There is a lot of talk about the very small harvest volume that we will get this year, even here at BKWine Magazine, Record-breaking small wine harvest in France. But in Burgundy they expect to bring in an unusually big harvest! It shows clearly how different weather conditions can be very local and hit very […]
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Alcohol consumption has fallen by 10 litres in 10 years (in France)
Over a ten year period households’ alcohol consumption has fallen by 10 litres to today 70.7 litres per household, a decline of 12%, a study made by Kantar Worldpanel shows (12,000 households). In France. People also spend less: the household budget has fallen over one year by 1.70 euros 327.70 euros in 2016. (How does […]
English wine exports increase sharply, up 21%
English wine has become really trendy, especially sparkling. Now, the wines from the Brexit island are also moving forward in the export market. And maybe it’s exactly Brexit that’s the reason behind it. The pound has fallen (soon at parity with the euro) and English wine has become cheaper in other countries. Exports increased by […]
Italy’s wine harvest prediction: extremely small volume
It is perhaps excessive to call it disaster, but also the Italian harvest (like the French harvest) is expected to be extremely small this year. The Italian oenologist association predicts that Italy will harvest 41 million hectolitres. This is a decline with 24% (!) compared to 2016 (54 M hl). Last year, however, gave a […]
Dates for some of next year’s (2018) wine tours
If you are already planning a wine tour for next year (this year is sold out), we can first of all offer you Chile-Argentina and South Africa in the winter. But we also have some of the dates ready for the rest of the year. Here they are: Chile & Argentina, January 27 – February […]
Record-breaking small wine harvest in France
Already today it is quite clear how big the wine harvest will be this year, with quite a lot of certainty. It will be small. The harvest is also very early. In some places it has already begun, the earliest picker started on August 10, but in most wine regions it will be a bit […]
A picture essay from ”Oriente” in Lisbon
A while back I had a few hours to spend in Lisbon. I was visiting Portugal to go to some oak forests and vineyards. (More on cork production here.) I was staying at a hotel in the part of the city called Oriente. Much of it was built for the Expo 98 world exhibition that […]
Affordable Red Burgundy from Maison Ambroise
Red Burgundy that is both good and does not break the bank can be difficult to find. Maison Ambroise is one place to look. We visited the house this spring on one of our wine tours and tasted their selection, starting with the “plain” Bourgogne Rouge, a wine that offers a good pinot noir character […]
Gérard Bertrand celebrates 30 years as a wine producer
Gérard Bertrand in Languedoc celebrates 30 years as a wine producer. He has had a tremendous success. He had to take over the family wine business at a young age when his father died. At the time the business was small. Now he produces 12 million bottles that are sold in 60 countries. He has […]
Grapes in the Napa Valley as expensive as in Champagne
Does Champagne have the world’s most expensive grapes? We thought so but now it seems that you have to pay as much for cabernet sauvignon grapes in Napa Valley, California. For one kilo of Napa cabernet sauvignon you pay 7 USD, compared to between 5.20 and 6.20 euros for one kilogram of Champagne grapes. Other […]
Vines threatened by fungal diseases, virus, maltreatment, draught etc
The French nurseries that supply wine producers with vines face major challenges. At the end of June, 120 of them gathered to discuss the future. The most important thing they discussed is the withering of the vineyards that has been going on for some time now. Everywhere, the wine growers see how some of their […]
Côtes de Provence celebrates its 40 years with a design competition
Côtes de Provence celebrates this year 40 years as an appellation. And there is reason to celebrate. Rosé wines from Provence have had incredible success in recent years. The world does not seem to be able to get enough of Provence rosé. As part of the celebration, a design competition was organized in June in […]
More new wine importers and one mistake
Yesterday I did an update of our Big List with Wine Importers. There were 13 new names and 22 that I removed. But it turns out that I had missed some new importers. I received several reactions and suggestions for new ones. Here are four five more new ones: Swedish Wine Association, “We stand for […]
New wine importers and closed wine importers
It is not complete but quite close. We have probably Sweden’s most current list of wine importers. We recently received a message from an importer that was not included, so we added his business: WineBee is not a new importer, but we have not noticed them before. They work mainly with Germany, France, Spain, Portugal […]
Qvevri and “normal” wines from Lipartiani-Khareba in Georgia
Georgia is on the move. And it’s no longer just the qvevri wines that get attention. In June, Winery Khareba/Lipartiani presented its wines in Paris. We tasted red and white qvevri wines and “regular” wines. These latter ones account for most of the production in the country. However, the traditional method of qvevri, which means […]
Château Darius: Young wine entrepreneurs set out to modernize Saint Emilion
The wine world is considered by many to be a bit old-fashioned. But times are changing. “We want to be innovative in this very traditional world,” says Flavien Darius Pommier. 23 years old and with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration in his pocket, he is now, along with a friend, marketing the family chateau […]
Civil Eats on sustainable and organic wine in Sonoma County, and on our organic wine book
It’s nice to be quoted. Must mean that some people read what you write and even appreciate it! “Civil Eats is a daily news source for critical thought about the American food system. We publish stories that shift the conversation around sustainable agriculture in an effort to build economically and socially just communities”, it says […]
A typical Chianti: Fattoria della Aiola Chianti Classico
A little while ago a few bottles of Chianti Classico arrived in the post from Fattoria della Aiola. This turned out to be a wine estate founded in 1934 by an Italian politician and sold in 2012 to Russian investors, who now continue to develop the 36 ha property. We tasted the wines and discovered […]
“Foreign” wines in France increase the market share
In France you drink French wines. With the variety that exists in this huge wine country, you never get tired of French wines. But the fact is that the French drink more and more foreign wines. An study on wine sales in big grocery stores (where most wines are sold) shows a rise in recent […]
Proposals for new rules for organic wines upset the wine growers
The EU rules for organic farming are being reviewed and discussions are apparently in the final phase. Several proposals have upset the French (and also other countries’) organic growers. One of the new proposals is that annual controls should be reduced to every two years and perhaps even less frequent. Organic growers worry about the […]
How the rosé trend is killing one of France’s great wines: red Bandol
I was a bit shocked the other day when I saw a video clip with Etienne Portalis from Château Pradeaux, one of the well-known wine estates in Bandol. Bandol has always, for me, been the great red wine of Provence. A structured, high-quality red wine, surrounded by a sea of (not always very exciting) rosé […]
Keep an eye on the weather and limit your spraying
Most (all?) wine growers today aim for less spraying in the vineyard. Regardless of the products you use when spraying. There are various preventive measures that facilitate this goal. For example, keeping an eye on the weather. To do this, a weather station will help. The company Cooptain has recently installed eight weather stations in […]
Rioja, now with single vineyards on the label
Henceforth it is allowed for Rioja to indicate the name of the vineyard from which the grapes come from on the label. Many producers have impatiently been waiting for this. Consumers want, says the Rioja producers, to have this precise information. The traditional Rioja categories will remain: joven, crianza, reserva and gran reserva. The single […]
Saumur Brut without sulphur from Ackerman
Ackerman is a major producer of sparkling wine in the Loire Valley. Now the company launches its first bubbly chenin blanc without added sulphur (Saumur Brut l’Esprit nature, 11.50 euros on site). But that does not mean that these wines automatically fit into the “natural wine” category. Certainly, the absence of sulphur is important to […]
How much does a vineyard cost in France?
If you are thinking of becoming a wine grower in France, here are some important figures just announced by SAFER, a government organization. In 2016, the average price for an AOP vineyard was 140,600 euro per hectare. The figure shows no major change since the year before. However, one change has occurred. The prices have […]
The pleasure of book shops and organic wines
Every time I go past a bookshop I pop into the shop to see if they have one of our books on the shelf. We’ve done nine wine books by now, nine published in Swedish and only one of them published in English. So it works well in Sweden where there’s usually one or two […]
How’s it going for “natural wines”?
Very strange things – even completely incorrect – are sometimes written and said about “natural wines”, the wine category that a few years ago became one of the hottest subjects among wine geeks (and that still is largely limited to the wine geek crowd), and one that no one can really agree on what it […]
Natural cork is doing very well these days
An article about how natural cork has made a comeback in recent years made me look for some interesting cork statistics from Apcor, the association of Portugal’s cork industry. 34% of the world’s cork forests are found in Portugal. That means 736,000 hectares in Portugal of a total of over 2 million hectares in the […]
New wine videos, Glenwood, Newton Johnson in South Africa, and Pic St Loup
We have published quite a few wine videos lately. You can for example watch a whole series of videos with the winemaker at Glenwood Vineyards, DP Burger, in Franschhoek: An introduction to Glenwood Vineyard in Franschhoek with DP Burger When to pick the grapes? A visit to Glenwood Vineyards And several more on their different […]
Oak ageing yes, but discrete flavours please
Oak ageing is an important ingredient in the production of a quality wine, this all wine lovers are well aware of. Important yes, but more and more winemakers are trying to make the oak as discreet as possible in their wines. The oak ageing is needed, they say, to stabilize the wine and to give […]
