Local secrets - Castres-Gironde

Neighbours gave us a plastic litre bottle of fresh wine, advising that it drank particularly well with roast chestnuts. Following a forage in the forest and a little work in the kitchen we duly cracked the unlabelled bottle and poured out glasses of faintly fizzy, cloudy white wine. Slightly sweet, though clean as a whistle, this stuff had been bottled from the primary fermenters (before full attenuation and clarification) and sold by word of mouth at the chateaux for a couple of euros a litre, strictly to the locals, in an under-the-counter style. And cracking stuff it was too, the whole experience thoroughly local and singular.

We sell our beer fresh from the cellar here in a similar fashion and we've a growing bunch of regulars turning up with containers various as suits their needs. This kind of sensible 'producer direct to customer' business is growing again, thanks to a widening realisation that it's more rewarding than buying soulless ale from a faceless middleman. It doesn't suit everyone, and it won't work on a massive scale, but for the few that care this service will always be valued.