When we were house house sitting near Fontainebleau, the home owner told us to make sure we took part in France’s annual wine fair (Foire aux Vins), usually held each September. She explained that every year the large supermarket chains in France hold huge sales offering great discounts on wines in all price ranges. I have done some of my own research looking for tips on how to get the best deals.

Already, every French supermarket we have ever been to, both this year and before on shorter visits, stocks a large variety of French wines. Sometimes too many – because choosing is very difficult.

The same home owner from Fontainebleau gave us some advice on how to manage that issue as well. She said that if the bottle of wine had a medal from a large wine competition, such as one held in Paris or Lyon, that it was worth trying. Her thinking was that if a panel of people had tasted it and rated it, then it was possibly a better gamble than an un-tested bottle.

That helps eliminate lots of bottles of wine.

The next tip is to choose your buying price. She believed there are many good wines to be had in the €5-10 range, as there are in more expensive brackets. Factoring in the increasing value of the € compared with the $AUD, this range is about what we would normally pay for a bottle of wine ($AUD 8-17).

I’d read that during the Foire aux Vins, the locals go mad and buy lots of bottles of wine to re-stock their cellars.

Information available on the net identifies the start and end dates of these sales for the different supermarket chains. Other sites offer advice on good ‘years’ for certain French wines.

So armed with this knowledge, Mick and I headed to Bellac, a town about 20 minutes away that has a number of different supermarkets chains all in very close proximity. Our goal was to get some good bargains that we could consume during the remainder of our stay here (less than 2 weeks), and some we could share with the owners the night before we depart.

Carrefour, LIDL and Intermarché are all located in Bellac – so we didn’t have to go very far to compare what was on offer.

The best specials appeared to be available in the “4 + 2 for free” deals. There was a lot to choose from, but Mick and I thought the LIDL deals were the best.

We bought a medal-winning Bordeaux from Saint Émilion  (with a 4+2 offer) for an average price of just under €5. And, we could not go past one of our favourite wine producing areas – Courbières. We bought a “4+2” deal for an average price per bottle of €1.98.

We also bought single bottles of a few others, and over the next few days we will partake in a few wine tasting sessions!!

Last night, Mick made me one of my favourite meals over here – Fisherman’s Stew. It went very well with the Saint Émilion Bordeaux.

If we were real locals, we’d definitely be buying up lots of cases to be stored away for the next 12 months.

I wonder how much freight would cost to send them to Australia??