Category Archives: Ramblings and Rants

November review and photo journal

Not that we habitually write our end-of-month newsletter at the last minute – good Lord, no – but we’ve been blending the 2023 whites and rosés this morning. And really good they are too (even if we would say that). We haven’t mixed all the wines from the stainless steel vats together en masse just yet but we have checked what fits together – with the help of an assortment of large test tubes and one of Bordeaux’s finest consultant enologists or oenologues (as in someone who knows what they’re doing). We’ll be bottling those wines here in February and there’s much to prepare before then.

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A guide to UK duty hikes on wine

An increase of 53p a bottle might not seem much to some but with 50% of an £8 bottle of wine soon to be UK tax, it’s worth considering how much is spent on a bottle. And perhaps, more than ever, ‘drink less but better’ might be the message.

I’ve tried to make it easier to grasp with a fancy graphic of typically-priced bottles, above, and roughly where the money goes at each price point when you buy from larger retailers. And, in a separate picture, in restaurants.

There’s also an in-depth look at the data behind the duty on wine. I hope it’s of interest and, aside from perhaps sharing in our frustration, I’d like to think you’ll be better informed to make smart decisions when it comes to buying and enjoying the stuff.

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Reply to the Government’s alcohol duty review

Replies to the Government’s consultation document on its new alcohol duty system have to be in by 11.45pm on 30 January 2022.

So our January news review comes a little earlier than usual to give you the thrilling opportunity to email your MP before the deadline, should you wish. We have felt pretty strongly about unreasonable levels of wine duty in the UK in the past but these current proposals have really sent us into a spin, along with many others in the wine trade.

Without beating about the bush, here’s a draft of what you might want to write to your MP. (Links to reach your MP below.) Update 26 Jan – we have slightly cut down the suggested letter from the email we sent here to the one below. Don’t forget to include your address to show you live in the MP’s constituency.

This explains where we’re coming from, but do copy and paste and edit accordingly. Below this explanatory letter is a stash of facts, figures and fancy graphics which you may be interested in, or can at least refer to if you want to know more.

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The Budget: prices on most still wines to rise in 2023

First the good news from Rishi Sunak’s ‘new age of optimism‘ Budget. The higher UK duty rate on sparkling wine will be removed and the tax rate will be the same for sparkling and still wines from February 2023. Instead it will be based on the level of alcohol, with the current duty rate of £2.23 plus VAT applying for wines of 11.5% vol. Duty is frozen for the moment but don’t be fooled by this.

While staying with family in Worcestershire, here’s a snapshot (above) of what the new duty rates will look like for still wines from Feb ’23 if the proposals go ahead. There are two bottles of Bauduc and four others I bought from Waitrose – in all, three whites and three reds.

The German Riesling at 12% alc/vol will cost 12p more in tax, the 13% Bauduc Sauvignon 35p more, while our Bordeaux red, the French Cabernet Franc red from Saumur, and the South African Chardonnay, a whopping 47p a bottle more (13.5%). The Argentinian Malbec at 14.5% will cost an extra 70p in duty.

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To be or not to be… essential

Should we deliver wine to customers at home in the UK? We think so, or at least for now.

There have certainly been some mixed messages from the UK trade. We were fairly shocked when the CEO of The Wine Society, Britain’s highly respected home delivery specialist, took “the decision to stop taking new orders and to stop making deliveries with immediate effect” hours after PM Boris Johnson’s ‘stay at home’ speech on 23 March, on account of staff safety. It was in the middle of one of their busiest periods.

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The new Bordeaux to Bauduc Express

Bordeaux is a great city and a really popular destination for a short break, whether you’re living it up in a swanky hotel or staying for a few days in an Airbnb. Until now it’s been difficult to get out to us for a tour and tasting without a car, so we are pretty excited about the new express coach service from the city centre to Créon, with the bus stop neatly located at the end of Rue Bauduc.

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That £4,500 bottle of Bordeaux served by mistake

If we had a pound for the number of times this will be mentioned by visitors this summer, we’ll be able to buy a bottle. Well, maybe a half. Here’s a quick recap of this cracking story that went around the world, and a brief look at how that bottle of Le Pin 2001 ended up being quite so expensive on the wine list in Manchester. Funnily enough, I was treated by some generous, wine-loving friends at a famous restaurant in northern Spain some ten years ago, and spotted the exact same wine on the list. “Wow!” I said. “They’ve got Le Pin ‘01 on the list for €600. The trade price, if you can find a bottle, is three times that.”

“Great” they said. “Order two.” Keep reading

A Long Weekend with David Pritchard

Watching Rick Stein’s Long Weekend in Bordeaux for the umpteenth time when it was repeated earlier this month brought back many happy memories but, on this occasion, it was tinged with considerable sadness. The director and producer David Pritchard, who had worked with Rick for many years, died a few weeks before this showing, following a brave battle with cancer.

On the face of it, the visit by David, Rick and the production team to Château Bauduc on the last day of our harvest in 2015 had culminated in just a few minutes of TV – albeit primetime BBC. By then though, David and I had become good friends and our friendship would continue, from afar, long after the filming had ended. So here’s a small tribute to the great man, with a gallery of pictures of his reconnaissance trip to Bordeaux, when he was accompanied by his wife and assistant Fiona, and of the filming of the Long Weekend itself with his crew.

David was an avid consumer of our newsletter – he would often call afterwards or drop us a line – so it seems only appropriate. Keep reading

No posing for the photo please – The Guardian

‘We need a picture of you with the stock you’re planning to sell’ said Jon Henley, the Guardian’s European correspondent, after he came to talk about Bordeaux wine and Brexit. We duly obliged and how smart the online version of his excellent piece looked. Then the picture editor of the print edition called. ‘Not for us, thanks. We need a ‘living the dream’ shot asap – bringing in the harvest, but no posing please.’ That proved more of a challenge than we thought but no doubt you’ll agree that Ange, Georgie and Sophie, below, don’t look like they’re posing. Not one bit. The boss reduced to a miserly cameo role, top right.

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