BKWine Blog
Sometimes people as “Do you make wine in Sweden?” A fair question. The climate is obviously not ideal. The answer is “Yes.” I believe there is well less than 100 hectares in total, but quite a few producers. If you happen to be in the south of Sweden on July 27-28 you have a unique […]
During our spring wine tours we have visited the small and interesting Champagne house Philipponnat. On our visit in early May we saw people working in their prestigious vineyard Clos des Goisses with knapsack sprayers on their backs. Obviously they were doing some kind of treatment. It turned out to be weed control with a […]
IWSR, an English company specializing in market research in the beverage industry, has published figures for global alcohol and wine consumption in 2017. Total alcohol consumption increased very modestly by 0.01%, but as it decreased in 2016, this small increase is still positive for the industry. It was mainly wine and cider that accounted for […]
Unusual grapes can pop-up when you least expect it. On one of our tours in Chablis in the spring, a little-known grape called sacy made an appearance during the tasting of Domaine Frédéric and Céline Gueguen. Of course, this was not a Chablis. Some Chablis producers, including Domaine Gueguen, also make wine outside the Chablis […]
Champagne producers would like to make us believe that Prosecco’s huge successes does not affect champagne. That champagne and prosecco play in different leagues. It is possible, but hard to believe 100%. At least Prosecco has now succeeded with the feat of entering the French high speed TGV train bistro wagons. You can now buy […]
Wine production conditions have hardly been ideal in recent decades, but now that there is light at the end of the tunnel, at least one producer has decided to blow life in the dormant wine industry in Zimbabwe. Jonathan Passaportis, owner of Winelands of Bushman Rock, the almost only surviving vineyard, believes in Zimbabwe’s future […]
IGP Ile de France is close to an agreement with Champagne. IGP Ile-de-France is a new IGP since 2017. Ile-de-France is the region around Paris and a (very small) part of the vineyards is actually in Paris suburbs. With new plantations in progress, the IGP may soon be around 70 hectares. But the new IGP […]
More and more wine bottles are sealed with screwcap, according to a survey. The screwcap has increased its market share in the world by 13.2% from 2012. Today it has 29.6% of the world market. In total, 30 billion bottles are sold annually in the world, of which 9 billion are closed with a screwcap. […]
When we visited Château Pichon-Baron, grand cru classé in Pauillac, recently we saw a small canister in the vineyard that we have never seen before. This canister is called CheckMate Puffer and is a new way of distribute pheromones that protect against the grape worm with the method with the curious name “sexual confusion”. The […]
Sulphur is something that is naturally present in our environment and it is a product that is allowed for all wine producers – organic as well as conventional – both to combat fungal diseases in the vineyard and as an antioxidant in the finished wine. However, there is a certain demand from organic producers for […]
A very violent hailstorm with huge hailstones hit Bordeaux on May 26th. It is as yet unclear how many hectares of vineyards have been affected, but probably at least a few thousand in southern Médoc, Bourg, Blaye and in Charente, the Cognac region. Vines that would have been in bloom the following week have now […]
Chile is a very exciting wine country today, really worth visiting. When you come to Chile you will surely also come to Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is a small town in the Colchagua Valley in Chile. It has around 40 000 inhabitants. It is the almost inevitable base-camp to explore the famous Colchagua Valley, and, […]
Armenia, Georgia, Macedonia and Moldova all make wine but they are completely unknown as wine countries to most wine consumers. They now work together to market their wines. The wine industries in the four countries have gained momentum in recent years, and now they want to develop both their exports and their tourism. Georgia is […]
The impossible and absurd objectivity No, it is impossible to judge wine after a neutral and objective quality scale. But first… Is it important for the wine consumer if a wine has a “medal” in a wine competition? Some think it’s irrelevant. Another point of view that we often hear is “a medal! Then at […]
Wine is found in all possible price ranges. One is as often amazed at how inexpensive wines can be as at how expensive wines can be. At what prices do different wine countries sell their wines in the export market? We recently saw some interesting statistics for 2017 that compare export prices for the most […]
OIV, the International Organization for Vine and Wine, recently presented the figures for the wine production in the world in 2017. The world has now 7.6 million hectares of vines; this figure includes table grapes and raisins. The production of wine in 2017 was 250 million hectolitres. This volume is historically low due to the […]
We have just launched a new and really exciting travel destination: New Zealand. The country is best known for its white wines made from sauvignon blanc (and perhaps also its rugby team?), but there are many other excellent wines as well, for instance exquisite pinot noir and powerful syrah wines. It is also a country […]
Bag-in-box wines have shorter durability than wines in bottle. And the small sizes, 1.5 and 3 litres have the shortest. These sizes are now becoming more and more popular, also in France. At a recent bag-in-box conference, where Smurfit Kappa and other bag-in-box manufacturers participated, it was discussed whether it is possible to improve, at […]
Italy shot to the top position in 2012, as the country selling most volume of wine into Sweden, and is still there. Not threatened by anyone at the moment. In 2017, 56.8 million litres of Italian wine were sold at Systembolaget, the Swedish retail monopoly. France, in second place, sold a meagre 26.5 million. The […]
Flavescence dorée is a dreaded bacterial disease that spreads through a grasshopper. It was discovered for the first time in 1949. In France it is especially difficult in parts of the southern Rhône Valley and Provence. Here we can even see a decrease in the number of organic producers because it is mandatory in some […]
Autumn 2018 Champagne, September 26-30 Bordeaux, October 10-14 Douro Valley in Portugal, October 17-21 South Africa, November 9-19 Winter 2019 Chile-Argentina, January 20 – February 4, 2019 South Africa, February 16-24, 2019 New Zealand, March 11-26, 2019 For more information please contact us on email or on phone (we’re on French time), or go to […]
During our visit to South Africa at the beginning of March, the harvest was in full swing. The very difficult, and prolonged, drought in the wine regions of the Western Cape affects the grapes of course. But most of the producers we met told us that although the volume in most places will be small […]
France has 806,000 hectares planted with vines. This area includes about 70,000 hectares used for Cognac. Three grape varieties take up one third of this area: Merlot (112,000 hectares), Ugni Blanc (82,000 hectares, which is used mainly for Cognac) and Grenache (81,000 hectares). After the top three follow Syrah (64,000), Chardonnay (51,000), Cabernet Sauvignon (48,000), […]
Comité Champagne has published their sales figures for 2017. Champagne made a record turnover of 4.9 billion euros in 2017. 307 million bottles were sold, a slight increase compared with 2016. The sales record counted in volume from 2007 is still valid. 338 million bottles of champagne were sold that year. France is still the […]
Grenache is one of the world’s most planted grapes. Most of these vines are in France and Spain. In 1982, Rhône Valley enthusiast Randall Grahm at Bonny Doon Vineyards in California made his first Grenache wines. The term Rhone Rangers was coined to describe producers with a penchant for Rhône grapes. Grenache was on its […]
“Burgundy… Say it. Feel it. Taste it. The word evokes a very special wine country and a very special wine. It makes me think of gently rolling hills. Vineyards all the way to the horizon. Winding roads. Small villages. Unique wines and superb French gastronomy. When I started tasting and drinking wine Burgundy was one […]
Vinisud, the big wine fair in Montpellier, took place earlier this year, on 18-20 February. Vinisud is about wines from southern France and other countries around the Mediterranean. If you want to meet good producers from Languedoc-Roussillon, Provence, the Rhone Valley, and more, Vinisud is an excellent wine fair, not least because many of the […]
Varietal or terroir? Or just “different”? The grape variety was not really important before the New World wines appeared on a larger scale in the 1990s. Well, of course it was important. But consumers did not care about which grapes the wines were made of. They bought a Bordeaux, a Burgundy, a Moselle or Rhine […]
It doesn’t stop raining in Bordeaux. As spring progresses, wine producers face problems. It is difficult to drive the tractor and to walk in a wet and muddy vineyard. This is inconvenient for those growers who mechanically remove the weeds. Maintenance in the vineyard, such as replacing the poles that hold up the wires, is […]
My taste and your taste We all have our own personal taste. We enjoy different styles of wines, not necessarily the same as our neighbour. Our opinion about a wine is always personal. It is virtually impossible to give a completely neutral, yet meaningful, review of a wine. In fact, to think that there is […]
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