Category Archives: Newsletters

Clocking 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.

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July 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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Sunak’s wine legacy

June 29 2024

“So today, we are taking advantage of leaving the EU to announce the most radical simplification of alcohol duties for over 140 years.” Rishi Sunak’s Budget speech as Chancellor, October 2021.

Well, judging by his duty bands for 1 February 2025, that’s far from a ‘simplification’ and most wine drinkers in the UK wouldn’t say it’s ‘taking advantage of leaving the EU’.

Our newsletter at the end of June last year was ‘A guide to UK duty hikes on wine’ and below is an update. A 53p increase in duty per bottle for most wine (44p plus VAT) to £2.67 plus VAT last August was bad enough, but there’s trouble ahead.

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May review and photo journal

May 31 2024

May is always a crazy month and this year’s no different. The weather has been less than clement of late, with rather a lot of rain, and we need the sun now before the all-important flowering in June. The vines are in fine shape though and the forecast for the next week looks pretty good, so we live in hope as always.

Here’s what’s included below by way of a photo journal:

  • 911 for Marathon Man Tom?
  • ‘The 25 best château stays in France’
  • Château DIY? Leaving it to the pros
  • Down in the vineyard
  • Comparing the same vines on the same day over several years
  • Bauduc Fantasy Premier League 2023-2024 winners
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Going green – March photo journal

March 29 2024

Good Friday is one of those strange days when it’s a day off in the UK but not a holiday in France – like Boxing Day in fact. A sensible compromise might be for us to take half a day off.

Angela is breathing a sigh of relief because we were intending to send out my ‘Bordeaux 2023 weather and crop report’ as our end-of-month newsletter. However, we’ve decided not to tarnish everyone’s Easter and to hold off before sending it out in a couple of weeks. That will also give some time for Jancis Robinson to check up on the numerous yet thrilling graphs and tables before she publishes the report on her leading wine site and for Liv-ex – the fine wine exchange – to do likewise.

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Official wine for Rick Stein’s UK tour – Feb news

February 29 2024

We’re delighted to report that Château Bauduc has been chosen as the Official Wine of the Tour for ‘An Evening with Rick Stein’ at 15 venues across the UK in the second half of March.

The theatres each have a capacity of 1,200 to 1,500 guests and tickets are selling well, with quite a few set to sell out. Do try and book as it should be fun.

Rick will have a glass of Bauduc and the bottle with him on stage – either the Sauvignon Blanc 2022 or our Rosé 2022 with his signature labels – and at some point in proceedings he’ll talk about his long-term friendship with us.

We haven’t had to cough up for this or for Rick to say nice things about us – it’s just that we’ve been working together for years. More on all that, below.

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January photo journal

January 31 2024

Our 2023 whites and rosés have just been blended in the winery and they’ll be bottled at the end of February. They won’t be released until the spring and we still have a few cases left of the current vintages to see us through until then.

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November review and photo journal

November 30 2023

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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Bauduc Farmhouse for 2024

October 31 2023

This month’s missive is devoted to our Bauduc farmhouse, as we do our best to make our guests feel welcome and the ‘price and availability’ page for 2024 is now live on our website. This terrific holiday home is let out by the week from April to October and, as most of the slots were taken up this year, it’s best to book early.

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The white harvest begins – a photo journal

August 31 2023

Not so much a monthly review, given there’s been a lot of activity in the last week. It is, in fact, the start of our 25th harvest at Bauduc. We’re not celebrating 25 years just yet – our first full season in charge of the vines was 2000 – but we moved into the farmhouse at the end of August in 1999 and helped to bring in the crop we’d acquired that was already on the vines, albeit with the formalities to be completed some months later.

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