BKWine Blog
The 2020 edition of the excellent wine guide “Platter’s South African Wine Guide” was launched in November. A total of 125 wines and one brandy received the coveted 5 stars. “Editor’s Award Winery of the Year” went to the well-known Boekenhoutskloof in Franschhoek. “Best newcomer of the year” was Pieter Ferreira Cap Classique. Pieter Ferreira […]
What does it really cost to convert to organic farming? It is sometimes said that “certification is expensive so the producer X works organically but does not certify”. That’s not correct. The certification is a marginal cost. But what about the rest? A French report from consulting firm CerFrance Gard tries to work it out. […]
Every year, over 2 billion Diam corks are sold, so chances are you will now and then pull one out of your wine bottle. Diam Bouchage is a French company that 12 years ago introduced a technical invention that eliminates the molecule responsible for the annoying cork taste (2,4,6-trichloroanisole, TCA) from cork granules. Diam could […]
In the November Brief, we wrote about an article on Scandinavian wines in the New York Times. We recounted, among other things, a quote by Sveneric Svensson, chairman of the Swedish Wine Association, uniting many of the Swedish wine producers. Sveneric sent us an email immediately after he read the newsletter to refute this quote. […]
How much does a grape name on the label really mean? A lot. At least some people think so. During the international Chenin Blanc congress that took place in Angers in July, there was much talk about the importance of providing consumers with information on the label and what added value it provides. The still […]
Every year, the Swedish food magazine “Allt Om Mat” (Everything About Food) selects a winery for the “Golden Glass” trophy, an award that goes to a winery that has distinguished itself for high quality and that is available to consumers in Sweden. In 2019 the award went to Musella in the Italian region of Valpolicella. […]
Will there soon be a requirement for wines to list the ingredients on the label? The issue has been debated in recent years. (Just to be clear: it is not forbidden to have a declaration of contents, it’s just not compulsory.) Many consumers ask themselves why alcoholic beverages are exempt from the rule that all […]
27 appellations in the Anjou and Saumur regions in the Loire Valley have recently published their new rules and regulations. The big news is that they all now prohibit chemical weed removal. These 27 AOPs together have 18,000 hectares. In the current climate of sustainability awareness more and more wineries reduce spraying with chemical herbicides. […]
One should not make the mistake to believe that cava is a cheap alternative to champagne. No more than that sancerre is a cheap version of white burgundy (or vice versa). No, cava is its very own wine style, own grape varieties, own terroir. Why not make an inspired and slightly different choice for New […]
No French dinner is complete without a good cheese. At Christmas, the cheese will probably be a vacherin de mont d’or, an AOP cheese from the Jura mountains. This is a true Christmas cheese and much loved by the French. It is only produced in the autumn and winter. In the spring and summer, the […]
Do you need some inspiration to fins a different bubbly for the festivities (you don’t really need any help to find the big brands, do you?)? Here are a few sparkling wines that we recommend. Champagne Bonnet-Ponson Seconde Nature, ~45 euro. Cyril Bonnet is a very talented winemaker. No sulphur, no dosage. But a lot […]
Scandinavian wines have received a great deal of attention in the international press lately. Like most other journalists, Eric Asimov, in his long article in the New York Times, points out that climate change makes it possible to commercially make wine in Scandinavia. But he also admits that this doesn’t make it easy. Climate change […]
The now well-known wine fair for organic wines, Millésime Bio, will take place on 27-29 January 2020 in Montpellier. All exhibitors must be organically certified. Being under conversion is no longer enough. There are now far too many producers who want to exhibit. The number of exhibitors – 1200 in 2020 – is increasing every […]
Recently Uco Valley, in the southernmost part of Mendoza, received its fifth geographical designation of origin, identificación geográfica (IG) in Spanish. It is San Pablo, where the vines grow in rocky soil at high altitude, between 1100 and 1700 meters above sea level. The other IGs in Uco are Paraje Altamira, which has a unique […]
There is a wine region in France that is really doing well at the moment. And that is Cognac. Sales increased in 2018 for the fifth consecutive year. 205 million bottles of cognac were exported. This equates to 98% of the entire production. The United States buys 94 million bottles annually and is the largest […]
Forty years ago, in 1979, the Spanish Torres family began making wine in Chile, in the small region of Curicó, 200 kilometres south of Santiago. At that time, Chile’s viticulture was still in its infancy and there is no doubt that Torres in various ways helped to accelerate development. Torres introduced new, modern production methods, […]
A wine tour is so much more than a “regular” tour or a normal holiday. A wine tour with BKWine is a unique experience where you get to meet the people behind the wine, enjoy the beautiful nature and of course also savour many good wines and top-quality food. It is a gift that will […]
Appellation Marlborough Wine (AMW) was founded in 2018 by a number of wine producers who wanted to protect their region’s reputation, which, they thought, was about to be eroded by cheap bulk wine exports. Now AMW is registered as a trademark also in North America, Asia and Europe. The association has 49 members. Although the […]
A bottle of wine is never wrong, but a book about wine may be longer lasting. We have written ten wine books, about Languedoc-Roussillon, Bordeaux, Champagne, Tuscany, Piedmont, Burgundy, all of France, how to grow vines and make wine (not a do-it-yourself but a book that explains the technicalities of what winemakers do). But we […]
Each year, the Munskänkarna Wine Association in Sweden (probably the worlds’ biggest, with some 25,000 members) chooses a “Wine Village/Wine Region of the Year”. For 2020, Roussillon in southern France was recently elected. A good choice we think. Roussillon is often lumped together with Languedoc and that can sometimes be justified. But Roussillon has its […]
Now, wine producers in the Spanish region of Ribera del Duero can make white wine and call it DO Ribera del Duero. So far, this designation has been for red wines only. The whites account for around 3% of the production in the region and have until now been sold as Castilla y Leon IGP. […]
In October we have twice been in the Douro Valley. In this wonderfully beautiful region in northern Portugal, some of Portugal’s, even the world’s, most interesting wines are made. That they make both dry wines and port wines here makes a visit to the Douro even more exciting. The producers are very fond and proud […]
Can the solution to the problem of the dreaded fungal disease downy mildew (mildiou) be something as simple as oregano? It is a little early to answer yes to that question. But the experiments that two Swiss researchers are currently doing are interesting. They discovered that by spraying essential oil of oregano on chasselas grapes […]
Vinomed is the name of a new, export-oriented wine fair in Montpellier in southern France. It takes place for the first time this year for two days, April 27 and 28, 2020. The focus of Vinomed is the wines from the Languedoc-Roussillon even if the show also includes some other regions in “Occitanie”, like e.g. […]
Is the new trend low-alcohol wines? This is what many producers believe in New Zealand. And a great deal of effort is now made to produce sauvignon blanc wines with alcohol contents of around 10%. Concours Mondial du Sauvignon (which is organised by the big Concours Mondial de Bruxelles) reports on the latest research. The […]
Only 2% of the world’s wines are aged in oak barrels. (Ed.: Only?) But for these 2% quite a few barrels are needed. France produced 670,000 barrels in 2018, an increase of 2%. 68% of the barrels went on export. The rest stayed in the French wine regions where demand is increasing, in part due […]
The wine world is really not a stronghold of equality. The average export price of a grand cru (red & white) from Burgundy in 2018 was 87 euros per bottle. The red ones are more prestigious and averaged 101 euros per bottle. The whites were “only” at 56 euros. These are prices that most other […]
The designation Cru Bourgeois for chateaux has existed in Médoc for many years. Various attempts to rank them, roughly in the style of the 1855 classification, have been made since the 1930s. More or less successful. It was previously a (semi-official) classification but is currently a private label. But from 2020, a serious attempt will […]
Organic wines are becoming more and more popular with French wine consumers. 48% of them would like to see a larger range of organic wines in the stores where they normally buy wine. The fact that the wine is organic is a buying argument for 50% of the young and 38% of the older consumers. […]
There seem to be no limits to the creativity of winemakers. Diemersdal Estate in Durbanhill in South Africa has recently launched its third vintage of its Sauvignon Blanc Winter Ferment. For this wine, the grapes are harvested in February. The grapes are pressed and the juice gets 3 days of skin contact. However, the fermentation […]
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