Shopping for Francophiles

Shopping for Francophiles? Is there a web site where you can get one? Nah. But you might have to DO some shopping for a Francophile this season. Or you might be trying to leave a list of French stuff you really want under the nose of an eager elf. Suite 101's France pages have some gift ideas available online that are sure to stuff the stockings of the wine snob... er, connisseur or the avid French student.

Try some of these links and online sources for your favorite Christmas cadeaux.

Wine: At the virtual vineyard, you can search by country of origin for a drinkable table wine or an older vendange. In addition to a huge selection of varietal wines from all over the world, a search of "France" turned up a short intro and a 58-item shopping list ranging from under $6 a bottle to a modest top price of $45 for a '96 burgundy. Virtual Vineyards spans the country nicely, providing table wines from Provence as well as sweet Sauternes. The down side is that we aren't told whether or not the wines are "A.O.C./Appelation origine controlée" - which if present on the label indicates that the wine meets stricter standards of production and quality than table wines.

Art: Get Matisse, Manet, or Monet in your bedroom. If you are an aficionado of French artists, you're likely to recapture your joie de vivre at barewalls.com. You can search this site, quickly, for thumbnails of its entire inventory of prints and photographs. On the front page you'll find links by genre and name as well as a listing of its most popular prints. The site loads rapidly and is easy to navigate. But I'm not a commercial, and I haven't yet placed an order, so of course, caveat emptor.

Food: Some of the pates are a little above my taste, but if you're yearning for a gourmet food shop that carries duck and chicken liver mousse, try shopping the Yahoo way. This year, Yahoo is probably taking at least a little bite out of mall traffic, and no wonder. Ordering is secure, and shopping is convenient...especially for search engines. You may have somehow not yet noticed its new auction area, which advertises Furbies on the block. My opinion is that if one site can offer Furbies AND escargots from Boulogne, it's worth a look.

Movies: I wouldn't normally recommend one site twice, but Yahoo seems to be ahead of the competition in locating foreign films, too. If you're searching for a specific title, you can look that up on many sites. But for foreign film browsers, Yahoo provides an alphabetical listing by title of the foreign film inventory. And it's a BIG inventory. In my search of a sample of other sites, foreign films weren't as easy to locate as a genre. But I still haven't found a site where one can browse only French titles.

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