Jodi Bart is the Austin-based blogger behind Tasty Touring, who won a trip to Europe through our Foodie Fantasy Food Blogger Video Contest. She’ll be sharing some of her adventures in this 2-part blog feature. Read about her tour of M. Chapoutier Vineyard here.

I recently returned from a fabulous European vacation for two, thanks to Whole Food Market’s Foodie Fantasy Food Blogger Video Contest. One of the highlights of the trip (an Intrepid Travel tour from Berlin to Paris) was the Paris cheese tour that was specially arranged for us by Whole Foods Market.

We took the train from Belgium, arriving in Paris on a Friday morning. When we arrived at our hotel, Antoine Marsot, general manager of Interval Export, was there to greet us with a smile.

Antoine has worked in the exporting business since he graduated from business school in the late 1980s. For a decade he managed exports for Laïta, a French dairy cooperative, before buying Interval from its founder, who was retiring after twenty years in business.

Antoine is passionate about running his business in a way that will make a positive contribution to the longevity of small- and medium-sized dairies, the happiness of his employees, and to share his management philosophy with others. He believes that people who work at Interval should be there because they are passionate about the work and because they feel it is contributing to their self-development, apart from the salary. Two US companies that he most admires are Whole Foods Market and Patagonia.

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Jodi Bart is the Austin-based blogger behind Tasty Touring, who won a trip to Europe through our Foodie Fantasy Food Blogger Video Contest. She’ll be sharing some of her adventures in this 2-part blog feature.

I recently returned from a fabulous European vacation for two, thanks to Whole Food Market’s Foodie Fantasy Food Blogger Video Contest. The trip, an Intrepid Travel tour from Berlin to Paris, included visits with Whole Foods Market local partners, including one to the M. Chapoutier vineyard and tasting room in France’s Rhone Valley.

My traveling partner on this adventure was Adam, my boyfriend of almost three years, and now fiancé after we got engaged at the end of the tour(!).

Adam and I arrived at M. Chapoutier a half hour earlier than our 2 p.m. appointment, and the tasting room, along with most of the shops in Tain l’Hermitage, was closed for lunch. We wandered to a local sports bar and ordered “deux café.”

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