Le Rouge et Le Blanc natural wine magazine

One from Trevor*: "If you haven't come across it before the quarterly wine magazine "Le Rouge et le Blanc" is an invaluable resource. (Unfortunately only published in French!).

It's been going for 30 years now and for all that time without advertising income of any sort.

Unusually for the French it recognises the existence of wine other than that produced in France - for example issue 108 had an in-depth piece on South Australia. The same issue had a typical wide range of material which ranged from a piece on the stellar Côtes Rôties of René Rostaing to a peasant winemaker in the Valais with one and a half hectares. Including full tasting notes on what he produces!

Of course its all about "natural wine" (whatever that means) and for Le Rouge et le Blanc that is a very broad church indeed. In their 100 plus issues they've covered just about everyone who's anyone in the natural wine world and made a fair few discoveries on the way.

The magazine is sold by subscription but is also often available at the classic natural wine bars dotted around France. If you subscribe (which costs 58€ in Europe or 70€ in the rest of the world) they'll send you a list of all the back numbers that are still available - which is most of them - and they also list the contents of each edition.

They're based in Paris - where else? - and they have a website www.lerougeetleblanc.com.

Try them - they are a mine of dispassionate non-commercially-influenced information.

* For those new to this blog Trevor (Vibert) is my husband, immensely knowledgeable about natural wine and will be posting whenever I can persuade him to!