Wendy
I don’t make wine for a living; I drink wine for a living! I’ve spent over 30 years living and working in Bordeaux as a wine educator, writer and guide. I went to Paris from the UK for a year, to study food and wine marketing and stayed. After eight years in Paris, I moved to Bordeaux to marry a local château owner and negociant and got knee-deep in wine. Now I teach wine classes, run tastings and wine events around the world and welcome people on tours of the vineyards sharing my passion for Bordeaux.
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As a yoga teacher, I’m passionate about wellness and I’m always looking at how I can balance enjoying wine and staying healthy. I published ‘The Drinking Woman’s Diet’ to share my healthy passion for wine and recommendations to help maintain a healthy lifestyle without giving up wonderful wine and fine food. These tips and tricks are also in my online course, ‘7 weeks to a liver friendly lifestyle’.
As I researched the book, I became more aware of the importance our food choices have on our health and how food choices affect how we process alcohol. Wine and food matching is more than just a fun exercise in flavours. Drinking on a full stomach slows down alcohol absorption, which is a healthier approach to drinking. Vegetables are key to a healthy diet and while I’m not vegetarian, the more I researched, the more I realised I really needed to increase the amount of vegetables in my diet. By making vegetables the centre of the meal, if I do add meat or fish, it’s as more of a seasoning or complement.
Synergy – team work
Sharing recipes to complement and help put into practice some of the healthy lifestyle choices recommended in The Drinking Woman’s Diet had been in the back of my mind for a while. When Sally started chatting about her challenges as a vegetarian wine maker, seeing few, if any recommendations for red wine with veggie dishes, it seemed obvious to pool our resources. Between us we hit on lots of themes that speak to us and we hope will speak to you too.
As well as being a wine maker, Sally is a great cook, witness her successful wine bar and tasting room at Château George 7. And as more and more people are eating plant-based, we want to highlight ways plant-based food is wine friendly - which wine to serve with which veggies, why certain combinations work and how to find that perfect pairing.