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Wine Tours

In Bordeaux you find world famous châteaux and world famous wines but also a lot of new exciting initiatives (less famous but maybe more important for the future of Bordeaux!) and young enthusiastic wine makers. On this trip we will visit both some big, famous Grand Cru Classé-châteaux and smaller ones that are less known, but very quality conscious. More info on this wine tour to Bordeaux.

More info on the BKWine wine tours here!

Custom wine tours

We also make custom designed wine tours – on-demand tours for you and a group of friends, for your company (maybe to scout new winegrowers?), for a special event… We can combine winery visits and wine touring with other activities: gastronomic workshops, visit to an oyster farm, truffles hunting, cheese making, and more. We’ve done tours for wine clubs, for sommelier educations, for corporate events, for wine importers, for wine course study groups… just to mention a few.

You'll get a tour designed exactly according to your requirements and tastes, made by one of the most experienced wine people in the business. We personally visit some 200 wineries and taste thousands of wines every year; we write on wine for various wine magazines (we had more than 30 articles published last year); in 2007 we published a ground breaking book on the wine of the Languedoc and this year we have another one coming. And we have organised hundreds of wine tours over the years.

 More info on the BKWine wine tours here!

 □  Producers

Quinta da Gaivosa, Cumieira, Douro-dalen
Domingos Alva de Sousa and his son have made it their speciality to make DOC Douro wines (”table” wines as opposed to port wine) in the dramatic port wine valley. The family owns 110 hectares split over five properties. The secret of the wines magnificent quality are actually the old wines (apart from very competent wine making of course), some more than a hundred years old.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Quinta do Mouro, Estremoz, Alentejo
Miguel Louro, who also works as a dentist in Evora (and looks a bit like Salvador Dalí), and his sun Luis run this high quality winery owning 30 ha in Alentejo. “Our wines are hand crafted wines”, says Miguel, “all is done by hand. The secret with excellent wines is that you have ripe grapes and low yields”. The wines are classic Portuguese with some herbs and a wonderful fruit.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Domaine Philippe et Vincent Jaboulet, Mercurol,
After 30 years as responsible for the wine production at the famous Rhône producer Paul Jaboulet Aîné in Tain l’Hermitage Philippe Jaboulet, together with his son Vincent, started off on his own and created Domaine Philippe et Vincent Jaboulet in Mercurol three kilometres to the south. Vincent is a trained oenologist and has worked in Australia. He’s the fifth generation of the Jaboulet family making wine. They make a Crozes-Hermitage (both red and white), a red Hermitage and a Cornas. The wines are consistently good.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Read about more recommended producers on the site: Favourite Producers

 □  Wine Bars and Restaurants

Restaurang L’Olivier du Clavel, Bordeaux
It’s just in front of the St Jean railway station in Bordeaux so it’s not exactly a charming area, but there are many other good reasons to go to L’Olivier du Clavel and not only when your catching a train. The cuisine is excellent and prices are very reasonable. You can have a two course lunch for 16 euro (or three for 19 euro), including a glass of wine (!), and in the evening they have a 29 euro three course menu. We recently had a fabulous risotto with pesto and grilled shrimps, a brochette with scallops, parmesan and green asparagus, and a duck’s breast with mango and polenta. Everything very well prepared and delicious. They also have a reasonable (not large but well chosen) selection of wines you can order by the glass.
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!

Åsa recommends:
Gini, Gini, Gini!
You never get bored with the wines from the Gini family winery. We’re in Veneto in north-eastern Italy. To be precise, in Monteforte d’alpone, not far from the town of Soave. It’s a difficult choice to settle for just one of the Gini wines to taste. But since days are getting longer let’s choose the Soave Classico La Froscá. This wine is made from hand-picked grapes from vines with an average age of 50 years. Fermentation is partially in stainless steel and partially in barriques. It’s a very well structured Soave (with 13% alcohol), nuanced and flowery nose (garganega can otherwise sometimes be rather neutral) and some ripe fruit in the finish. La Froscá goes well with pasta and fish but also to what the Italians call “animale da cortile” (animals from the back yard!): white meats like pork of chicken. Approximate price: 15€. www.ginivini.com

Jack recommends
Losada, Bierzo, Spanien
This month I’ve chosen a wine that without any inhibitions excels in ripe fruit, soft tannins and delicious vanilla ice-cream. It’s an unfiltered purple Rubens wine with a big meaty nose with aromas of plums and blackberries with a topping of aromatic herbs and, for once, a reasonably balanced barrel treatment. the wine is the 2006 Losada from Bodegas Losada Vinos de Finca (approx. €10) from Bierzo in Castilla y Léon in north western Spain (that you also could read about in the last Brief). It’s made from the recently popular grape variety mencia. A perfect match for your first session in front of the barbeque this spring with perhaps some juicy and fat pork chops.

Revolutionary champagne ”cork” launched by Alcan and Duval-Leroy
Champagne is not entirely spared problems with poor quality corks and goût de bouchon. Champanges Duval-Leroy has just today (May 5), as the first house, launched a champagne with a new “revolutionary” cork, called Maestro. But it’s not really a cork but a crown cap (or crown cork, like on beer bottles). Virtually all champagne spend at least 15 months and often up to three, four or more years in bottle closed with a crown cap – after the second fermentation in bottle, when the wine ages in bottle on the lees, before it is degorged (lees removed and recorked). Unfortunately no customer would accept to open a precious bottle of champagne with a beer bottle opener, or so the producers think (albeit Domaine Chandon in Australia sells such a wine). Alcan’s new closure solves the two problems: you don’t need a bottle opener and you get the traditional plopp, just like with a “real” cork. And in addition there is no risk of corked wine. See how it works on our video: in French with Carol Duval-Leroy, head of the champagne house, or in English with their director of international youtube.com/bkwine.

BKWine on American radio
The Wine Fairy, or Wine and Dine Radio, www.winefairy.comis an internet radio station (podcast) that only talks about wine. You can also listen to it on iTunes. In a recent emission BKWine was “today’s guest” of the creator of the show, Lynn Krielow Chamberlain. You can listen to the program and the interview with BKWine and Per here or connect to the station on Live365.com or on vinvillage.com

New reports from the wine economists
The American Association of Wine Economists regularly publishes white papers on varying subjects. The latest ones cover these themes:
- Can People Distinguish Pâté from Dog Food?, och
- When does the Price Affect the Taste? Results from a Wine Experiment
You can read them here: www.wine-economics.org/workingpapers/

Wine video festival and wine photo exhibition
You have no doubt heard of the Cannes film festival but perhaps not of oenovideo. The Riviera version is no doubt more ambitious but for the vinophile Oenovideo is more interesting. Each year videos on the theme of wine compete in this small film festival. It can be promotional videos, movies, reportage or other things. Every year the festival takes place in a different place. This year it is the turn of Beaune. So if you are in Burgundy between may 8 and 10 don’t miss Oenovideo in Beaune. www.oenovideo.oeno.tm.fr

Australia is like Bordeaux, but the other way around
Australia has gained a reputation of being primarily a source of cheap bulk wines and Bordeaux is mostly know for producing wines that no one can afford any longer (thanks to their rocket-like price increases in recent years). Both regions suffer from these images that are not telling the whole story. Australia has many ambitious winemakers who produce top quality wine and you can find excellent value-for-money wines in Bordeaux in the price range of 8 to 18 euro. Australia’s ambitious producers have recently had some good press e.g. by Jancis Robinson in the FT or by Mike Steinberger in Slate. Now we’re only waiting for the pieces on good value Bordeaux!

Bordeaux primeurs prices falling
Quite as expected (and demanded by many) the prices of the Bordeaux Primeurs (2008 vintage) have fallen. As we reported in the last Brief, Angélus set the tone with a release price down 40% from last year. Many other chateaux have now announced what price they demand for the latest vintage. It is decreasing prices all over with between 10% and 40% and sometimes more. Ch Yquem went down with 59%. Read more on e.g. New Bordeaux and newbordeaux.blog.co.uk. But as a wine consumer it is perhaps a bit too early to cheer too much considering the price hikes seen in recent years. Maybe we can expect prices to come down to just “expensive” from “ridiculous”. More Les Echos 

France sponsors 1000 free wine and cheese parties
France has launched a campaign in 19 countries (USA, Canada, Spain etc) where anyone who wants can sign up to be a candidate to be sponsored for a free wine and cheese party. 1000 participants will be chosen to organise in their homes a paid-for-by-France wine and cheese cocktail party. The only condition is that they afterwards report on how it turned out. The party package contains (apart from wine and cheese one assumes) a French apron and a CD with music by Carla Bruni (an Italian-born French singer who is married to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who does not drink wine… Figure that one out!) They have a budget of 1.6 million euro for the parties to promote French gastronomy and wine, all coordinated by the promotion organisation Sopexa. We cannot quite figure out how this campaign fits with the various anti-wine measures and campaigns that they implement at home on the French territory. Why not launch the campaign in France too instead? Or do French authorities want us to drink more French wine but only if it is done outside of France? Wall Street Journal

Wine producer E&J Gallo attacks grocery store in Seattle
E&J Gallo is one of the world’s largest producers of wine, based in California. The Spanish table is a small grocery store chain in Seattle with four shops, specialised in Spanish food. Gallo is about to take the food store to court because they sell a Spanish brand of pasta, made in Spain, called, you guessed, Gallo. EJ Gallo had given The Spanish Table until April 16 to comply with their demand to remove the pasta but already on April 14 they filed in court. Are there not better things to do for a wine producer? Read more: Modesto Bee or watch the video king5.com

The Parker Effect (1)
If anyone doubted the importance of Parker Points (ratings from the wine guru Robert Parker) the story of this year’s primeurs should dispel any doubt. Liv-ex has made a graph illustrating the price evolution of Chateau Lafite 2008. On April 29 Parker published his comments on the 2008 vintage and his rating of Lafite was very positive. The Liv-ex graph is very illustrative. Read more on the Liv-ex post here: Liv-ex

Restaurant VAT down
France will lower the VAT on restaurants to 5.5%. Currently restaurant bills are subject to “normal” VAT at 19.6%. The change will happen in January 2010, or possibly already in July this year. The intention is to dampen the downward trend that restaurants have seen in recent months. Restaurant visits have gone down with between 10% and 50%percent. restho-news.com

Make your own Bordeaux – live your dream?
CrushPad started a few years ago in California. It’s a (relatively) inexpensive way to make your own wine. They collaborate with wine producers and as a member / customer you get the possibility to (almost) make your own wine. Grapes are supplied by selected vineyard partners and you get expert advice and assistance to make your own microcuvée at a winery. In California the model seems to have reaped some success and now the Crushpad model comes to Europe. They have started a cooperation with Chateau Teyssier in Bordeaux, run by Jonathan Malthus, where the wines will be made. And then you only need to bring the bottles home to your bursting cellar. “Our clients can live the dream of owning a vineyard at a fraction of the cost” says Stephen Bolger, president of Crushpad France. www.crushpadwine.fr or www.crushpadwine.com

"Robert Parker should be ashamed of himself”
That is at least what many wine bloggers think. Parker does exist on the internet, as eRobertParker.com, but he’s certainly not a dedicated Web 2.0 adept. More importantly, he has written several denigrating comments about wine blogging, wine bloggers, and the Open Wine Consortium (organising the American Wine Bloggers Conference), implying that what wine bloggers write is of no value and that many wine bloggers are ‘bought’ by the wine industry. Not good Mr Parker. Read a detailed commentary here: WineLifeToday.com and SansDosage.blogspot.com and winecase.wordpress.com

Robert Parker’s impartiality in question
More rough times for Robert Parker. Not only is he in trouble with the wine blogging community but he also seems to have difficulties with his own ethical rules. He has laid down very strict ethical rules for how the Robert Parker tasting and writing team operates. For example, they always pay their own hotels, they do not accept trips paid for by wineries or promotional organisations, they always pay their own restaurant bills etc. In reality, rules that virtually no other professional wine writer can live by. But now it turns out that his collaborators in the Robert Parker publications apparently do not follow those rules. DrVino, an interesting wine blogger, wrote a letter to Parker and asked for clarifications. Parker is, after all, a very dominant entity in the wine world, so it is reasonable to know what goes. Tyler Colman (=DrVino) did receive an answer but Parker simply dismissed the question without at all addressing the key questions. Another thing that has made the wine bloggosphere buzz. With reason, we’d say.  Read all of DrVinos story here

What’s a rosé wine?
As part of the EU wine reform that has been agreed by the countries’ agricultural representatives it is planned that it will become legal to make rosé wine by blending red and white wine. Today, in most EU countries, you have to make rosé from red grapes with a short skin maceration (except, we’ve heard, in Spain). But that might not be something that you’re average rosé wine consumer knows. Or cares about. Now, in the eleventh hour, there has come a lot of protests from primarily French and Italian wine producers who say that it would destroy the quality of rosé wines (if it ever was there to start with). But, one might ask, did then the countries agree to it in the first place? Well, one comment we heard was that the Italians did not want to raise their voice in the previous discussions since they had been cheating with the milk quotas and did therefore not want to attract any attention. And the French? Perhaps they were sleeping? We don’t know. But does it really matter? Would it be such a catastrophe if you could make rosé wines by blending red and white? (And would the consumer suffer?) Or is it the “traditional” rosé wine producers who do not want to get more competition? We’re not convinced. And then you should keep in mind that virtually all rosé champagne is made by blending red and white wine. And we have not heard anyone protesting against that. Have you? See e.g. Reuters and vitisphere.com

To filter or not to filter?
We’ve previously written about filtering of wine (us being wine tech geeks!?). Does it matter? Is it good or bad? Is there any substance in the fashion of making unfiltered wines? Here’s an interesting article by Tim Patterson in Vines & Wines: ”If filtration ’strips’ wine, what’s getting stripped?”

Do winemakers make wines they like or wines that get high Parker Points? (The Parker Effect 2)
Do the winemakers make wines they like, or wines the consumers like, or wines to please the most influential wine critics (Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate, James Laube of Wine Spectator and perhaps some more)? That’s the question that Tina Caputa, editor-in-chief of Vineyard and winery Management Magazine, asked herself when preparing a presentation for the American Wine Society. But she also put the question to the winemakers. The result is a video reportage looking at how the heavyweight wine critics influence the type of wines we can buy today. Watch the reportage here: downunderwines.net

Advanced wine tasting technique with Fry & Laurie
Perhaps not a method to take after but a quite enjoyable clip about wine tasting with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.  “This one is cat and the other one is dog, right?”

Australian albarino turns out to be savagnin
Some wine producers in Australia have turned out some very decent wines from albariño grapes (some 150 ha planted). Albarino is a grape variety well known from e.g. northern Portugal. At least, so they thought. Two French researchers, Jean-Michel Boursiquot and Laurent Audeguin at the Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin, have made DNA analysis of the vine. It turns out that it’s not albariño at all but a variety called savagnin. Savagning is a little known grape that is primarily used in the Jura district in eastern France. More vitisphere.com. Australian researchers have subsequently done their own tests and made the same conclusion… decanter.com

Full moon? Cancel the wine tasting!
If the moon is not in the right moon phase the wine may taste much worse, that is at least what Tesco and Marks & Spencer, two of Britain’s biggest wine retailers think. They only invite to tastings on days when the moon is in an appropriate position for tasting. This is inspired by the so called biodynamic sowing and planting calendar where days are categorised as appropriate for different activities. Some days are good for planting, other for harvesting etc. And apparently, some days are better for tasting than others. Jo Ahearne at M&S was doubtful but after having made comparative tastings he was convinced that it made a big difference. Time to reschedule your tastings? (Note: The calendar, established every year by Maria Thun, is not strictly speaking part of the biodynamic principles, but many biodynamic growers use it. Many growers who are not biodynamic also look at the moon phase to decide the appropriate days for e.g. bottling or racking.) More on news.scotsman.com

Alsace growers want to stop other’s from putting riesling et al. on the label
One part of the new EU wine reform is that from the first of August it will be possible to put the grape variety (e.g. riesling) on the label for wines “without geographic denomination”. Typically, this refers to wines that fall outside the traditional AOC (AOP) rules for a region. Say you make a riesling wine in Languedoc. Riesling is not a permitted variety in AOC (AOP) Languedoc so instead the wine will have to be made “without geographic denomination”, what used to be called Vin de Table, but on a VdT it was forbidden to specify the grape variety. But with the reform it will now be possible to put the variety on the label. But the Alsace producers are not happy with this. They think that putting e.g. riesling or gewürztraminer on a wine that does not come from Alsace will confuse customers and devalue Alsatian wines. Therefore they want to forbid growers in other regions to mention the “Alsatian” varieties. The French have now launched a committee that will try and find a compromise. Another example of counterproductive and narrow self-interests that hinders a progression towards a better functioning wine market? After all, there are plenty of wines out there that say riesling, gewürztraminer etc on the label from e.g. Germany, Spain, not to mention the New World. So again, we have some French producers hindering other French producers to compete better against wine producers from other countries. vitisphere.com

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