The first Book and Wine Fair takes place on Saturday November 16 and Sunday November 17 in Mareau-aux-Prés. This new event, organized on the grounds of the AOC orléans-cléry, invites everyone to come together around a particularly rich and exciting program.
Give flesh to an ancestral alliance: that of literature and wine. This is the ambition of the first Book and Wine Fair in the Loire region, organized on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 November, in Mareau-aux-Prés.
“A great first in the Loiret, but also in the Center Val de Loire region, which is very surprising in the land of Rabelais, Balzac, Ronsard, Péguy, Genevoix…”, lists the initiator of the project, Jean-Pierre Delpuech. “And this, while Orléans has been a wine-growing land since Antiquity.”
A unique show to celebrate the alliance of letters and wine, in Mareau-aux-Prés
Professor of history and geography and founder of the associative publishing house Le Mail, in Orléans, Jean-Pierre Delpuech had the idea of bringing together audiences who do not necessarily meet around an unprecedented event: the audience of book fairs with that of wine fairs. “And above all, to set up this event in the territories, in rural areas, where things can happen that are just as interesting as in the city, in this case in Mareau-aux-Prés.”
And the meeting with Bertrand Hauchecorne, the mayor of Mareau-aux-Prés who immediately joined the project, was decisive.
“Today, we tend to see Orléans from the angle of vinegar. But we have forgotten the importance of wine in Orléans, whose vineyards were the most important in the Loire Valley in the 19th century. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Orléans vineyard is even comparable in power and richness to that of Bordeaux in the middle of the 20th century. It's crazy!
Jean-Pierre Delpuech (president of Vignes et vins en lands de Loire)
Proposing such an event in the heart of the AOC Orléans-Cléry therefore made sense, notes the historian and geographer. “In the Loiret, at the very beginning of the 19th century, there were 33,000 hectares of vines: wine was made from Châteauneuf-sur-Loire to Tavers, and even more on the right bank than on the left bank.”
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To create this show, which should be a landmark, it took a year of preparation with the Marepresian municipal council team. But “we all agreed on the substance: it was about offering a popular, festive, quality and accessible event”. Indeed, with the exception of the purchase of the collector's glass at the entrance to the show (4 euros) and the dinner based on local products (20 euros per adult, 10 euros for children), all of the event is free.
It's Bacchus's fault…
“The public will thus be able to attend the show It's Bacchus's faultby Amédée Bricolo, participate in family dictation and listen to round tables and conferences by internationally renowned academics:
- Jean-Robert Pitte, academician, geographer and major writer in the history of wine;
- Nicolas Charles, researcher at the Geological and Mining Research Bureau;
- the historians Françoise Michaud-Fréjaville and Emmanuel Brouard;
- archaeologist Alain Ferdière;
- Marieke Aucante and Gabrielle Vizzavona, specialist journalists;
- oenologists and also authors in signing.
“It is not a question of giving conferences for a symposium audience but of proposing a popular event in the noble sense of the term.”
The president of the Friends of Michèle Desbordes recounts a little-known part of the life of the Orléans writer, “a lost friend”
Katia Beaupetit
