Welcome to the BKWine Brief nr 85, August 2010

This is nice:

”World’s Top Wine Tours”! That’s what the worlds biggest travel magazine says about BKWine. We’re very proud!

Travel and Leisure Magazine has recently published a web feature on the world’s best wine travel operators. It’s written by T+L’s highly respected wine and food editor Bruce Schoenfeld (“an acclaimed magazine and television journalist” says Harper Collins). BKWine is one of a handful of tour operators that Schoenfeld puts on his list. In the T+L feature he gives BKWine top score for being the best choice if you want to meet with winemakers and have a really personal wine tour experience. We are, as you might imagine, quite proud. The world’s best wine tours! And we hope that we will have the occasion to see you, dear reader, sometime soon on one of our wine and food tours.

Along with quality (e.g. of wine tours) there are other subject matters in this Brief that may be worth some thinking and reasoning. For example, fairness and justice.

Take fairness.

There’s a big row (well, relatively speaking) on how the 400 bottles of super-luxury wines from the Domaine de la Romanée Conti should be sold in Sweden. (Going for a market price of up to €4000 per bottle.) “What do you mean, how they should be sold?” you may justifiably asked. Well, there’s a monopoly. Previous years, on the day the DRC wines were released, what you had to do was to prepare yourself for long waiting in line in front of the shop entrance the night before the release. The last time it was more a question of luck than of patience: if you happened to be at the store where they opened the doors two minutes before the official opening time so you could rush to the order desk before anyone else. None of this was of course quite fair to those who did not get a bottle.

This time they hope to solve the “fairness” problem with a clever new shop IT system for ordering. How that will work we do not know. You won’t be surprised, we think, if we say that the problem can never be solved, as long as there is a monopoly. How can 400 very sought after bottles be sold “fairly” to 9 million consumers? Read the details in this month’s Brief. Do you have any ideas how to solve the difficult issue with the DRC bottles? (If there actually is one.) Write us a line or post a comment in the blog!

Another philosophical problem is justice and research in genetically modified plants.

A group of activists has destroyed an experimental plantation in Alsace, ripping up 70 GM vines. Is that a reasonable way to do things? Last time it happened (yes, it’s not the first time) authorities hardly reacted. This time the response seems much stronger both from the government and from others.

The activist mean (we assume) that it can be dangerous with GM research. On the other hand, it might lead to that growers need to use fewer chemicals in the vineyard, or that it reduces the problems with incurable vine diseases. Perhaps a difficult balance? And one can wonder if the activists also refuse to dress in cotton, or perhaps also attack the clothes stores in town. 43% of all cotton comes from genetically modified plants (according to gmo-compass.org). What’s your view? Write us a line or write a comment in the blog!

But back to the beginning, the wine tours. We will soon be launching the wine tour program for 2011 so keep your eyes open. For us right now, it is this years most intensive travel season that is just beginning. Over the next two months we will be at home on Mondays and Tuesdays and travelling the rest of the week.

Enjoy the Brief!

Britt & Per

PS: Recommend to your friends to read the Brief or forward it to them !

More on wine:
Guest writers on BKWine.com
Wine videos: BKWine TV
Wine photography



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