Category Archives: Ramblings and Rants

New Bauduc Website

June 17 2008

We are delighted to launch our brand new Château Bauduc website at www.bauduc.com this week, which can be opened by clicking the big red button at the top of this page.  The site has been created mainly with our UK customers in mind, with a comprehensive online ordering system (Buy Wine) a key feature. 

We have had an online system in place for the past five years on our old site, but we felt that we needed to offer something a little more sophisticated.  

I’d really like to know your thoughts on the site – feel free to comment below or contact me.

The next time I hatch a cunning marketing plan, it might just be smarter not to try and design and write everything at the same time, at a time when there is so much to be done in the vineyard: new website, new blog, new Gazette newsletter, new Bauduc Bond offer, and so on.  The brain’s gone slightly mushy.

Bauduc in The Observer: Buy Direct for Value

June 16 2008

Our thanks to Patrick Collinson of The Observer for his kind recommendation on how to save money by buying direct from a vineyard online, or rather Bauduc. Does anyone know of any other overseas vineyards that sell direct to people at home in the UK? Of course, you could order wine from a foreign vineyard and have it sent over, at some cost, and pay duty and VAT as it comes through Customs (that’s the law, folks). But does anyone do that, and do you get caught for the duty?

The Best Wine List in the World?

May 29 2008

And a steal for €600 a bottle

P1030580When I was a young man growing up in London, my friends used to squirm in trepidation when I had my hands on the wine list in a restaurant. Their fears were justified: to paraphrase George Best, I spent most of my earnings as a 25 year-old computer salesman on fine wine, football and a fast car – the rest I wasted.

Those happy, yuppy days are gone but some things – and blokes, I suppose – don’t change. So it was a real joy to be back in the toy shop yesterday when I was presented with the greatest wine list I have ever seen. And this wasn’t in Bordeaux, or Paris, or even in London, but in Girona, 100kms north of Barcelona in northern Spain and a short drive from the French border. (I drove the 500 kms from Bordeaux in our Toyota Previa, so something’s had to give.)

I was lucky enough to be invited to this celebration dinner at El Celler de Can Roca by a group of old friends from England, Belgium and Holland, and even more fortunate that (a) I wasn’t paying and (b) was given instructions to order only the best. The same group, minus me unfortunately, had eaten at El Bulli the night before and had ordered only Spanish wines, so their preference this time was for reds from Bordeaux.

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A Bordeaux Blog

May 24 2008

Rule number one for writing a blog should surely be to have a purpose in mind. What am I trying to achieve with a Bordeaux Blog?  Where’s the Mission Statement for my Bordeaux Blog? I’m afraid there isn’t one and I’m not sure where I’ll be going with it either.

If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s for the blog, like some diaries of previous generations, to become a higher priority than the experience itself, for the blog to become the master and the raison d’etre. There’s certainly a risk that I’ll seek out good experiences that can be reported in the blog, and being a vine grower, wine producer and Bordeaux critic for a UK magazine should see me fall into all sorts of situations. As will dealing with so many interesting and varied customers in the UK and beyond.

To be frank, I think I’ll just let things run their course.  I intend to write a post perhaps twice a week on average, if I can make the time.  I am sure there’ll be no shortage of material unless things get very dull around here, but our children, colleagues, friends and locals will see to that.  Your feedback will be most welcome. 

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