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Welcome to the BKWine Brief nr 67, February 2009
French folies
”Ils sont foux les romains” is what Asterix and Obelix says about the old romans. It may now seem more apt to say “ils sont foux les français”. They are about to vote on a law proposal that may lead to that restaurants cannot serve all-included menus, including wine. Or that you cannot organise wine shows where the visitors are served samples after paying a simple entrance fee. Or that wine producers cannot serve tasting samples at his winery without charging by the glass. (What about barrel samples?)
There’s an anti-wine lobby in France that is surprisingly strong and this is only latest folie. Wine production is a major agricultural industry and wine is one of the more important exports from France, so one would have thought that it would be more positively treated. But that is not the case. Many wine producers are today more in great need of support, rather than hindrance. In particular on the marketing side there are lots of things that could be done to improve the situation. That’s not an area that the French and wine producer in particular, are good at. But the French government is actually more inclined to help the wine producers outside of the country rather than inside. They have for example the Sopexa international marketing support organisation (albeit not particularly effective when it comes to wine). Read more about the recent developments further down in the Brief.
Swedish folies
We just read that the Systembolaget (Swedish alcohol retail monopoly) has plans to implement on-line shopping towards the end of 2009. That is, of course, great for people living in Sweden. Only … why has it not been done long ago? Can you imagine a major and dominant retailing business that has not since long started offering its customers on-line shopping. Retail is a monopoly in Sweden, but import of wine is not. There is a thriving industry of independent importers, but they all have to sell to consumers through the monopoly. Curiously, many of these independent importers have created small web applications that allows consumers to place an order on-line, that is then forwarded automatically by the system, e.g. by fax, to the Systembolaget… Since the Systembolaget didn’t do anything the importers, with minimal resources, did it themselves. There are also a few on-line wine shops that sell direct to consumers and even deliver the wines directly to the door. That’s possible thanks to an EU regulation that has forced Sweden to accept that individuals are allowed to privately buy from e-shops located in other EU countries. So a few enterprising Swedes have opened an eshop based in Denmark or Germany and are selling direct to consumers in Sweden. And providing home deliver. Home delivery is not part of the Systembolaget plans, as we understand it. That’s the joys of a monopoly. Wonderful customer service.
France and Sweden are not the only oddball countries of course. Take England: if you are serving wine by the glass you are not allowed serve it in whatever quantity you like. The wine glass must have a certain measure. Small tasting samples? No, no.
Or the USA, the beacon of the free market (one would have thought): due to archaic rules and regulations (partisan corporative self interests and pork?) the wine trade is strictly controlled and it is virtually impossible to sell to a consumer from one state to another. The big e-tailer Wine.com recently pulled out of, was it Michigan (?), for this reason. Admittedly, these rules seem to be loosening up a little. A little. Or take the wine shop (in New York?) that was recently fined ($10 000?) because it provided a nice gift bag to carry the bottle in. And you even have some states with almost a monopoly situation. Just like in Sweden. You wouldn’t have thought the Americans to be such Socialists would you?
I promise…
It is perhaps too late with New Year’s vows but it can anyway be a good time now in winter to think about how to improve one’s wine year 2009. Here are a few suggestions for vinous vows for 2009:
1. Buy six different bottle in stead of six of the same. In some “buying advice” you read that you should always by a case of 6 or 12 to see how the wine develops with age. But it can be even more fun to discover a new wine instead. And anyway, how many of us have the possibility really to lay down wine? In our own wine cellar there are very few wines that we have more than a single or at most a few bottles of. And then we do have a cellar with more bottles than most.
2. Spend a couple of extra euros/dollars on the bottle, at least for the ones for the weekend dinners. It’s not more than the price of a latte/pint/hot dog but it will give you a faaar better wine experience.
3. Don’t choose the house wine in a restaurant. Select something else. It doesn’t have to be expensive but at least you know what it is. If you insist on taking the House Wine, at least ask what it is first. And if the answer comes back as “oh, I think it’s some nice and fruity red”, then I know what I’d choose.
4. At least once (or twice) a month choose a wine that comes from a district that you’re not very familiar with. Pick a Vouvray, or a wine from Austria, Alto Adige, Jura, Uruguay or something else that is not BBC (*).
5. Choose a wine that is not on recommendation from an ”expert”. There’s nothing wrong with good advice but taste is so different. “Recommended producer” by BKWine, 90/100 from Robert Parker, five stars in Decanter… all depends on personal preferences. Don’t look at someone’s recommendation and then apply rule #4. (You can’t image how often we’re not d’accord with each other or with some ”expert” on a wine.) Why not occasionally pick a wine because it has a pretty label?...
6. Discover a new wine region in situ. This is of course our final and best suggestion. Look at our travel program below…
Britt & Per
(*) BBC: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne
Read all of the BKWine Brief 67 here!
The wine louse (phylloxera vastatrix) has been found in Australia. The dreaded insect showed it’s ugly head in Europe at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries and almost wiped out all of Europe’s vineyards. Luckly, someone found the remedy: graft the European vines on American rootstocks to get a disease resistant plant. Three years ago the devastating insect was found in a small area in Australia but seemed to have been fought back. Now it has been found again, this time in the Yarra Valley. The risk for the winegrowers is that they will have to do expensive replantings if the pest spreads. No end to the misery in Australia it seems. More: www.vitisphere.com
Here are the top selling lots at Sotheby’s in 2008. Not cheap…
- $ 724,371: Ch Yquem, 70 vintages, 136 bottles ($5326/bottle)
- $169,400: Romanée Conti 1971, 6 magnum ($14166)
- $151,250: Romanée Conti 1985, 12 bt ($12604)
…follwed by another four lots of RC. And then:
- $102,850: Château Pétrus 1961, 12 bt ($8570)
- $90,750: La Tache 1985, 6 mag ($7562)
- $84,700: Château Latour 1961, 1 impérial ($10587)
There are not many better occasions to discover the wines of the Rhône than the Découverte en Vallée du Rhône. Over several days there are many tastings and meetings with vignerons in villages all along the district. This year it takes place on March 16-21. Trade only. More info www.inter-rhone.com. The only better way to discover Rhône wins would be on a wine tour with BKWine…
Château Latour, one of the five Premier Grand Cru Classés in Bordeaux, belongs to the fabulously rich French industrialist and financier François Pinault. According to persistent rumours (e.g. in TimesOnline) the chateau is now for sale. Pinault is said to have contacted the investment bank Lazard and asked them to discretely enquire for potential purchasers. It is estimated that you will only have to cough up some 150-200 million euros for the place.
The big Loire wine fair will take place, as always, the first week of February: on February 2-4 in Angers. An outstanding opportunity if you are looking for Loire wines. (Trade show.) www.salondesvinsdeloire.com
According to research done by PowerBoutique sales of wine over the internet grew with 171% between 2006 and 2007 compared to +31% for the average on-line shop – in France. Numbers that are perhaps a bit surprising, in view of the struggle that most online wine shops have to survive.
BKWine Travel Stories: vintage organic
Millésime Bio is the only (as far as we know) wine fair dedicated to “vins bios”.
Bio wines translates to organic wines but the scope is a bit bigger since it also includes biodynamic wines (that are organic by definition but that have gone one step further, adopting the biodynamic ways of working).
This is the first time we come to this wine fair and it is certainly seems to be a “must” to come here for a wine buyer (and perhaps wine journalist) interested in organic wines. All very well organised (except the exceptionally poor organisation of transport to and from the wine fair – if any organiser reads this, then you should note that you definitely need to fix this problem. We took a taxi to get there, the rain was pouring down. Then we asked at the info desk how to get back to the hotel in the evening: “First you have to walk 20-25 minutes to the bus stop. Then you take a bus to get to the tram. You change to the tram, and it will take you to the city centre. Oh, and by the way, the walk is over a couple of dark and empty shopping mall parking lots”… Scandalous! But lunch was very good though…)
After spending two days at the event we’ve tasted many interesting wines, ranging from simple, straight-forward everyday wines (what you in French could call gouleyant or vins de soif, ‘thirst wines’), to very ambitious and sophisticated wines.
I’m not going to make a long story of all the producers we tasted (they will no doubt show up in various situations in the future here) but I’ll give you some of the names:
Albet i Noya (Penedes), Ampelidae (Loire), Champagne Fleury, Champagne Françoise Bedel & Fils, Clos Lapeyre (Jurançon), Dom Alain Chabanon (Languedoc), Ch Dudon (Sauternes), Clos Château Gaillard (Loire), Domaine Grand Guilhem (Corbieres, Fitou), Domaine Illaria (Iroleguy), Domaine la Courtade (Provence), La Grange de Quatre Sous (Languedoc), Dom de la Pinte (Arbois), Domaine la Tour des Videaux (Provence), Maison Humbrecht (Alsace), Dom Montirius (Vacqueyras, Rhône), Dom Olivier Pithon (Roussillon), Dom Pierre Breton (Loire), Dom Pierre Frick (Alsace), Château Richard (Bergerac), Dom St André de Figuière (Provence), Ch Yvonne (Loire), Dom Zumbaum-Tomasi (Languedoc Pic St Loup), Colombaia (Tuscany), I Tre Poggi (Piedmonte), Castello di Tassarolo (Piedmonte), Ch Pech-Latt (Languedoc), Dom Borie la Vitarèle (Languedoc), Dom Canet Valette (Languedoc), Château la Tour Grise (Loire), Bodega Enguera (Valencia), Château les Mangons (Bordeaux), Dom Clairac (Languedoc)…
All make very good wines in their respective ranges and categories.
Are they good because they are organic? Well, we’re not convinced that is the case. Perhaps it is, perhaps not. You can certainly also find a lot of bad organic wine. It may be a case of coincidences, so to speak (or mistaken causality): many organic (and biodynamic) winemakers care a lot about how they grow vines and how they make wines. Perhaps the wines are good simply because the producers are careful and thoughtful in what he does, and cares about the quality of the end result too…
There was one tasting that was so particular and so interesting, from a perspective of “what difference does it make what products you use and how you treat the wine” that almost in itself it made the trip worth while. But you will have to wait for the next BKWine Travel Stories post to read about that.
Millésime Bio, wine show for organic (biological, ecological…) wine – definitely worth going to.
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Vine Growing and Wine Making
The original Swedish title is "Ett vin blir till" meaning A Wine is Born. It is a unique description of the work in the vineyard and in the wine cellar. Published in 2009. More info on the web site for A Wine is Born.
Languedoc
Wines, vineyards and winemakers in Languedoc in the south of France, one of the most dynamic wine regions in France, and in the world. Published in 2007. More info on the site of the Languedoc book.
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