The vineyards around our house in the dordogne are primarily growing grapes for Monbazillac wine. This is a lovely sweet wine and to ensure this sweetness, the grapes are left to "rot" on the vine. This simply means that they are harvested as late as possible.

The Monbazillac wine is named for the main chateau near us - Chateau Monbazillac. It is an imposing building set on the top of a hill with beautiful views and is certainly worth a visit if you are staying at our house.












As the chateau also produces wine (of course), it has a shop and wine tasting. The actual Chateau is open to the public.

We provide a number of walks for our guests and one of them starts and ends at the Chateau. Pack a picnic and you have an excellent way to spend a day.

It is only January, and we are pretty much booked up for the peak season this year. Looking at the reservations, 70% of our holiday makers for 2008 are either people who have stayed at the house before, or friends of previous holiday makers. Hopefully this is a good sign that we are doing something right and keeping our guests happy!

The house is great for winter holiday lets and our guests who stayed to see in the New Year of 2008 had the following comments:

"The weather was spectacular - The Snow Queen's palace springs to mind; the vines were frozen white and the frost was absolutely beautiful. ..... No house we saw came close to yours which is so well equipped and comfortable"

This particular couple were looking to buy a house in the Dordogne to retire to.

We have just got home after such a relaxing holiday in your lovely house. We instantly felt at home and found it to be so comfortable and well equipped. We hire houses for all our holidays and yours had easily the most comfortable beds and furniture. We will certainly recommend it to our friends. The attention to detail such as books, board games and the huge DVD collection were much appreciated as was the UK TV. As a French teacher it would have been nice to have French TV but that is not a moan. In terms of feedback there is nothing negative at all to say-we feel so rested after a week in such a lovely place and the children thought it was wonderful.

07 April 2007

We've decided to start posting some of the guest comments to the blog and so as it is currently the off season in the Dordogne (although we are fully booked for Christmas and New Year), we'll start by updating with some of the previous comments.

This one is from 27 June 2007:

We have had a superb two weeks in your cottage at Foncaussade.The house is so comfortable, beautifully presented and in an ideal location. I repeat that your cottage was one of the best we've found in more than 20 years of holidaying in France.

We've just posted a video tour of the property - it can be found here:

http://www.holidayinthedordogne.com/property/dordogne_villa_tour.htm

Some people may be a bit apprehensive about renting a holiday home in France if their French is not up to snuff. But the Dordogne has many English-speaking residents - French, Dutch, German, and English.

You should naturally try to speak some French - especially with the locals in the village - as they will appreciate it tremendously. In fact, sometimes you may start to ask a question in French and they answer you in English (which can be frustrating if you are trying to brush up your language skills).

There are so many English speaking people in the Dordogne, that there is even an English newspaper. Sud Oest publishes this edition monthly and is available in some shops and as a download.

Most shops and vineyards speak English or at least have some English-speaking employees.

So don't worry about your language skills if you are tempted by a holiday in France - a decent phrase book and a willingness to try will go a long way... but if you need it, there are plenty who also speak English.