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Wine Tours

Spring 2009 program

Autumn 2009 wine tours

 □  Producers

Domaine de la Bouysse, Corbières, Languedoc
Martine Pagès and Christophe Molinier are both trained oenologists. They run this 50 ha family property in the Corbières in Languedoc. They have 10 ha in the sub-appellation Boutenac with its stony soil. They took over the responsibility for the property in 1996 and immediately started a restructuring of the estate to improve the quality of the wines. They planted syrah and mourvèdre (adding to the 50-80 year old carignan and grenache they had) and started reducing the yields. They have developed a range of Vin de Pays wines (viognier, chardonnay, merlot) and AOC Corbières rose and red. The wines are very well made and very reasonably priced. Mazerac Corbières 2005 is concentrated with aromas of vanilla, cocoa and dried figs (8 euro). The Viognier 2006 is excellent, flowery, full-bodied with aromas of apricot (5 euro), and Roc Long Corbières 2006 has the typical garrigue expression (herbs and spices) with ripe fruit but retaining a fresh acidity (6 euro).
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Bacalhôa Vinhos de Portugal, Alentejo
This is one of the biggest wine producers in Portugal, with head quarters on the Setúbal peninsula south of Lisbon. On the edge of the small town Azeitão they have a big winery. In addition to the wine production facility they have one of Portugal’s finest collection of azulejos (ceramic tiles) dating back to the 16th century. Bacalhôa is well known for its excellent Moscatel de Setúbal, a sweet wine made from the very aromatic muscat grape. It is concentrated with hints of orange marmalade, dried fruit and nuts with an excellent balance between the sweetness and the acidity. But they also make very good reds, for example Meia Pipa and the cabernet sauvignon-based Quinta da Bacalhôa. Their white Loridos made from alvarinho grapes is very nice with citrus character and good minerality.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Read about more recommended producers on the site: Favourite Producers

 □  Wine Bars and Restaurants

Paris

Pinxo, Paris 1
Pinxo is run by Alain Dutornier from the Michelin-starred restaurant Carré des Feuillant, just a few blocks away. The decoration is very Spartan with a Japanese touch. The first thing that strikes you with the food is the presentation: very modern, very slick and it too more than a hint oriental. Choose e.g. the mi-cuit (very lightly cooked) tuna, grilled gambas with spicy rice and coconut milk and finish with the coffee accompanied by a heavenly delicious chocolate preparation. You will not be disappointed. Very professional and attentive service. Good selection of wines starting at 30€. Count on 40-60€ for a full meal.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Beaune:

Restaurant Bissoh, Beaune
It is not quite what you expect – that a Japanese restaurant has what is no doubt one of the best (if not the best) wine list in Beaune. But so it is. You will find virtually all of the top Burgundy producers but also other districts are well represented. When we were last there, on the table next to us a young winemaking couple was tasting one of their (illustrious) neighbours’ wines. If you like saké they also have many of the top producers. Food, having trawled through the extensive wine list, is excellent. Both the sushi and the meat, traditionally prepared on the cooking table in the middle of the restaurant. A dinner will add up to 35-50 euro (or more, of course, depending of your choice from the wine list…).
Click here for address and more recommendations.

 □  Wine of the Month

Criteria: an interesting wine (not too cheap) and one that you can enjoy with dinner or friends (not too expensive). And very good! Selected by Jack, our reporter in Stockholm.

Faustino I Grand Reserva, Rioja
A red wine that I’ve always had a bit of a faiblesse for is Faustino’s archetypical Faustino I, a Grand Reserva in a traditional barrel-aged style. At the moment you can get the 1996 at the Swedish monopoly (Systembolaget) for 149 kronor (~15 euro) and it has just the perfect maturity to go with a well made country chicken or other white meat. The delicious vanilla and dill (!) nose is perfectly balance with the maturity of the wine and a touch of acidity, with some fruit and berries at the back end. A perfect Rioja to enjoy a dark January night, in the classic, old style that is at risk of extinction from the onslaught of more modern alcohol-filled power wines.

Bordeaux chardonnay?
Can we look forward to soon seeing a Bordeaux chardonnay? Perhaps. The producer organisations for AC Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur has requested permission from the INAO to plant experimental vineyards with e.g. chardonnay, chenin blanc, syrah and marselan, grape varieties that today are not allowed. The suggestion is that they would in the future be allowed up to 10% in the blend.

Will copper be the next victim of the organic wave?
Copper and substances containing copper are frequently used to fight mildew. It is even permitted in organic farming (even though it can hardly be claimed to be a “natural” treatment). There are now discussions on EU level to declare copper as a not permitted substance in farming, since it is difficult for nature to assimilate it in quantities often used. The irony is that this would perhaps hit hardest for the organic winemakers. Non-organic (“traditional”) grape growing can use alternative, chemical, substances, but organic farmers cannot… The decision is not yet taken though. (Latest news: in a revised list of prohibited substances copper is no longer included, according to our latest information.)

Syrah – a French grape variety
At the Syrah Symposium in May 2008 grape researchers established that the syrah variety is not originating from Greece, the Middle East or any other distant country. it is simply a genuinely French crossing. The two parents are mondeuse blanche from Savoie and dureza from the Ardèche. It is believed that the crossing took place in Isère in the northern Rhône Valley.

Drink more sherry
Sherry is another of those wines that definitely deserves to be more appreciated by the wine lovers. Especially the wonderfully dry and crisp fino with some olives or Serrano ham, not to mention manzanilla an amontillado. But forget the cloyingly sweet kinds and above all auntie’s Bristol Cream that was wheeled out of the cupboard once a year (less and less fresh). But to be honest, there are indeed some wonderful sweet olorosos too.

Sales of sherry, by type, approximately dry-to-sweet (source: DO Jerez and Drinks Buisness):
Manzanilla: 17%
Fino: 23%
Pale cream: 8%
Amontillado: 6%
Medium: 20%
Oloroso: 2%
Cream: 20%
Other: 2%

Total sherry sales: 55 million litres. Markets (source: idem):
UK: 29%
Spain: 25%
The Netherlands: 22%
Germany: 10%
Rest of EU: 7%
Rest of world: 7%

Miss Wine
Laetitia Bléger won the title Miss France in 2004. She’s the daughter of a winemaker in Alsace and after her Miss modelling career she has returned to the source and has started to make her own wine at the family property. her wine is made with a secret blend of three Alsatian grape varieties and is called Précieux. Précieux means expensive, precious or dear but the reference is probably more to “pierres précieux” which is the French word for precious stones. More info www.bylaetitia.com

Wine sales on the internet boom
According to research done by PowerBoutique sales of wine over the internet grew with 171% between 2006 and 2007 compared to +31% for the average on-line shop – in France. Numbers that are perhaps a bit surprising, in view of the struggle that most online wine shops have to survive.

Wine – how much more than just a drink? New guest writer: Robert Joseph.
Robert Joseph founded (together with Charles Metcalf) a long time ago Wine International Magazine and the International Wine Challenge. He has written some 30 wine books. In a new (long, interesting and original) article on our Guest Writer Page he wonders if wine is just another drink, or is it more? And how does the international wine market function today? And what’s the role of a wine writer? In passing, he also touches on elephants on trampolines and American teens’ infatuation with blow jobs. Read more on the wine Guest Writer Page.

Biodynamic wines – humbug and witch craft or not?
We don’t have an answer for you. There are many biodynamic wine growers who make excellent wines, and some who make bad. Just like winemakers who use other methods. It is also quite difficult to get an understanding of what biodynamic farming really means, and add on the confusion between that and biological, ecological, organic, sustainable etc. Do you want to get a better understanding of biodynamic wine, then you should watch our mini video series in seven parts with an interview with wine maker Christine Saurel of Domaine Montirius in the southern Rhône valley. She explains how they came to be biodynamic and what it means. In plain language. And they also make excellent wines. http://www.youtube.com/user/bkwine

BKWine grows more than Wine Spectator
On a very small niche… BKWine TV (beta) is our collection of wine video clips: winemaker interviews, reportage from vineyards and other wine related stuff. We don’t have a big production department (nor a small) so it’s not very slick. But the contents may be worth the while. We have some 70 videos today. It’s interesting to see what other do too so sometimes we go and watch the Wine Spectator videos on YouTube. WineSpec have more videos than we do (but many of them are themselves talking about a wine) but the other day we happened to glance the statistics and saw that, to our great surprise, BKWine TV has more channel views (a key statistics on YouTube)  than what WineSpectatorVideo has! We were indeed surprised and happy. What we’re not so happy about is that they have much more subscribers to their channel than what we have. So, the next time you watch a wine video on BKWine TV do click on the Subscribe-button. Please!

Loire wines
The big Loire wine fair will take place, as always, the first week of February: on February 2-4 in Angers. An outstanding opportunity if you are looking for Loire wines. (Trade show.) www.salondesvinsdeloire.com

Chateau Latour for sale?
Château Latour, one of the five Premier Grand Cru Classés in Bordeaux, belongs to the fabulously rich French industrialist and financier François Pinault. According to persistent rumours (e.g. in TimesOnline) the chateau is now for sale. Pinault is said to have contacted the investment bank Lazard and asked them to discretely enquire for potential purchasers. It is estimated that you will only have to cough up some 150-200 million euros for the place.

Discover the wines of the Rhône
There are not many better occasions to discover the wines of the Rhône than the Découverte en Vallée du Rhône. Over several days there are many tastings and meetings with vignerons in villages all along the district. This year it takes place on March 16-21. Trade only. More info www.inter-rhone.com. The only better way to discover Rhône wins would be on a wine tour with BKWine…

Become winemaker
To become a winemaker is perhaps a secret dream for some, but one that is not easy to make come true. Well, now there is another possibility to do it (other than dishing out 200€M for Latour): buy a WinePod. The WinePod is a stainless steel “thing”, shaped like a wine glass, a bit more than a meter high, in which you can make your own wine. You fill it with grapes and then the almost fully automatic “thing” does the rest. You can follow the process with the monitoring program installed on your computer. With built-in wine press. Makes up to 48 bottles. A must-have! And only $4500. More info: www.winepod.net

Most expensive wines on auction
Here are the top selling lots at Sotheby’s in 2008. Not cheap…
- $ 724,371: Ch Yquem, 70 vintages, 136 bottles ($5326/bottle)
- $169,400: Romanée Conti 1971, 6 magnum ($14166)
- $151,250: Romanée Conti 1985, 12 bt ($12604)
…follwed by another four lots of RC. And then:
- $102,850: Château Pétrus 1961, 12 bt ($8570)
- $90,750: La Tache 1985, 6 mag ($7562)
- $84,700: Château Latour 1961, 1 impérial ($10587)

The world’s greatest wine collection to become museum?
Michel Chasseuil is a retired French engineer. A long time ago he caught the wine virus, long before it become trendy with wine tastings and long before the nouveaux riches started collecting wines. Today he has a collection of 20,000 bottles dating back to the 18th century. Perhaps the world’s greatest wine collection: all DRC RC back to 1905, Petrus back to 1924, Yquem 1811, a champagne produced for Napoleon… He no longer has the intention to drink all the wines. Instead he wants to create a museum dedicated to wine, in Saint Emilion in Bordeaux. But he does not currently have the funding to do so. Perhaps a kind-hearted reader can help? It would indeed be interesting to visit if it becomes a reality. Read more on TimesOnline.

The classification of Saint Emilion, a true slapstick
The meandering story of the new classification of Saint Emilion seems to be a story without an end. It has long since past the limit between reasonable and ridiculous. The classification is supposed to be reviewed every ten years, the last time in 2006. Here’s the story in (very) short:

It is hard to believe one's eyes. The only thing that they seem to succeed in doing is making the whole classification, the chateau owners, the Saint Emilion region and all of Bordeaux look utterly ridiculous. And in the mean time they are loosing market share. Perhaps one can hope that this tragicomedy with bring something good: that the Bordeaux classification system will loose any little remaining credibility that it may have. And perhaps that the chateau owners finally will understand that it is the wine consumer who can judge the quality of the wine, not an elitist, more or less partial selection committee. Read more: www.winealley.com and www.vitisphere.com

The wine louse threatens Australia
The wine louse (phylloxera vastatrix) has been found in Australia. The dreaded insect showed it’s ugly head in Europe at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries and almost wiped out all of Europe’s vineyards. Luckly, someone found the remedy: graft the European vines on American rootstocks to get a disease resistant plant. Three years ago the devastating insect was found in a small area in Australia but seemed to have been fought back. Now it has been found again, this time in the Yarra Valley. The risk for the winegrowers is that they will have to do expensive replantings if the pest spreads. No end to the misery in Australia it seems. More: www.vitisphere.com

Carol Duval-Leroy is head of the champagne house that carries her name Champagne Duval-Leroy in Vertus in Côte des Blancs. She’s originally Belgian and ever since she was a child she’s had a passion for food and cooking. Travelling around the world promoting champagne she is often asked how you combine champagne with food. She says that most people think of champagne only as a festive drink, not something that you drink with a meal – so she decided to write a cook book dedicated to champagne. This is the result, Femme de Champagne, a cook book that presents various dishes in combination with champagne from Duval-Leroy, everything chosen and prepared by Carol herself. Between the recipes she, of course, slips in some information about the House and about the region. (The book can also be bought in the shop at Champagne Duval Leroy in Vertus.)
Buy the book. More book reviews.

Champagne Guide
Richard Juhlin
Richard Juhlin Publishing AB

A new book by the champagne specialist Richard Juhlin, this time in a conveniently smaller format (but not quite pocket sized). It is a guide focused on the producers: 400 of the 450 pages lists and describes (shortly) selected houses and growers. The first 50 pages are dedicated to some quick information about the district and tourist information on sights, hotels and restaurants.
Buy the book. More book reviews.

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