Category Archives: Chateau Bauduc

Wedding Frenzy: Labels for Special Occasions

April 26 2011

We like weddings. Especially big ones.

It’s the time of year when we get asked to quote for many special occasions.  Thankfully our wines often seem to fit the bill, as far as quality, versatility, prestige, provenance, a smart label and price is concerned. And you won’t see it everywhere.

Receiving this sort of feedback too is encouraging for any wine grower:

“The Bauduc wines drew a remarkable number of positive compliments, way outside the usual drunkard expletive. Really, so many people came up to me to say how good they were… My purpose in writing is merely to say thank you for a) the Bauduc which you must never be complacent about – it is seriously good b) the sound advice on bubbles.”

(Mark Johnstone, 25 June 2010)

Another advantage is that buyers can collect the wine from our Calais collection point, saving £25 duty per case in the process. As long as the wine is for your own use, such as for a wedding, there’s no limit to the amount you can take home from France.

steinblSo we’ve decided to go one step further for a trial period, following an idea from a customer who wanted to buy a barrel (all 25 cases) of wine. For a substantial order, we’ll print the names of the happy couple and the date on our Château Bauduc label. We are, after all, known for putting the names of famous chefs on our label, not least Rick Stein and Gordon Ramsay. The same applies for anniversaries, birthdays, special events, and so on.

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Calais Collection

Given the current and planned future increases in UK duty (currently over £26 a case), we’ve had more demand for a Calais collection service. See my rant called ‘13 unpalatable truths about UK wine duty‘.

dutyforblog1We have just delivered lots of stock to our new warehouse there. Details of the location, which is just a few minutes from the Channel tunnel, are available on request.

ukdutyforblogOur Calais Collection website will be up and running this summer but in the meantime, please email us at team@bauduc.com with your requirements. The prices below, available from 5th May, show a saving on UK delivered prices of at least £2 a bottle (unless sterling falls below 1.11 €).

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“Top Speakers Lined up for London International Wine Fair Conference”

April 25 2011

The headline from an article in Harpers Wine and Spirits actually says

Top speakers lined up for social media conference at LIWF on May 16.

But I wasn’t sure that the acronym LIWF means very much to our customers, as it’s a trade thing. However, I need your help.

“Anyone interested in communicating or making money through the internet is urged to attend the London International Wine Fair’s pre-conference event on May 16,” writes Richard Siddle, editor of the magazine.

“The half day event will include a line up of expert online speakers on how to develop your communication skills through the internet and the best way to invest in and make the most of social networking sites.

img_5460“The event, which is being chaired by wine writer and producer, Robert Joseph will include: Dan Jago, head of beers, wines and spirits at Tesco; Angela Mount of YourFavouriteWines.com; Rowan Gormley, of Naked Wines; Gavin Quinney of Château Bauduc; Sophie Jump of the International Wine Club Association; Antonia Branston, senior retailing analyst at Euromonitor International; and Guy Levine from digital marketing agency, Return On Digital.

“Key areas for discussion will include: the International experience; selling wines direct from the winery online; brands vs boutique wines online sales; how to engage the consumer online and keep your community interested; an overview of the current alcoholic drinks retail distribution landscape; how existing wine distribution channels are influencing online trends; opportunities across the price spectrum; how to build an effective website.”

Any feedback or ideas will be gratefully received, either as a comment below, or email me at gavin @ bauduc.com or on Twitter @GavinQuinney

13 Unpalatable Truths about UK Wine Duty

March 24 2011

Psst. Don’t mention the wine.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, didn’t say the word once in his UK Budget speech yesterday, on 23rd March. He simply said that there would be no further increases to alcohol duty beyond the measures already in place.

graphThe media relayed the apparent good news as ‘no increase in alcohol tax’ but a few tweets later and a quick glance at the HM Treasury budget statement (page 61) showed that wine has gone up 15p a bottle, from this Sunday. Even a 4p annual increase used to get mentioned in every Budget overview. Now, a 15p rise doesn’t even get a look in. So, forgive me, but this calls for a rant.

It is, of course, all the previous Government’s doing:

“The government will continue with the plans announced in the March 2010 Budget (i.e. Labour’s last) to increase the rates by 2 per cent above inflation each year to 2014-15.” Budget June 2010

So we now have a situation where none of the three major parties will criticize the policy towards alcohol duty.

Here are 13 unpalatable truths about UK duty on wine:

1.     The UK now has the highest duty on wine in Europe.

2.     Only four countries (UK, Ireland, Finland and Sweden) have duty of over 50p a bottle. In France, it’s 3p.

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3.     From April 2000, our first spring here, to March 2008, UK duty on wine went up by a total of 15%. In the last three years, duty has gone up a whopping 36%.

4.     Duty will increase by 2% above inflation each year until 2015. It went up 7.2% in this budget from £1.69 to £1.81.  It is misleading though to say that wine has gone up 12p + VAT to the consumer, because every retailer, merchant and restaurant treats duty as part of the cost, just like the wine. Duty is charged upfront by HMRC, when the wine is taken out of customs, so it’s a real cost. Every merchant I know, except of course those that are selling ‘In Bond’, takes the cost of wine, plus the cost of freight/distribution and the duty as the basis of the cost of the wine, before adding their gross margin to cover their costs and to make a profit.

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5.     UK duty, and VAT on the duty, is over £26 a case at £2.17 a bottle. It will be £30 a case in two years at the current rate of inflation. VAT, which also went up in January of course, is charged on duty and the wine, so there’s a double whammy. (Update: in fact, the double tax increase in Q1 means that a £5 bottle on 1st Jan is up 25p to £5.25, a £7.25 bottle is 30p up to £7.55 and there’s 36p more tax to add to a £10 bottle.) Keep reading

People Power and Bottling Machines

February 24 2011

In my list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2011, there’s no mention of switching from corks to Stelvin screwcaps for white and rosé, and changing our whole bottling process. There’s just a brief squiggle in the margin of ‘New Year Goals’, saying ‘check with customers about closures.’

img_4399_31Perhaps we should ‘check with customers’ more often because a month after asking, we’d used different bottles, different closures, revised back labels and a different bottling machine for over 130,000 bottles. Later in this post I’ll cover the bottling but here’s a reminder of how our customers made the call to change.

Although I’m a big fan of Twitter, and have a rather feeble Facebook Page, we wanted some swift, one-to-one feedback, without too much interference from either lobby. So on 14 January, with the help of a nifty online survey program called Wufoo, we emailed our customers (we use Campaign Monitor) with the question ‘what closures should we use to bottle our wines?’

As a guide, I wrote an accompanying article called 10 Questions about Corks v Screwcaps and within a week, over 1150 kindly completed the online survey. More than 700 people added a comment, which was staggering, given that most of the UK wine trade and press think the subject a bit passé (me included, in all honesty, before I understood that customers have such strong views).

This was the result, which I’ve edited from the Survey Results post with my self-serving Pacman effect to highlight the conclusion we came to:

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With almost two thirds voting for screwcap for white, plus 19% ‘Don’t Mind’, 84% is a persuasive majority.  Only 12.4% expressed a preference for cork for our rosé, our top selling wine in the summer (i.e. we’d be sealing it with a closure that only 1 in 8 wanted).

It’s a different story for Bordeaux red with 77% voting for cork or ‘don’t mind’. 23% is still a sizeable vote for screwcap for this, the most traditional of wine regions, but it should be remembered that we’re from the cheap seats, not the royal circle.

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Video: How to Taste White Wine by the Hotel du Vin’s Master Sommelier

February 23 2011

ronan-vidRonan Sayburn is one the leading sommeliers in the world and recently made a star appearance on Michel Roux’s ‘Service’ on BBC2. He’s also Director of Wines and Spirits at the Hotel du Vin, and has taken on one of the Scholarship winners, Danielle, from the programme. In this video from their new website – via the ‘HdvTV’ YouTube channel at the foot of the page on their site – Ronan talks through what to look for when tasting a dry white.

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Corks v Screwcaps Survey Results

January 26 2011

We’ve had an incredible response to our recent ’30-Second Survey’. As I mentioned in 10 Questions about Corks v Screwcaps, we’ve considered whether we should continue with corks for our white and rosé, and possibly for our reds. With the bottling of over 10,000 cases due to take place next month, we wanted to know what everyone thinks. The easiest thing to do would be not to change anything – after all, we get few complaints.

On 14 January, we emailed all our customers (or rather, all those who are on our email list), with a link to a simple survey, which closed a week later. The question was:

What closures should we use to bottle our wines?

There were three choices – cork, screwcap or don’t mind – for each category of white, rosé and red. Over 1100 responded within a week, leaving their full name and email address (which wasn’t obligatory). Around 700 left a comment. This was the result (1148 entries):

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Conclusions

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Corks v Screwcaps Quiz Winners

Everyone who completed our January ’30-Second Survey’ was invited to enter a short quiz, with the closest to guessing the % vote in favour of cork winning a prize. 600 people took part.

The results were 16%, 12.4% and 59.5%. For the full results, see Corks v Screwcaps Survey Results.

Congratulations to the winners, Stuart Denlegh-Maxwell and Brian Cockburn

who each win a case of 2000 Château Cap de Faugères (89/100 from Robert Parker). Both were within 2 points on average of the pro-cork vote.

Mike and Liz Stamp snatched the third case, of 2000 Château Puygueraud (87/100 RP).

A Château Bauduc apron, for being within 3%, goes to these 6 who were so close – within 3% on average: Keep reading

10 Questions about Corks v Screwcaps

January 14 2011

The debate about corks versus screwcaps is hardly a new one, so why now?

Today, we’re emailing our customers with a 30-Second Survey to see whether they prefer corks or screwcaps on our whites, reds and rosé. We’re bottling next month, so we’d like to know what our customers prefer.

What closures do Château Bauduc use?

bauduc-1_151All our wines in our current line-up (pre-2010 vintage) are bottled with natural cork from Portugal. After some poor experiences with corks ten years ago, we did a trial using Stelvin – the leading brand of screwcaps – for our 2002 vintage Bordeaux Blanc. The 2002 bottles sealed with Stelvin are still drinking well today.

Why not carry on with Stelvin screwcaps back then?

Consumer reaction in 2003 was mixed and some restaurateurs were not in favour. The acceptance of screwcaps since has obviously changed in most countries, especially the UK, but not in France. More importantly, we changed cork suppliers – we now use two or three – and the quality of corks has improved dramatically. It’s a small point but we were also quite attached to the uncommon ‘antique’ green colour of our bottles, which until now have not been available here for screwcaps. Keep reading

Picked for Hotel du Vin

November 25 2010

We are delighted to announce that the wines of Château Bauduc have been selected as the “Premium” house wines for the Hotel du Vin group.

dsc_0012_2Our wines have now been delivered to all fourteen locations in England and Scotland. Other than the flattering endorsement of our red, white and rosé, all of which have the Bauduc/Hotel du Vin label, this provides a great opportunity for us to host wine tastings and wine dinners for many of our customers around the UK. We’d be delighted to read any ideas or suggestions you may have for what might – or might not – work at the various locations.

The fourteen Hotel du Vins are at: Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Harrogate, Henley-on-Thames, York, Newcastle, Poole, Tunbridge Wells and Winchester.

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