Category Archives: Ramblings and Rants

Bordeaux 2012: Scorching Summer, but No Rush

August 25 2012

Last weekend, Jancis Robinson asked me for ‘a brief report on how the Bordeaux vignoble is looking so far‘ and published my reply on her website a few days later. With Jancis’s kind permission, here was my seat-of-the-pants, stat-free response:

After a long, wet spring, we’ve had a lovely summer in Bordeaux. Unlike last year, however, the owners and MDs of leading châteaux can enjoy the end of their August break on the Atlantic coast at Cap Ferret and Arcachon without feeling the need to rush back to their vines. The red-wine harvest is still some way off.

No two growing seasons are ever the same in Bordeaux but the contrast between 2011 and 2012 could not be more striking. Last year, there was an early budburst and the flying start was accelerated by a warm, dry spring. The lack of rain carried on until the second week of July, with many vines suffering in the drought-like conditions. The summer was then up and down, topped off by an early harvest of the dry whites at the end of August. Almost all the reds and sweet whites in 2011 were brought in during September, which is uncommonly early. The last time that happened was in 2003, an altogether different vintage. Keep reading

Why a Dodgy Vintage will be Good News

June 14 2012

Bad news for Bordeaux? A decidedly lacklustre En Primeur campaign for the top 2011s (good wines but many were overpriced) and now the crucial flowering of the vines for 2012 looks to be late and uneven. This could, though, be a welcome break for people who actually buy the stuff to drink.

In complete contrast to last year, when the vines budded early and then a very warm, dry Spring helped to accelerate the growth, 2012 has got off to a slow start. The weather has been mixed to date, although with gorgeous weather in late May, things were looking up. Keep reading

Ramsay’s UK Sommelier of the Year

June 13 2012

 

Congratulations to Jan Konetzki of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea who has won the coveted title of UK Sommelier of the Year.

Jan (pictured here with my nephew and colleague Freddie) has poured more Bauduc than he’d care to remember. Treat yourself to the lunch menu at Royal Hospital Road for terrific value – with a glass of you know what.

Victoria Moore, the Telegraph’s wine critic and one of the judges, describes how Jan scraped home in a close final here. Also worth a look, if you’re a bit nerdy like me, is the ’Sommelier of the Year: Can you spot the 10 errors on the wine list?’ Keep reading

Toot Toot: Runner Up in Online Wine Awards

May 31 2012

No, we haven’t won a Silver Medal for our wine – which doesn’t really come as a shock as we haven’t entered any competitions for a few years, rightly or wrongly.

But I’m chuffed to have won a brand new Kindle and a year’s subscription to jancisrobinson.com for coming in as ‘1st Runner-up’ in the 2012 Born Digital Wine Awards in the Best Winery Content category. Much of this chuffness stems from there being such a stellar bunch of wine writers on the judging panel, including Jancis Robinson, Tim Atkin, Elin McCoy, Wink Lorch and Richard Ross.

(As you can see, the section is actually called Best Winery Self-Produced Content, as opposed to stuff put out by PR firms and third-parties, I suppose. But it is the only ‘Winery’ section.)

Keep reading

Bauduc Blog up for a Gong

May 10 2012

Toot toot. We’re chuffed that an article from this blog has been shortlisted in the 2012 Born Digital Wine Awards, in the Best Winery Content section.

For each of the 6 categories there’s a shortlist of 5, honed down from over 300 entries from 24 countries.

The piece in question was a rant about a pet hate of mine: the excessive and unfair tax on wine in the UK. It was called ‘13 Unpalatable Truths about UK Wine Duty‘. That was from last year – the follow-up post, with updated numbers and charts, is called ‘UK Duty on Wine up 46% in 4 years.’

The winners will be announced at the London International Wine Fair on 23 May. Fingers crossed.

Congratulations on reaching the shortlist to fellow dribblers and scribblers Ryan O’Connell, Chris Kissack, Louise Hurren, Quentin Sadler and Jim Budd.

 

Lower Euro, Better Prices

What impact a new President might have on the French wine industry is unclear but the continued improvement in the exchange rate is good news for wine drinkers in the UK. Today’s rate of €1.25 to the £ is the best for some time. So we’ve put our UK prices back to the same level as a year ago, despite a duty increase in March.

Since January, we found that by going over the £10 a bottle barrier, sales fell away, so any help we can get with Sterling against the Euro to remain competitive is welcome. Rowan Gormley, the founder of Naked Wines, told me last year at the London International Wine Fair – where we were both speaking at a conference – that every time he put a price up by a pound a bottle, sales for that wine halved. I’d agree, based on some fairly unscientific analysis. For anyone selling wines at around £8 to £9 a bottle, where 40% disappears in UK tax and 10% in shipping and delivery costs, a pound either way makes a huge difference.

 

To view our wines, with UK prices now all under a tenner, here’s the link to the Best Sellers.

Bordeaux 2011: An Insider’s View

April 16 2012

I wrote this article for the trade magazine, Harpers Wine and Spirit, for the April 2012 issue.

Gavin Quinney, a grower in Bordeaux and contributor to Harpers Wine and Spirit, has tasted the top wines en primeur since the 2000 vintage. @GavinQuinney on Twitter.

The 2011 harvest at Pontet Canet

There are only two types of vintage in Bordeaux these days, it seems. “Best ever” (2009 and then, arguably, 2010) and “Better then expected” (2008 and now, 2011). Most of the wine trade and press who attended the annual primeur tastings in early April agreed that the 2011s showed better than everyone thought they would. And, of course, that prices would have to be lower for the wines to sell as futures.

How does 2011 rate?

2011 is not a great vintage for red Bordeaux but it is a good vintage – and a very good one for dry whites, and an excellent one for Sauternes.  I don’t think it’s comparable to any other recent vintage but qualitatively, for the reds, I’d put it well below 2010, 2009, 2005 and 2000 but above 2007, 2004, 2002 and most 2003s (excluding the northern Médoc). It sits somewhere alongside the 2008s and 2001s, depending on the region and the Chateau, and has more charm than 2006.

One plus point about 2011 is that most of the leading Chateaux produced 2011s that typify their terroir, their style, and the vintage. It may not have been a normal growing season in Bordeaux but the wines, for the most part, are faithful to their origin.

’It’s good to return to an Atlantic vintage, after two Pacific ones,’ said Denis Durantou of L’Eglise Clinet in Pomerol. ’With less alcohol.’ Keep reading

Bordeaux 2011: The Weather Compared to Recent Vintages

April 02 2012

At the end of September 2011, I wrote about the unusual 2011 harvest in Bordeaux. Some people out there like to see the nerdy stuff, so I put together my weather charts for Livex, the Fine Wine Exchange. Here’s my article that appeared on their site in March. (For my other fascinating articles on the Livex blog, search ‘Quinney’).

As the trade and press prepare to descend on Bordeaux for the annual en primeur tastings in late March and early April, here are my weather charts for the 2011 season compared to recent vintages.

A summary of what happened in the vineyard:

1. Early budbreak, very warm spring, drought until July.

2. An up-and-down summer.

3. Low threat of mildew early on but risk of rot later.

4. An early harvest under September sun.

5. Picking dates a gamble between ripeness and rot.

6. Sorting and selection were key.

7. Quality and yield vary from one estate to another. Keep reading

UK Duty on Wine up 46% in 4 Years

March 21 2012

 “Today, I have no further changes to make to the duty rates set out by my predecessor.”

George was at it again in this year’s Budget. Of course, the Chancellor could have said “Duty on alcohol will increase by 2% above the rate of inflation, as put in place by the previous Government” but the news channels would have picked up on that bit of bad news.

The official Budget document doesn’t actually say what the actual increase is. “As announced at Budget 2008, and extended in March Budget 2010, alcohol duty rates will increase by 2 per cent above the RPI. These changes will come into effect from 26 March 2012.”

Anyway, here are some numbers and a few updated graphs. Keep reading

Bordeaux 2011: How was it?

March 20 2012

I was asked by Gemma, the News Editor at Harpers Wine and Spirit, for my thoughts on the 2011 vintage before the trade and press tastings here in the first week of April. Here was my reply.

Even though I live and breath each vintage in Bordeaux, it’s foolish to try and predict how each Château’s wines are going to show from barrel, especially with such an up-and-down year as 2011.

No-one is going to claim that 2011 is a better vintage than, say, 2009. Apart from me, that is – I lost 80% of my crop to hail in May 2009. (So did hundreds of others, for that matter.) But for the great wines, 2011 sits in the shadows of 2009 and 2010, despite the dry and sweet whites from last year showing real promise.

There are some key factors about 2011.

We had a very early budbreak and then a summer-like spring, so the vines flowered about three weeks early in May. By the beginning of July, after a bone dry period of four months, the development of many vines had become blocked through lack of rain. July and August were then up-and-down – at times hot and humid, at other times cool and rainy.

The year will go down as a very dry year, with just 270mm of rain from March to September, compared to the 30 year-average in Bordeaux of 430mm. But in July and August we had around 150mm of rain compared to a norm of 100mm, so a glance at a weather chart will show that it was an upside-down season – dry from March to June and again in September but wetter in the summer. Weird. Keep reading