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'Vine' form for French football star

Former French footballer and Newcastle United player David Ginola will return to Tyneside this weekend to launch his award-winning wine in the UK. The soccer star - who spent two years at Newcastle United in the mid-1990s - has swapped the changing rooms for the cellar and has become a wine producer.

He will be meeting up with his former boss Kevin Keegan to show him how he’s been spending his time since hanging up his football boots.

His Coste Brulade 2007 Rose produced at his own winery in Cotes de Provence has already won a silver medal at his debut at the International Wine Challenge in London.

And now it is being unveiled to the public for the first time at The Journal Taste 2 Food and Drink Festival at Linden Hall Hotel, Golf and Country Club near Morpeth, Northumberland on August 30. At the festival Ginola will be joined by television’s Hairy Bikers, Simon King and Dave Myers, and wine expert Malcolm Gluck along with 100 artisan producers.

Ginola has apparently always had an interest in fine wine and said that it seemed a natural progression to become a producer once he had retired from football. He bought into an existing partnership with the co-operative cellar of Coste Brulade in the small town of Puget-Ville which is close to his Sainte Maxime home in the South of France.

Ginola told the Journal: “I had been looking to buy a vineyard in Provence for years. Whilst still a footballer I tried to buy the Domaine de la Bastide Blanche near St Tropez but was outbid. I finally discovered Coste Brulade and together with Jean-Christophe Audéoud, the domaine’s winemaker, we produced a rosé from the 2007 harvest.

“I hope the quality of my wine makes it credible and is on a par with my interest and the work we put in.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .