francofiled

Browsing the wine section at my local supermarket, I suddenly stopped as I found it interesting to come across these bottles with French idioms on their labels.  Varietals / Grape Varieties More about their meanings below, meantime the varietal names, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay are by now so well known to wine consumers that they need no further explanation.  If it were a competition varietals would win among local consumers. In many establishments that's all that is offered.  However, most of the wine in France is bottled with regional or estate names and may not immediately recommend themselves to those who select their wine according to grape variety - Chablis, for example is a Chardonnay.   We're getting there but it may take a while longer until outlets and the wine consuming public develop greater confidence with LaBel(le)France  And that's why these labels are such a good idea.  They create  a splash of fun with the language and...

  It was a green lemon moment.  It happened when translating  citron vert   for a menu I was working on.   It would be nice to say that my rendition was due to pressure of time or working late at night but no, from a French language perspective, it was a basic school day error. The translation should of course have been lime .  I realised and self-corrected my mistake for a later version but the original menu had already been circulated.  You can guess: Blush and red now added to the colour palette of lemon, green and lime. However: The interesting thing is that green lemons do exist and they are not limes.  Although lemons and limes are from the same plant family they are not the same fruit.  In fact, some supermarkets recently had to compensate for shortages of lemons - you know the yellow ones - by selling green lemons.  Now they are the same fruit at different stages of ripeness, with the green ones having some days extra s...