chateau la tour de l'eveque blanc

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One Vineyard, two Terroirs

Our philosophy is the result of a long family tradition based on quality and organic farming. The vinification is focused on the respect of our terroir.

FROM HYÈRES TO PIERREFEU-DU-VAR

In the hilly valley of the Maurettes the land Schisteux of the Phyllades de Hyères consists of shaley soil derived from Silurian layers, and Permian red sandstone. The vines covering 78 hectares, are on average twenty years old.

Black varieties :  Cabernet-Sauvignon, Cinsault, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah White varieties :  Rolle, Sémillon, Ugni-Blanc

ORGANIC FARMING

Our philosophy is the result of a long family tradition focused on quality, expertise on organic farming. Proud of their terroir, men and women work with passion and respect in our estates.

The labour of the soils is performed through plowings, without chemical weed-killers. We us infusions and biodynamic preparations on some plots, combined with treatments with copper and sulphur.

"Our practices : organic farming, biodynamic principles, horse plowings, manual harvesting, massal selection."

MANUAL HARVESTING

Manual harvesting in boxes. We start to cut very early in the morning to harvest fresh grapes. Our staff has been trained from generations to make a careful selection of the grapes while harvesting. We use refrigerated trucks in order to maintain the grapes at a perfect temperature and avoid any risk of oxydation. Manual harvesting is key for the vinification of our wines because our rosé and white wines are pressed in whole-bunch grapes.

THE WINEMAKING

Our focus is to develop and modernize the estates in order to improve the production, storage and exportation of our wines, maintaining the best level of «quality & innovation» .

"Our principles : Respect of the terroir, vinification by gravity, indigenous yeasts, direct soft press in whole bunch grapes, champanese Coquard press."

Rosé & White :  Vinification by gravity, without crushing, direct pressing in whole bunch grapes, on an hydraulic press typical from Champagne. Fermentation using indigenous yeasts and storage in stainless steel vats under controlled temperature.

Red : Vinification by gravity   with   maceration. Fermentation with indigenous yeasts. The wines are stored in stainless steal tanks and the cuvée Noir&Or is aged in barrels.

When he acquired the Château la Tour de l’Evêque in 1958, Gabriel Sumeire digged under the cellar in order to increase space and enter new stainless steal tanks.

In 2011 Régine Sumeire built a new cellar on several levels in order to respect gravity principles for better winemaking. This new cellar allowed to use the new version of horizontal hydraulic Coquard press machines.

Contenants :  Stainless steal tanks, concrete, barrels, concrete eggs

Bottling is done by respecting gravity principles. We particularly focus on the good respect of dissolved oxygen during the different winemaking moves and during bottling in order to limit the use of SO2.

CHÂTEAU LA TOUR DE L'ÉVÊQUE© 2017 All rights reserved

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Château la Tour de L’Évêque, blanc 2022

• par Marc André Gagnon
• 8 décembre 2023

En ligne (24) et dans 50 magasins.

D’autres vins de ce domaine .

Château La Tour de l'Évêque Côtes de Provence Rosé

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The story of the Moscow gold: How the Spanish war was lost

Francisco Olaya 'El Oro de Negrin'

(Ediciones Madre Tierra, Mostoles 1990)

This book is the product of almost thirty years investigation, involving examination of thousands of books and pamphlets, around a million documents, and the combing of 32 archives in Spain and beyond. Olaya's work is an attempt to come up with a satisfactory explanation of the denouement of the Spanish civil war. He is highly critical of the leadership of the PSOE (Socialist Workers Party of Spain, now in power) during the civil war.

In great and documented detail Olaya examines the whole topic of what has hitherto been known as the 'Moscow gold' and which he re-christens 'Negrin's gold', gold to the tune of 5,500 million pesetas (1937). About half of this sum wound up in the Soviet Union. A small portion went to France. The remainder passed to the republican government's purchasing commissions, set up by Indalecio Prieto of the PSOE to obtain war material.

In 1954 Jose Peirats was commissioned by the CNT -in-exile to write his monumental five volume 'La CNT en la revolucion espanola'. In the course of his researches he was accorded access to documentation belonging to the CNT and in London in the keeping of Polgare. When Polgare died in 1957, access to the documents was offered to Olaya by CNT colleagues aware of his researches. Among the documents, he discovered copies of 52 letters written to Negrin by his special agent, identified only as 'C'.

One of the reports from 'C' is an account of an exchange between Salvador do Madariaga (the philosopher and original wartime Ambassador to Britain) and the British Foreign Minister, in which British preoccupation with helping the Francoist side was evident. Olaya, using textual clues, attempted to Identify 'C'.

At first Olaya suspected one Calvino, who had figured in all the Purchasing Commissions ('C' had complained of corruptions by these commissions). Calvino however denied this and further investigations led Olaya to conclude 'C' had been PSOE luminary Celestino Alvarez. This was confirmed to him by two agents who had been operating on behalf of the CNT - FAI in Paris at the time. Further inquiries led Olaya to records from Turkish customs and cargo checks (by a French secret agent) of shipping that passed through the Dardanelles en route to Spain with foodstuffs and war materials. Olaya lists this information in an appendix to his book.

A record of the accidental discovery (at the bottom of a crate of goods being returned to the USSR as defective or unusable) of gold led Olaya to query the conventional account of the shipment of Spain's gold reserves to the USSR 'for safe keeping'. Other seemingly unrelated evidence led to the conclusion that, aside from the usual shipments, gold was removed from Spain via the diplomatic pouch to Prague and, also, unrecorded, aboard other vessels.

Olaya holds that the war was lost by the republic due to corruption in the Purchasing Commissions plus the failure of Negrin and Prieto (when so informed by 'C') to take remedial action.

Olaya argues that half of the gold reserves were was sent to the USSR and half to France, partly for their use of the Purchasing Commissions and partly to open accounts in the name of specific individuals… an account in Negrin's name held 390 million francs, one in the name of Julio Lopez Masegase held 198 millions. Olaya's book details all these. He says that so far no account has been taken of the assets seized from Franco's supporters, reckoned at almost three times the value of the gold held in Spain's treasury.

Franco was later able to recover a part of what had been described as Negrin's personal treasure. Negrin's ability to realise the value of his gold in France makes nonsense of the claim that gold had to be removed to the USSR for safekeeping. Olaya states: 'I wanted to check out everything sold by C who was Negrin's informant on activities taking place abroad but I wanted confirmation from other sources. To my surprise, I was to amass a wealth of documents that confirmed and expanded upon the whole business'.

In 1988 Olaya's book in manuscript was a finalist for the 'Espejo de Espana' prize awarded by Planeta publishers. However, Planeta refused to publish it, as did all of the other major publishers in Spain. As a result, the book has been issued by Ediciones Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) of Mostoles. Its author claims: 'The book is based on documents and we are not championing any interests or making partisan propaganda, merely telling the whole truth'.

The book's appearance has coincided with a PSOE desire to sell itself to the electorate under the slogan of '100 years of Integrity with the Socialist Party'. Olaya himself has explained 'it may appear that the book has emerged at an opportune time, but no, that is mere coincidence'. ~ Paul S.

In KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 1 [1991]

• Negrin Lopez, Juan (1887-1956)
• Olaya, Francisco
• Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol PSOE
• Russia / Russian Empire / Soviet Union
• Spanish Revolution and Spanish Civil War SCW

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• KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 1 [1991] .
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• Imanol, - . Further Data on Riojan Involvement in Guerrilla Groups in France and Spain .
• Revision 6 : Post from the Camps [1 August 1939] .
• Araquistain, Luis . A Socialist Exposes the Counter-Revolutionary Role of the Communist Party of Spain [Leaflet, 1939] .

MIA   >  Archive   >  Mandel

Ernest Mandel

De gaulle’s trip to moscow.

Source: From World Outlook , 29 July, 1966, Volume 4, No. 24, Paris and New York City Written: July, 1966 Translated: by World Outlook Transcrition & Marked-up: by David Walters for the Marxists’ Internet Archive 2009. Public Domain: Creative Commons Common Deed . You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

[The following article has been translated from the July 9 issue of the Belgian left socialist weekly La Gauche.]

“As to alliances, we would think that they ought to be constructed ‘in three stages’: a Franco-Russian treaty procuring a first degree of security; the Anglo-Soviet pact and an agreement to be concluded between France and Great Britain constituting a second degree; the future pact of the United Nations, in which America would be a capital element, crowning the whole and serving as the ultimate recourse.” It was in these terms that Charles de Gaulle in December 1944, at the time of his first trip to Moscow, defined his concepts concerning European security, according to his Memoirs. (Volume III, p. 83, “Livre de Foche” edition.) Many things indicate that he has not changed his mind twenty-two years later. Wasn’t his second trip to Moscow designed to advance this concept?

Those with a more dour outlook will immediately object. The head of the Fifth Republic had something much more Machiavellian in mind. What he is aiming at is the predominance of France in Europe, or at least Western Europe if he is unable to extend it “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”

Since France doesn’t have the necessary economic weight, it must neutralize the drive of German industry through military superiority and diplomatic ruses. Hence it has two interests in common with the Kremlin—to block the Bundeswehr from getting nuclear arms and to break the American grip on “little Europe.” Thus the trip to Moscow was a power play against Washington and Bonn.

No doubt these analysts are right on the long-range aims of the general. But the nature of things is such that the designs of men—no Tatter how imbued with their own “grandeur”—are not at all sufficient to shape the destiny of the world. This is determined by the relationship among the big social forces. More than once in history, the diplomatic maneuvers of a power that was too weak have ended in serving the ‘big ones” despite the best intentions in the world. Didn’t this happen once again with the trip to Moscow?

Thus in the United States, the most cunning, like the servile tools of the (Johnson administration, carefully refrained from denouncing the general. “De Gaulle in Moscow served the United States despite the United States,” said some. ‘He worked for the whole West,’ others said approvingly. In Bonn, after weeks of glacial chill, the barometer of Franco-German relations again points to “fair weather.”

The truth is that de Gaulle, contrary to the groundless fears of some, did not betray his West German class brothers any more than he did his Polish class brothers at the time of his first trip.

In December 1944, Stalin dangled a “good, firm alliance,” real support against the Anglo-Saxons, in return for immediate recognition of the Lublin committee. But de Gaulle was not deceived. This would moan betraying a perhaps ‘democratic’ but certainly bourgeois Poland in behalf of a perhaps despotic but certainly noncapitalist Poland. And he did not want to take responsibility for an act contrary to “honor and honesty.” (Memoirs, Volume III, p sa.)

In June 1966, Brezhnev and Kosygin dangled an offer of just as real support against the United States, even genuine political leadership in Europe. In exchange they asked for recognition of the German Democratic Republic; that is, “of the two German states.” Be Gaulle brusquely replied that there could be no question of recognizing this “artificial construction. And with that rejoinder the serious conversation came to an end. The balance was nothing but decorations and fine talk.

Of course, the differences between Paris and Washington, between Fans and Bonn, are real in relation to the political future of our continent, its relations with the United States and the best strategy to follow to block the rise of the anti-imperialist and anticapitalist forces in the world.

Be Gaulle seeks a Europe freed largely from American supremacy. He seeks an Atlantic alliance on the basis of equality between North America and a Western Europe combined under his guidance. He favors a more supple policy, with regard to the USSR, which in his opinion should be definitively separated from China and the “extremists” among the revolutionists of the Third World, through some indispensable concessions.

He holds that it is necessary to “relax” the tensions to be able to resolve the questions in dispute, such as the reunification of Germany, while the Americans and the Germans of Bonn maintain that without this reunification no real relaxation is possible in Europe. But at bottom, they all defend a common cause—the cause of Big Capital. They all seek to hold back the enemy—socialism and the peoples of the Third World who are rising and seeking to break out of the capitalist world market. They all seek refuge under the “nuclear umbrella” of the Pentagon, without which they cannot counterbalance Soviet military power on the European continent (if anything confirms this, it is the explosion of the ridiculous French nuclear device in Polynesia which amounts to nothing in face of the power of the USSR). The means may differ, the aim is the same.

In this respect the Soviet Union represents something else again. The means are perhaps the same, but the aim is entirely different. Thus treaties on mutual consultation can be concluded—even by means of a direct telephone line!—treaties on technical cooperation, or whatever cultural and commercial exchanges are desired; the fundamental opposition between the interests of the French bourgeoisie and the Soviet leaders will by no means make it possible to form a genuine alliance in the present world context.

The Soviet leaders are aware of the weakness of the present Communist parties in Western Europe (for which they are in part responsible). They are aware of the temporary stabilization of caitalism in this part of the world (which they largely contributed to). From this they draw the conclusion that it is necessary to return to a policy that seeks to ‘exploit the interimperialist contradictions,” as before the second world war. They commit an error in believing that de Gaulle is ready to follow them into a têtei-tête, when he seeks in reality only to increase his power and prestige within the Atlantic Alliance

The French Communist leaders would obviously make a still greater error in concluding that the time has come for an ‘agonizing revision” of their political orientation in France, as in 1935 or 1944.

It is true that the policy of the USSR places them before a cruel dilemma; they no longer know if they should applaud or complain when the Soviet crowds cheer the person who remains, until proved otherwise, the fiercest and most dangerous class enemy of the French workers. If they oppose him, they are tempted to make an alliance with de Gaulle’s pro-American adversaries like Nollet and Nitterrand—and then the capitals of Eastern Europe are not very contented. And if they approve, what remains of their role as an opposition in France? There remains the socialist perspective which stands in complete opposition to the politics of de Gaulle; but the leaders of the French Communist party do not think this is any more “realistic’ than do the Social Democratic leaders of the SF10, or even the technocratic ideologists of neocapitalism.

That will the practical results of the trip amount to? The American Newsweek summarized the situation as follows: “At least he will have succeeded in engaging the Russians in a new diplomatic dialogue with the West.” That puts it in a nutshell. At a time when the intensification of the American aggression against the Vietnamese people makes a public dialogue between Moscow and Washington more difficult, de Gaulle is playing, objectively, the role of go-between for the Atlantic Alliance as a whole Thanks to him, the head of one of the capitalist states in this alliance has been acclaimed by crowds in the Soviet Union. For the first time in many years they have been shown a face of capitalism which their own leaders now say is benevolent, attractive, peaceful, full of good intentions toward the peoples of the world.

Pravda in connection with this trip, talks about an ‘irreversible process.” Let them beware of certain processes, which while still reversible, bode nothing good for the USSR. By attending mass in Leningrad, de Gaulle, like a good politician, was already prepa:ing for his coming trip to Poland. Rumania, ceaselessly increasing its trade with the West, already told the Russians in Bucharest that it would like to see the Warsaw pact modified just as de Gaulle wants to modify NATO. Decidely, if things are in movement, thanks not a little to the general, not everything is stirring in favor of socialism and not everything is stirring against the interests of American imperialism.

Back to the Ernest Mandel Internet Archive

Last updated on 7 February 2009

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Theatres in Moscow

Cultural life of Moscow city is various and rich! Operas, ballets, symphonic concerts... Russian composers have created some of the most beautiful classical music. Russian classical music is very popular in Moscow. It is performed in many beautiful historical venues. Do not forget to include a visit to a concert hall in your itinerary when you are planning your stay in Moscow! And do it in advance.

There are almost no restrictions on dress code in Russian theatres. Visitors may wear jeans and sports shoes, they may have a backpack with them. Only shorts are not allowed.

A typical feature of Russian theatre – visitors are bringing a lot of flowers which they present to their favorite performers after the show.

Here are some practical advices where to go and how to buy tickets.

The Bolshoi Theatre

The Bolshoi Theatre is the oldest, the most famous and popular opera and ballet theatre in Russia. The word “Bolshoi” means “big” in Russian. You can buy a ticket online in advance, 2-3 months before the date of performance on the official website . Prices for famous ballets are high: 6-8 thousand rubles for a seat in stalls. Tickets to operas are cheaper: you can get a good seat for 4-5 thousand rubles. Tickets are cheaper for daytime performances and performances on the New Stage. The New Stage is situated in the light-green building to the left of the Bolshoi's main building. The quality of operas and ballets shown on the New Stage is excellent too. However, you should pay attention that many seats of the Bolshoi’s Old and New Stages have limited visibility . If you want to see the Bolshoi’s Old Stage but all tickets are sold out, you can order a tour of the theatre. You can book such a tour on the official website.

If you want, following Russian tradition, to give flowers to the performers at the end of the show, in the Bolshoi flowers should be presented via special staff who collects these flowers in advance.

In August the Bolshoi is closed.

The Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre

This theatre is noteworthy. On one hand, it offers brilliant classical opera and ballet performances. On the other hand, it is an experimental venue for modern artists. You can check the program and buy tickets online here http://stanmus.com/ . If you are opera lover, get a ticket to see superstar Hibla Gerzmava . The theatre has a very beautiful historic building and a stage with a good view from every seat. Tickets are twice cheaper than in the Bolshoi.

The Novaya Opera

“Novaya” means “New” in Russian. This opera house was founded in 1991 by a famous conductor Eugene Kolobov. Its repertoire has several directions: Russian and Western classics, original shows and divertissements, and operas of the 20th and 21st centuries. It is very popular with Muscovites for excellent quality of performances, a comfortable hall, a beautiful Art Nouveau building and a historic park Hermitage, which is situated right next to it. You can buy tickets online here http://www.novayaopera.ru/en .

Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Center

The Opera Center has become one of the best theatrical venues in Moscow. It was founded in 2002 by great diva Galina Vishnevskaya. Nowadays its artistic director is Olga Rostropovich, daughter of Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband Mstislav Rostropovich, great cellist and conductor. Not only best young opera singers perform here, but also world music stars do; chamber and symphonic concerts, theatrical productions and musical festivals take place here. You can see what is on the program here http://opera-centre.ru/theatre . Unfortunately “booking tickets online” is available in Russian only. If you need help, you can contact us at and we can book a ticket for you. 

Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and The Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory

These are two major concert halls for symphonic music in Moscow. Both feature excellent acoustics, impressive interior, various repertoire and best performers. You can check the program here http://meloman.ru/calendar/ . You need just to switch to English. Booking tickets online is available only for owners of Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian phone numbers. If you need help, you can contact us and we can book a ticket for you. 

Moscow International Performing Arts Center (MIPAC)

This modern and elegant concert hall houses performances of national and foreign symphony orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo instrumentalists, opera singers, ballet dancers, theatre companies, jazz bands, variety and traditional ensembles. Actually, it has three concert halls placed on three different levels and having separate entrances. The President of MIPAC is People’s Artist of the USSR Vladimir Spivakov, conductor of “Virtuosy Moskvy” orchestra. You can see pictures of the concert halls here http://www.mmdm.ru/en/content/halls . The program is impressive in its variety but is not translated into English. You can contact us at and we can find a performance for you.