Toot toot! In her piece for the Telegraph last week called ‘The best bubbles for the bank holiday’, wine correspondent Victoria Moore kindly included our delicious sparkling wine.
Keep reading“A top-notch Crémant” – Telegraph
May 28 2025
Category Archives: Chateau Bauduc
‘Excellent. Definitely a buy’ – The Telegraph on our 2024 Sauvignon Blanc
April 30 2025
“The new vintage of Quinney’s Château Bauduc Sauvignon Blanc 2024, Bordeaux, France (£13.25 in cases of six, delivery free in England and Wales for orders of 12 bottles, bauduc.com), has just landed. Crisp, streamlined, mostly sauvignon, excellent. Definitely a buy. People like it so much that Quinney is thinking of buying even more white vineyards. Though he says some think he is “stark, raving mad”.
Victoria Moore in the Telegraph, Saturday 19 April 2025.
Sauvignon Blanc 2024 – Switzerland
Keep readingOur new Rosé & Sauvignon Blanc 2024
March 31 2025
The first shipment of our 2024 Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé arrived this morning in London City Bond and, as the sun’s coming out, it seems a good moment to launch them on our website. The wines will arrive with our importers in some countries like Switzerland this week as well.
Both wines, with our without the Rick Stein signature labels, are from our 25th full season at the helm and the best we’ve made since 2020.
Keep readingBordeaux 2024 weather and crop report
February 28 2025
My annual Bordeaux vintage report is published on JancisRobinson’s fine wine website and on Liv-ex – the fine wine marketplace. To find previous ones, see ‘Bordeaux reports’ in the menu above.
Here’s my annual report on the amount of wine produced in Bordeaux last year, and how the weather shaped the size of the crop, and the wines, in 2024. (The top image is of the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest at Château Lafite Rothschild on a sunny October day. Below is a sorting table at Château Figeac in Saint-Emilion, also in October 2024.)
Keep readingDuty changes and some personal news
January 31 2025
Mid-winter may feel a little bleak right now but there are, we trust, some brighter days ahead.
We’ve been preparing the blends of our white and rosé 2024 for bottling next month and they’re both excellent, touch wood, albeit with lower yields all round.
The UK prices of our reds will have to go up from today, regrettably, as the new duty rates kick in after midnight tonight. We warned our customers earlier this week, so we’ve been busy with a flurry of orders.
There’s also been a big birthday in the family this week – where has the time gone? – but we’ve also placed a sad announcement in today’s Times. More on these below.
Keep readingYour guide to UK tax on wine
November 30 2024
Sandwiched in between the joys of Black Friday and Advent Sunday, we bring you glad tidings with a festive guide to the changes in UK duty which will kick in at the end of Dry January. You may want to adjust your wine purchases accordingly in the run up to Christmas to avoid a bleak mid winter soon after, and beyond.
There has been some confusion about how wine is going to be taxed and by how much, so here is a handy portfolio of tables, graphics and photos.
Keep readingLabour’s scary Autumn Budget for wine
October 31 2024
Ah, the Autumn Budget, and a new dawn? A 1p reduction in the duty on a pint of draught beer? Hooray! No doubt the pubs are getting the Bonfire Night bunting out.
A horror show fit for Halloween, more like, for the UK wine trade and their customers. You’d never grasp that from the analysis of the Budget in today’s papers, however. Below is my table of where we were last year with UK duty on wine, where we are now with the so-called ‘easement’ for most wines today, and where we’re headed. The future for many is not looking too bright.
Keep readingOur 2024 harvest photo journal
September 30 2024
September is harvest month for us, so unsurprisingly it’s been a busy one. Please forgive this lengthy journal of pictures, which is really designed for you to scroll through when you have the time and, indeed, the inclination.
Equally, after completing 25 growing seasons at Bauduc, we’ve nearly reached the stage where it might act as a useful aide memoir.
Keep readingClocking up 25 years – August news
August 31 2024
A quarter of a century. Blimey.
It’s the end of the summer holidays, our twentysomething children have left this week and we made the decision yesterday, Friday, to start the harvest this coming Monday.
And if there’s one thing you shouldn’t do when you have an end-of-month newsletter to write it’s to start looking through boxes and boxes of old photos. (Note to self: digitise all the old photos, and write that bloody memoir.)
Anyway, it’s all go. We’ve been lucky enough to have had several weeks of glorious weather until the rain came on Thursday. It’s not an early vintage, by the way, it’s just that we need to pick the white grapes for our sparkling Crémant while they still have lots of crisp acidity and aren’t too high in sugar.
Keep readingJuly photo journal
July 31 2024
We hope you’re enjoying a fine summer.
It’s been a scorcher in south west France this week. On Monday, we came on the train down to Spain on the hottest day of the year so far at home. Our three-night stopover in Hondarribia, not far from San Sebastian and on the border with France, is our brief summer holiday away from Bauduc, and we return tomorrow. Let’s hope August is sunny, indeed, but not so hot – the poor vines can’t cope with the sort of temperatures around Bordeaux below for long.
Meanwhile, here’s a photo journal of some of the things that happened in July. Of particular interest, if your summer barbecue is in use, is how we cook our beef these days (about half way through this missive).
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