?  All of the above!  For each suits a time and mood, and fits into the dips and surges of income and available time.

The dynamics of wine shopping have changed in the dozen years since we arrived in southwest France, in the Bergerac vignoble to be specific. At first we took a large cubitainer (sturdy plastic barrel) directly to a winemaker and said: “Fill ‘er up”! Using an antique corking apparatus, the wine had to be quickly bottled, then stored for the upcoming months (or weeks, with the arrival of thirsty visitors). All of this depended on storing clean wine bottles, buying corks, and having time to swab down the kitchen floor.

Once I took into account the time and bottle-washing (being chief cook and bottle-washer), it seemed there must be other alternatives to stocking a supply of wine.  The empty bottles are dusty now, waiting for another round of rinsing and corking.  A recent visit with a wine maker supplied our ‘best’ racks with bottles of Côtes de Bergerac red and a case of lovely, fruity Bergerac white–my preferred apéritif.  From the village grocery, a row of mineral water bottles filled with basic reds and whites are always on hand for various cooking and marinating uses.  Still, weekly markets offer opportunities to explore wines of a wider region, attracting makers of sweet Pineau de Charentes northwest of the Dordogne, reds from the Côtes de Duras south of Bergerac, and with a bit of luck- from any part of the vast Bordeaux vignoble to the west.

A Sunday morning jaunt to a picturesque market serves to update this wine-shopper, taking our enthusiastic friend along for his first market dégustation.  In the medieval village of Issigeac, the church square is the setting for their weekly market, drawing shoppers and Sunday dawdlers to savor its historic ambiance.  We can count on seeing small scale vignerons who make red wine when they are not raising ducks or chickens, as well as larger stalls displaying a wider range.  Often - not always - dégustations or sample sips of a wine are part of the wine selection ritual. This pause offers a good chance to ask vintners about the problems and pleasures of wine-making.  Interspersed in the market between fruit, chickens, cheese and flower stalls, there are half dozen vendors of wines.  Organic wine-making methods are gaining ground in the Bergerac terroir, with several producers of vins biologique  (organic wines) represented in the Issigeac market.

We step up to a vendor of organic wines who displays their 2005 millésime –last autumn’s harvest, now ready for sipping. Would we like to sample red or white, dry or sweet? The steps of a tasting, even on a chilly spring morning, are always the same:  admire the color, take a little whiff of the bouquet, then sip.  Allow a forgiving margin for the reds that need to be warmed to room temperature - which this tasting in the chilly air limits.  It is a better time to sample cool white wine – just before noon on a Sunday morning.  Our friend nods in agreement.  The organic white is fresh and crisp, so we buy a packet of three bottles. He winks: Next dégustation?

Along a narrow side street lined with half-timbered houses, we find an elderly wine-maker from the Lussac-St.Emilion region selling his red wines.  He recognizes us with a broad smile and apologizes that he is not equipped with dégustation glasses. We engage in a jovial exchange, assuring him that we have enjoyed his wines before and would like to have a bottle of his 2003 with our Sunday dinner.  As we turn to leave with a three-pack of red wines, I nudge our visitor:  Next dégustation, on the terrace at home - under our blooming plum tree!