Spontaneously I was able to take 10 days of vacation this summer. Since I've been working with La Belle Iloise for a long time and didn't know Brittany yet, I packed my suitcase and my wife into the car. Our headquarters were located on the Crozon Peninsula in Finistère. From there we visited different sardine factories in a star shape. On the very first day we got up at 6 a.m. and drove east at 7 a.m. Early Breton fog surrounded us. At 10 o'clock we were in Quiberon at La Belle-Iloise. La Belle-Iloise is one of the last sardine manufacturers in France. Although it is very big and constantly expanding, the working methods are still the same as 100 years ago. Of course, machines have taken over a lot of the work, but the most important thing - sorting and trimming the fresh sardines - is still done by hand. We have purchased many new products to taste which we may soon add to our range. With a bang we managed to visit another one of our suppliers, La Quiberonnaise. The La Quiberonnaise factory is located directly on the harbor opposite the pier for the fishing boats. The Quiberonnaise buys the sardine catch unsorted, which means they also have smaller sardines on offer. They offer anchovy fillets preserved in olive oil (like the sardines), which we already have in the program. You also work with the butter pope Jean-Yves Bordier and with him you produce the sardines with Bordier butter: sardines with natural butter, with butter with seaweed from Roscoff and butter with yuzu. We already have them in our range. We bought a lot of samples here too. Unfortunately we could not visit the factory due to lack of time. After a Plateau de Fruits de Mer at the port, we drove north to the Pointe de Penmarch where we had another appointment. We visited La Compagnie Bretonne des Poissons there, tasted it and bought samples again. The company is another family business with a long history, but much smaller and with less variety than the other two sardine manufacturers. The next day we drove to the north of Finistère, to Roscoff. Shortly before reaching our destination, our path led past an impressive number of artichoke fields. The harvest was in full swing. We found ourselves in Brittany's famous "golden vegetable belt". Information is available here: Artichauts du Léon . We had an appointment with Algoplus, a Conserverie Artisanale that started processing seaweed. It is based in Roscoff because it has the world's highest concentration of edible seaweed. As always, we bought many samples and were already enthusiastic about the different rillettes. We'll meet again in September in Paris at a delicatessen trade fair and will then decide. In the afternoon we went to Carantec to visit Alain Madec's "Prat-Ar-Coum" oyster tanks. Unfortunately nobody was there. We will come back. After that we had the whole week off and could visit the places that interested us. The weather was very good, no rain, only sunshine with temperatures around 30 degrees. Our favorite restaurant was at the Hôtel Thalassa in Camaret-sur-Mer. Everything is fresh and comes straight from the sea to the table; the chef is good and respects the products. You also have to eat galettes and crepes in Brittany. We liked them best in the "Le Korrigan" creperie . Time flew by and we started our return journey. We had the last appointment of our trip in Orléans at the Vinaigrerie Martin Pouret. The house of Martin Pouret has existed since 1797 and is today the last and only authentic manufacturer of vinegar and mustard using the traditional Orléans process. Martin Pouret preserves the ancestral recipes and local craftsmanship according to the rules of the royal edict of 1580. The healthy and natural vinegar from Orléans is made exclusively from wines of the best French grape varieties and fermented in oak barrels according to the traditional Orléans method. Only a good wine becomes a good vinegar! Orléans - Vinegar is a combination of three factors: temperature, air and time. The Orleans process is a natural conversion of wine into vinegar. Surface fermentation takes place without stirring the wine, without the addition of ferments or antioxidants. Oak barrels (240 l) are half filled with vinegar and mother of vinegar. So the surface is the largest. 50 liters of wine are added. At an ambient temperature of 28 degrees Celsius, the wine turns into vinegar within about 3 weeks. The Martin Pouret vinegar then matures for at least 12 months in oak barrels at a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius. The result is no comparison to industrial vinegar, which is manufactured within 24 hours. In the rooms where the barrels are stored for fermentation, it took our breath away and our eyes burned. But it still smelled good. Packed with more samples, the journey home could begin. Outside temperature 37 degrees! On our trip, we were not only impressed by the beautiful, varied landscape, but also by the friendliness of all the people we came into contact with. We'll definitely go again.

In September 2019 we, my wife and I, were in Porto and visited some winemaker friends. Because of the grape harvest, we were immediately harnessed. First we visited Márcio Lopes, our supplier of the Vinho Verde “Pequenos Rebentos”. In the Douro Valley, near Peso da Regua, Márcio has his second mainstay and presses Douro wines of the brands "Proíbido" and "Permitido".

The Arribas Wine Company project has its leased vineyards around Bemposta. The creators are two friends, Ricardo Alves and Fred Machado, who drive their project forward with a lot of energy, physical effort, passion and knowledge. We received a very warm welcome on a Sunday and Ricardo drove us straight to the vineyards on donkey paths in his old 4x4. At 80 or even 100 years old, the vines are very old and no longer yield much.

Cidre, the French cider, is the perfect drink for spring and summer. It is refreshing, sparkling and light, can be combined in many ways, low in calories and alcohol, but rich in taste. We visited François Huet from Cidrerie Pierre Huet at his estate in Cambremer, Normandy.

In mid-July, Philippe and his wife Evi were back in Portugal. Actually, mainly to visit the Vinho ao Vivo wine fair in Porto, but of course the two discovered and experienced much more.

Champ Divin's Crémant du Jura has been the undisputed team favorite for about 3 years. So it was really time to finally visit the winemaker couple Valérie and Fabrice Closset on site. In addition to Crémant, we were able to taste many other very special and typical Jura wines.

At the beginning of June we took the whole family on a small wine tour from Champagne, through Burgundy to the Jura and visited some winegrowers. You learn best when you can see, hear, feel and taste where the wine comes from. Besides, nothing beats personal relationships! A highlight of the five-day trip was the visit to Champagne Moutard in Buxeuil, one of the smallest communes of the Côte des Bar in southern Champagne. Read and see here how warmly the "Buxeuil Boys" welcomed us and immerse yourself in the "Champagne Feeling" with us!

Yes, we are Puxisardinophile! Puxisardinophile are the lovers of sardine cans - whether filled or empty as a collector's item. Although we prefer the filled ones. One of our favorite sardine brands comes from Matosinhos, about ten kilometers northwest of Porto on the Atlantic. In this port city is the Fábrica de Conservas Pinhais, the Pinhais canning factory, which we were allowed to visit on our last Porto trip. Here you can find out what makes Pinhais & Nuri so special. Have fun!

Maître Philippe & Filles are better known for French cheeses and we want to keep it that way. However, there are rumors that the Dutch also achieve quite acceptable results when it comes to cheese... The most famous Dutch cheese is Gouda, a large, round hard cheese made from cow's milk, if possible without holes, which comes from the eponymous village in the Netherlands, or at least is named after it. The name itself is not protected, which is why Gouda can and is made anywhere in the world. It is therefore obvious that the quality is not always right.

At the beginning of July I had the great pleasure of traveling with a Kabel Eins film crew to the Ile de Ré in Brittany to find out how fleur de sel is made. We visited Maud and James, the two extremely likeable salt workers from the Comptoir des Pertuis, who took us to their salt marsh and gave us an insight into their exciting profession. Read the short illustrated report of this exciting journey on our blog now!

In the last week of February we flew to Porto to visit the two wine fairs "Essência do Vinho" and "Simplesmente Vinho". In just a few days we have discovered numerous exciting wines, seen many friends again and placed a few new orders that will be coming to us very soon. These include the fantastic rosé by Rita Marques (Conceito), a very elegant encruzado and a fresh vinho verde. Read more about our discoveries and experiences in this blog post...

Jamon Ibérico , the air-dried ham from Spanish pigs, is well known among gourmets . It fetches high prices and is said to be the best ham in the world. Particularly famous and renowned is the Jamon Ibérico de Bellota or Bellota ham, which comes from pigs subjected to traditional acorn fattening. But how does it actually look in Germany? Does it always have to be smoked Black Forest ham in this country? No! In Lower Franconia, the graduate agricultural scientist Hans Huss subjects 250 so-called acorn pigs to species-calculated acorn fattening before an excellent acorn ham is made from them, which really doesn't have to hide behind Jamon Ibérico!