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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

Château d'Anglès, Languedoc La Clape
La Clape is an appellation not far from Narbonne, on the Mediterranean. It’s a limestone rock that was once an island, mixed with red clay and stones, more stones than anyone would wish for. The area is a protected nature reserve that mixes the garrigue wildlife and vineyards. And it is one of France’s sunniest spots! You can find several excellent producers here. One is Château d’Anglès. It was bought by the Fabre family in 2001. Eric Fabre had worked as winemaker in the Médoc in Bordeaux but dreamed about having his own vineyard by the Mediterranean. Now he works with his son Arnaud and they make some very good wines. One is the white they make from they grape variety bourboulenc, typical for La Clape. Their red wine is full-bodied, partially due to a long skin contact. It has the typical aromas of herbs and spices (“garrigue style”), and ripe berries. A touch of mint, typical for La Clape.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Pascal Jolivet, Sancerre
The Domaine Pascal Jolivet winery is just on the edge of the Sancerre village, at the bottom of the hill. He wines are full of character and quite full-bodied compared to many sancerres. They prove that sauvignon blanc can also make complex terroir wines. The secret, according to the winemaker Jean-Luc Soty, is to do very little débourbage (sedimentation of the must before fermentation). That gives the wine more power and complexity. He also thinks that it is important only to use the natural yeast (that is on the grapes). The sancerres from Pascal Jolivet all have finesse and minerality, good concentration and acidity. Sancerre Les Cailottes Blanc has a lot of terroir character with an underlying elegant and aromatic layer from the sauvignon grape. The Grand Cuvée Pouilly Fumé has grown on soil that is very rich in limestone. It is aged on the lees for nine months and has a touch of mushroom on the nose, lower acidity, more depth and a wonderful, long and intense flavour. They also make some of the best reds in the appellation.
Click here for address and more recommendations.

Read about more recommended producers on the site: Favourite Producers

 □  Wine Bars and Restaurants

Paris:

Le Vin Chai Moi, Paris 1
Luc Menier is the sommelier and Sébastien Farré is the chef. Born and raised in the same village, in Chinon in the Loire Valley. Now they are both at the cleverly named and very nice restaurant Vin Chai Moi, just off Place de la Madeleine. They used to have a restaurant in the 20th arrondisement in Paris but in May they moved to this, much more central location. They are still putting the final touches to the decoration, when we were there the first time the parquet was not yet done on the first floor but the second time it was in place. They have three levels: a small are on street level which they will run as a small and elegant brasserie with just a few tables. The basement can be rented for private functions or tastings. One floor up is the restaurant and a small bar. A three course menu goes for 33 euro and if you pick and chose from the à la carte you can expect 40-45 euro. The ravioli de langoustine is a delicious starter with a creamy sauce, or try the foie gras de canard mi-cuit. As a main course you can try the file de bar (seabass) with penne and chanterelles mushrooms, a generous entrecôte with creamy mashed potatoes, or a souris d’agneu (literally, a smiling lamb, a very tender knuckle of lamb) with curry cauliflower. If you still have room for desert (please do) you can try their home made baba au rhum (sponge cake steeped in rum, but go easy on the rum, they’ll put the bottle on the table…) or a delicious Grand marnier soufflé. The wine list is quite extensive without being excessive, with several interesting bottles starting at 24 euro: a very good Saint Romain from Alain Gras for 36 euro (lots of pinot in that wine!) or a white Chinon (unusual!) for only 24 euro. (Open lunch and dinner. Closed Sundays and Mondays.)
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’s Wine of the Month
”Behind the island” there is a sweet wine filled with sunshine – Dietro l’Isola from Salvino Gorgone
Salvino Gorgone owns two hectares on one of the southernmost islands of Italy, Pantelleria, south of Sicily. He makes a wonderful sweet wine using the passito method (drying of the grapes for some time after the harvest) called Dietro L’Isola, “behind the island”. It has aromas of sun-ripened peaches, apricots and honey. It has an astonishing fresh acidity so that it is sweet without being cloying. The balance between sweetness, fruit and acidity makes this wine a wonderful example of a passito di Pantelleria. On the palate it is filled with figs and citrus fruit. It’s made from a grape called zibibbo. It’s a wine that is best drunk on its own, without any food. My suggestion is to simply replace the cheese or the dessert with a glass of Dietro l’Isola so that it can shine on its own. A half-litre bottle costs some 20 euro. Salvino Gorgone does not have a web site but can e reached on salvino.gorgone [at] libero [dot] it

Wine from Bolivia!
But to tell the truth, Bolivia does produce ”real” wine too since a long time back. Unfortunately we have not (either…) had the opportunity to taste their wines. Since a few decades back they are trying to develop the wine production towards a quality profile. The vineyards are located near the Argentinean border at altitudes of between 1600 and 2850 metres! In total there are some 2000 ha (less than half of Chablis), planted with varieties such as malbec and cabernet sauvignon. Producers like Kohlberg and La Concepcion are spearheading the development.  BBC Business and  Wine Business Monthly 

Tempest in a pot of Bordeaux
Even Bordeaux is affected by the crisis. Bordeaux is otherwise one of the few wine districts that from a sales perspective have been working quite well these last few years. But at the latest meeting at the CIVB (Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux), the cooperation and promotion organisation of the Bordeaux producers, the debate was at times heated. The background is that sales are down 14%, exports are down 15% and new contracts are down with 29%. In spite of that the CIVB President Alain Vironneau maintained that, according to research, consumer demand is not down (the effect is supposedly due to big stockholders of Bordeaux wine emptying their cellars). Whatever the truth is the meeting was at times animated and some of the growers present claimed that the CIVB don’t do enough to improve the situation. Read more on Blog Sud Ouest. --  And watch our video interview with Alain Vironneau, the president of CIVB and Georges Haushalter, its vice-president , where they talk about the situation.

Alcohol consumption
How much alcohol do people drink in different countries? Here’s some statistics on the alcohol consumption, counted in litres per capita (persons over 15), for 2003:
1. Luxemburg: 15.5 l
2. France: 14.8 l
3. Ireland: 13.5 l
4. Hungary: 13.4 l
5. Czech Republic: 12.1 l
6. Spain: 11.7 l
7. Denmark: 11.5 l
8. Portugal: 11.4 l
9. United Kingdom: 11.2 l
10. Austria: 11.1 l
12. Belgium: 10.7 l
13: Germany: 10.2 l
14. Australia: 9.8 l
16. Finland: 9.3 l
20. USA: 8.3 l
22. Italy: 8 l
26. Sweden: 7 l
27: Iceland: 6.5 l
28. Norway: 6 l
Source: OECD and nationmaster.com

A Rose is a (new) Rose – or, a renovated wine site and musings on wine competitions
Anthony Rose is a highly respected British wine writer. He has recently launched a renovated version of his web site and blog with lots of information, well worth visiting. One of the articles on the site is “What’s your poison?”. It’s a story about the seminar organised by the Australians for a group of 20 wine writers (including some very famous names) in the UK to show how Australian wine judges are trained and selected. The tastings included the ability to identify wine defects and the reliability (or perhaps rather, the consistency) of scores. The tasters were given (without them being aware of it) the same wine to taste twice during the day. Ideally, the same score should be given to the wine both times. But that was not always the case… The article is very interesting and entertaining, especially for those who think that wine scoring is close to a science and absolute. Take the time to read the numbers at the end of the article! If we understand it right, none of the 20 participants were quite appropriate (in terms of consistency) to be an Australian wine judge. The basic idea is definitely a good one: reasonably, one should give relatively similar scores to one and the same wine when tasted at two different occasions within a few hours of each other. It is a much more reasonable idea than the one that is often heard – that different wine critics should consistently evaluate/score a wine similarly (illustrated e.g. by the spat some time ago when Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker did not agree on Chateau Pavie). That isn’t quite the case. Read that article and many others on Anthony Rose’s new site: http://www.anthonyrosewine.com

Three golden rules for drinking alcohol in Sweden
Sophe la Girafe is a young French woman exiled in Sweden. For some reason, we don’t know which, she has chosen to settle in Stockholm It does take some time to get to grips with Swedish society and customs – to make sure you behave, well, appropriately. But after some time (and practice) you get the hang of it. It seems. Sophie la Girafe summarizes her findings on the Swedish way to drink in an excellent blog post. It starts like this: ”When it comes to alcohol in Sweden, things are… quite special… Let me tell you how it works out here :) “. And then she reveals the three golden rules on how not to embarrass yourself when drinking in Sweden. Don’t miss the rest. Read it here: sophilagiraf.wordpress.com

The wonderful world of search engines – Austrian wines and revengeful elephants
What’s the link between angry elephants and wines from Austria? Search engines (and primarily Google) influence much of what we do these days. But sometimes one wonders how it all works. If you watch a video on YouTube you will get a few recommendations, generated by the search engine, for other related videos you might want to watch. If you watch our interview with Weingut Emmerich Knoll in Wachau in Austria you get a list of related videos with various other wine videos and … one called Revenge of the Elephants about wild elephants, wilder than usual, who intentionally murders rhinoceros (the recommendations vary with when and where you are so you might not get the same). What’s the link? We have no idea.

Zagreb Wine Gourmet Festival November 27-28
If you happen to be in or near Croatia in November it is an excellent opportunity to make a visit to Zagreb. Croatia has an amazingly beautiful coast line but it also has some very good wine and food. On November 27-28 they organise the Zagreb Wine Gourmet Festival in the capital. Guest of honour is France so there will no doubt be some French delicacies too. More info http://www.vino.com.hr/

France loses ground in England
Down with 6.5% in a year. In third place, after Australia and USA (i.e. California). Chased by Italy (+14.9%) and South Africa (+34.9%!). France and French wines do not have an easy time on the UK market, judging from an interesting article by Charles Metcalfe in The Telegraph: "Zut alors! French wine sales go down the drain". Charles hypothesises on what may be the cause for the demise of French wines. For example tax hikes. That’s perhaps not so likely, since it hits all imports equally. Other ideas: The commonly quoted (but dubious) difficulties with French names and labels. What’s so very much more understandable with "Penfold's Yattarna Chardonnay Victoria" than "Louis Jadot Chevalier Montrachet Les Demoiselles Grand Cru"? (really, it’s not very likely that you don’t know that it’s a Burgundy if you’re even only close to thinking of buying the latter) – if you don’t know how a Burgundy tastes the chances are hardly bigger that you’ll know what chardonnay tastes like? But the big issue with this, though, is that you don’t have much of a clue just from the grape variety – there aren’t many similarities between, well, a Yattarna Chardonnay and a chablis. Or between a pinot noir from Patagonia and one from Sancerre. No, the grape variety can be helpful sometimes (and the French have started to understand that) but it is hardly the truth behind lost market shares. Another hypothesis in the article is that the French classification system needs reviewing, so that what is sold as Bordeaux or Sancerre really deserves the appellation. Quality improvement is of course commendable but it is hardly because of the superior quality that Australia and the US are ahead of France on the UK market. There are probably several other factors that are equally (or more) important, much that has to do with the changing structure of the market. For example: More and more wine consumers are not in the wine producing countries. In those countries it is more important with brands compared to in the “old” wine consuming countries (e.g. in France, where they (we) drink less and less wine). And France is not very good at wine brands. In those countries it is also more common to drink wine as a “social” drink instead of with a meal. And French wines are above all food wines. But perhaps the most important aspect (and this is just a hypothesis we have) is that more and more of all wine is sold by big retail chains in the UK: Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s etc (just like in many other countries, France included). It is easier for the wine buyers at the supermarket chains to buy from big producers, those who can deliver sufficient quantities to make it rational from an economic and logistic perspective. The issue then is that the French wine industry is terribly fragmented. There is an enormous amount of small wine producers and very few big ones (but that is of course the charm of French wines for many of us). Compare it for instance with South Africa where the whole country has about the same number of wine producers as the tiny Bordeaux appellation of Pomerol. Then it is easier to sell to companies like Tesco. (Or, for that matter, our Swedish monopoly Systembolaget, where the situation is even more pronounced – France in 5th or 6th place.) The question then is – what should France do to survive the international competition? We’ll have to save that for another time. But if you have any ideas, do let us know! Read the article here: www.telegraph.co.uk

The 40% of Champagne
40% seems to be a magic, or rather cursed, number for Champagne at the moment, according to what we read in The Drinks Business. The latest numbers from the CIVC show a drip in shipments to Great Britain with 40% for the first four months of this year, and Rémy Cointreau reports a drop in sales with 40%. But all is not so dark. Not quite. Moet shipped 35% less during the first three months and global sales at Laurent Perrier fell with 25%. They also mention that prices are going down and that it is not excessively difficult to get discounts when buying. In view of the price increases in recent years it is perhaps not so surprising.

Charity auction in the Loire to benefit research on autism
Research about autism, that’s what the profit from the auction will go to. For the third time the Chateau Rivau in the Loire Valley organises a charity auction with some excellent wines from the Loire. The guest of honour this year is Italy and many Italian wines will also be on auction. The auction takes place on September 20. More info: http://www.chateaudurivau.com

Starbucks wine bars?
Starbucks is the world’s largest chain of coffee bars, best known for its selection of odd coffee-based concoctions with odd names. But also for its excellent espresso. They have now launched three experimental shops/bars in Seattle where they also will offer a selection of wines and beers. If it goes well we can expect to see Starbucks Wine Bars in more locations. One assumes that they will favour oak aged wines in barrels with French roast. www.bizjournals.com

Buy a satuernes: 68 M euro
Butt hen you’ll get the entire chateau. According to reports in Decanter the (relatively) famous Chateau de Malle in Sauternes is on sale for € 68M. An anonymous ad first appeared in the Financial Times but it has since transpired that the property in question is the Ch de Malle. Industry observers seem to think that the price is high in view of the current climate. decanter.com

True ice wine? Vineyard plantings in Siberia
An experimental vineyard of 3 hectares will be planted in Siberia, as an experiment to develop winemaking in northern climates. The vineyard is in the Russian republic of Altai, in southern Siberia, not far from China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. The vines come from Franche-Comté, and mountainous wine region in France. vitisphere.com

Laroche in Chablis for sale
Domaine Laroche, the big Chablis producer, is in discussions with Jeanjean, a negociant in the Languedoc, about a sale of the domaine. Laroche is one of the biggest producers in Chablis. They also have properties in the Languedoc, Chile, and South Africa. It is headed by Michel Laroche who is the person behind its greatness and its recent expansion. Nothing has been said about the reasons for the sale. Michel Laroche comments in La Revue du Vin de France that it is a plan that he has been working on for a couple of years to find a buyer to his wine empire but that has found more urgency due to the current financial crisis. vitisphere.com

Virus resistant vines
Vines can be attacked by many different diseases and other evils, e.g. the wine louse, mildew, rot, and many other things. One dreaded disease is “fanleaf degeneration” (or grapevine fanleaf virus) that is caused by, yes, a virus. There are chemical treatments available to fight the virus but they are not always effective. Researchers in Aachen have developed a vine with a “built in” defence against the virus, up to 100% effective. With genetic engineering they have introduced anti-bodies from a soil bacterium into the vine so that it produces substances that protect it from the virus. A remaining obstacle is, of course, that genetically modified grapes are not permitted in Europe. sciencedaily.com

French barrel producers create wood appellations
The French barrel making federation (Tonneliers de France) have created a “charter”, which, like an appellation controlée for wine, defines the origin of the wood used to making the barrel. The charter states that if a barrel is labelled as “French” then 100% of the wood has to be of French origin, whereas if a more precise designation is used only 70% of the wood needs to have that origin. For example, a Limousin barrique must contain 70% wood from the Limousin region, the rest coming from other forests in France. The charter also wants to suppress the designations Nevèrs and Tronçais. “There are no forests in Nevèrs” explains François Peltreaux-Villeneuve, CEO of the barrel maker Seguin Moreau Napa. The approved geographic origins for the wood are: Le Centre, Limousin, L’Est, and Le Nord. Some coopers have already moved to classifying their barrels according to the tightness of the grain instead of by geographic origin (cf. for instance our piece on Radoux in the last Brief). All 43 members of Tonnelier de France are said to have signed up to the charter. They represent some 90% of French production. winesandvines.com

Fastes growing wine brands
The fastes growing wine brands on the market in Great Britain are (source: OLN, Nielsen, MAT):
- Yellow Tail, +190%
- FirstCape, 135%
- Ogio, 118%
- Viña Maipo, 86%
- Arniston Bay, 42%
- Lindemans, 33%
- McGuigan, 32%
- Isla Negra, 32%
- Berberana, 18%
- Echo Falls, 27%
- Oyster Bay, 25%

The harvest approaches
According to estimates by Vignerons Idependents this years wine harvest will start early August for the Côtes de Provence, August 23 in Chateauneuf-du-Pape, around August 28 in Bandol and Coteaux Varois, September 15 in Anjou and Sancerre and then Bordeaux.

Swedish wine bar opens in China
Rolf Olofsson was one of the founders of the Barrique Wine Bar in Gothenburg in Sweden some years back. He has left his homeland (and Gothenburg) a couple of years ago to settle in China. His new creation, Barrique Wine Bar (in China) opened in Guangzhou on July 16, two days after the building works finished… Guangzhou is today a (partially) modern city that, according to some estimates, has some 18 million inhabitants. And according to other reports it has very few good restaurants. So the Barrique team has good hope for the future. We wish them the best of luck in their venture.

What with Cru Bourgeois?
A few years ago (2003) Cru Bourgeois classification had the same unpleasant experience as the Saint Emilion one: a revised classification was challenged in court as being unfair and unjust. The plaintiffs won and the Cru Bourgeois classification was annulled. Since then there is no Cru Bourgeois classification, albeit it continues to be used in many circumstances… Instead of trying to make a new (and fairer) classification, as will be the case in Saint Emilion, the Médocains are trying to resuscitate Cru Bourgeois not as a classification but as a kind of quality label. Instead of a classification it will be called “Alliance” Cru Bourgeois. The principle is that the chateau would sign a quality charter and the wines be subject to tasting by an independent jury. Any chateau could sign the charter and adhere to the rules. They would then be subject to controls and audits by an independent organisation. If all is well according to the controls they would get the right to use the Alliance Cru Bourgeois label (but, as mentioned, it would not be considered to be a classification). One glitch: we read in La RVF that Bureau Veritas, the independent audit and control organisation originally in the picture, has declined the project since it is “politically and humanely unmanageable”.

Nitrogen and sulphur makes for more aromatic wines
If you spray the vines with a mix of nitrogen and sulphur the resulting wines will have a more pronounced aromatic character, in particular for white aromatic varieties (e.g. sauvignon blanc). The treatment stimulates production of a substance called thiol that contributes to the aromatic characteristics. The ideal is to make two sprayings in the vineyard around véraison – when the grapes change colour in late July / early August. That the conclusion of studies made at IFV Sud-Ouest (Thierry Dufourcq), IFV Tours and by Florian Lacroux at Enita Bordeaux.

Why and how do you buy wine online?
Daniel Shin is an MSC Food management student doing a project on customers purchasing behaviour when buying wine online. He has made an online questionnaire that will take you a few minutes to fill in. He needs as much input as possible for his research project and would much appreciate any responses from the readers of the BKWine Brief. You can help him by answering the questionnaire here.

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