Welcome to the BKWine Brief nr 55, February 2008

Where to, French wine journalism?

In January there has been a number of remarkable court rulings in France around wine. The oddest one being when a court fined a French daily paper, Le Parisien, for having published an editorial article about champagne in December 2005. The “fault” of the paper was that they had not printed a warning text (as is compulsory on advertisements: “l’abus d’alcool est dangereux pour la santé”). And the court considered that the article (and I repeat, a purely editorial piece) was close in spirit to an advertisement so it should have carried a warning message. The fine was €5,000. This whole thing is driven by a French organization called ANPAA, state financed (!) with a budget of some €60-70 million. Apparently they see articles on wine and advertisements for champagne as a driving force behind the evil forces dragging young people (and others) down into drug abuse and misery… Read more further down in the Brief. And if you don’t quite agree with this do consider signing the on-line petition protesting against the court ruling equating journalistic articles with advertisements. You will find the link to the petition further down. At the same time, large sums of public money is spent on supporting wine producers in financial difficulties. And the EU allocates substantial budgets to promoting the consumption of EU wine – outside the EU… Try understanding that logic if you can.

Wine Travel

Our upcoming Wine, Truffles and Foie Gras trip is approaching (sorry, it’s fully booked) and we are looking forward to meeting all the participants on that tour. We are just finalizing the final details on the program and I can certainly promise you that the truffles lunch looks very mouth watering – not to speak about the rest.

At the beginning of June we have the “Three Classics” tour that takes you to three of the most interesting and classical wine regions of France: We begin in Champagne, continue south to Chablis and end up in the heart of Burgundy in the Côte d’Or. This is the perfect trip for the wine enthusiast who wants to se a lot of France in a short time – and taste many a good wine on the private wine tastings that we have organized. Just at the beginning of June, when the vineyards are bursting with growth and evenings are wonderfully warm… See below for details.

We will soon have finalized the autumn wine tour program too. The dates to put in your diary are:
- Bordeaux, 8-12 October
- Douro, Porto in Northern Portugal, 22-26 October

More details on these wine tours soon!

And don’t forget that we also do custom tours. If you want to go to that special place with a small group, or perhaps organize a special event with your company or your wine tasting club, do get in touch. We have all the behind-the-scenes contacts to make sure that you will have a really unique experience and an unforgettable trip. Just call me or send me an email if you are interested.

Wine videos – Beta

We have started an experiment with wine videos – interviews with winemakers, visits to vineyards and more. At this moment we are experimenting what this medium can do. It’s actually quite a lot of fun. The clips are sometimes in English and sometimes in French. You can see all of our wine videos on our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/bkwine. If you like the videos you can subscribe to our updates by clicking “subscribe” on YouTube. As I said, it is still an experiment so we are very grateful for any comments on what you think about it. Perhaps we can sell it to Air France or some other airline as an in-flight video channel!? (see the news item below on Grape Radio)

Britt

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

Read the whole Brief here.