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Written by Henry Conway

Category: News

Published: 13 November 2015

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Welcome back to our weekly news blast! News and interesting information from around the wine world!

Retailer Yesmywine doubled sales on its Tmall.com outlet versus last year to hit CNY 40.5m (£4.2m) during China’s Singles’ Day, as part of a ‘72-hour sales campaign’. Wine and spirit retailers Sichuan 1919 and jiuxian.com also reported record sales figures.

China’s Singles’ Day, also known as Guang Gun Jie, is celebrated on the 11 November. It has become the world’s largest online shopping festival led by major online retailers including Tmall.com and JD.com.

Online retailers tend to give exceptional discounts on this day to attract consumers’ attention. The Tmall.com sales figure, according to Yesmywine, only accounts for a part of its total campaign sales across all its online and offline platforms.

It told local media that its official website, www.yesmywine.com, also ‘saw significant increase in sales’, though the final figures are yet to be released. ‘We aim to make a profit,’ WANG Yang, executive vice-president of Yesmywine told local media before the launch of the campaign. Wang stressed that ‘unlike some brands’, Yesmywine ‘will not use extremely low price to increase our sales’.

No surprise that there wasn’t a seat left in the Pol Roger masterclass room at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter 2015.

Which of Pol Roger’s cuvées goes best with thai green curry? If your answer is Brut Reserve NV, then you think similarly to the Champagne house’s UK MD, James Simpson MW. ‘That’s my hot tip,’ he told a packed room at this Decanter Fine Wine Encounter 2015. His comments set the tone for a lively tasting session in which Simpson and Hubert de Billy formed an entertaining double-act inbetween talking DFWE guests through a sumptuous assembly of wines – not to mention a bit ofChampagne history revolving around World War One and Churchill.

‘We remain a completely family owned Champagne house,’ said Hubert de Billy, the great-great grandson of house founder Pol Roger. ‘We are always working for our children. Our decisions are based on the long-term view.’ Pol Roger is one of the smallest Champagne houses, producing just 1.6m bottles per year from 92ha of its own vineyards.

A warm, early spring set the clock ticking to make California 2015 the earliest harvest of the new millennium.

In many areas, inclement weather during flowering resulted in shattered grape clusters, making small quantities inevitable from the very beginning.

Vines fatigued by three years of drought and three consecutive generous vintages (2012-2014) also tended to produce smaller berries than usual. This phenomenon was most conspicuous in Pinot Noir, but Chardonnay was also below average. On the Sonoma Coast, Jasmine Hirsch reports record low yields of 0.8 tones per hectare, and to the south in Santa Barbara the story was the same. Further inland, Pinot yields were less punishing, and the Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon crop, while depleted, did not suffer so badly. These small crops ripened rapidly, and when harvest came it was, as Cathy Corison puts it, ‘fast and furious’.

Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were picked first, beginning in August, followed unusually swiftly by Cabernet Sauvignon. A series of heat spikes in September saw sugar accumulation accelerate rapidly, in advance of physiological maturity, a problem exacerbated by low yields and drought conditions.

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Written by Henry Conway

Category: News

Published: 07 November 2015

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Today is your final chance to come and have a taste of:

Colombo et Fils Crozes-Hermitage 2012

Fleur de Thenac 2009

Te Mata gamay Noir 2014

Castello Vicchiomaggio Agostino Petri Chianti Classico Riserva 2010

And they all have 10% off if you really enjoy them! Come on down!

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Written by Henry Conway

Category: News

Published: 05 November 2015

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Welcome back to our Weekly blast of news from around the wine world! Each Thursday we will be bringing you a load of information regarding wine!

Winemakers in Chablis have joined a chorus of those predicting a very good vintage across France in 2015, despite some producers being hit with a hailstorm on the eve of harvest. The Chablis 2015 vintage started off well and it was soon apparent that an early 2015 wine harvest was on the cards after the vines flowered in early June, followed by a long, hot and dry July and August. But, dreams of a good vintage were jeopardised by a hailstorm that hit several producers Chablis on the 1st September, just before the Chablis harvest.

The storm, passing along a narrow corridor from Irancy, through Chitry and Courgis and right up to the Colline des Grands Crus, affected more than 300 of the 5,400 hectares of the Chablis winegrowing region. The Climats of Les Clos, Blanchot and Montée de Tonnerre were worst hit. The remaining fruit on the damaged plots was bought in quickly and, despite a few estates being hard hit, producers said losses were kept to a minimum, according to a vintage report from Burgundy wine council, the BIVB.

Jacques Lesimple, oenology advisor in Chablis, said that 2015 would be a very good vintage.

A single bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild 1895 vintage has been sold for $17,000 at a retailer in Dubai. Retailer Le Clos, based in Dubai International Airport, did not reveal the name of the Lafite Rothschild 1895 buyer, other than to say he or she was an international fine wine collector. It is rare for 19th Century Bordeaux wine to be offered for sale. Christie’s sold a Lafite 1895 at auction in 2011 for £6,670 – then equivalent to $10,592 – versus a pre-sale high estimate of £2,500.

Lafite Rothschild 1895 was unlikely to have been bottled within the first growth château’s grounds. According to Michael Broadbent, retired Decanter columnist and ex-Christie’s wine director, Lafite Rothschild did not bottle its own wine at the château between 1885 and 1906. Instead, wine was sent in barriques for bottling by merchants. This was due to the phylloxera vine disease playing havoc with France’s wine industry at the time.

In his book, Pocket Vintage Wine Companion: Over 50 years of tasting over Three Centuries of Wine, Broadbent said many of the late 19th Century Bordeaux vintages were hamstrung by phylloxera and also powdery mildew. But, he listed Bordeaux 1895 among a string of ‘very good’ vintages, on a scale of good to outstanding. Of the 1880s and 1890s, only 1899 made the ‘outstanding’ list.

Hong Kong entrepreneur Peter Kwok has bought 12.6 hectare (ha) grand cru estate Château Tourans in the St Emilion commune of Saint Etienne de Lisse from Dutch businessman Petrus Wolter. Financial details were not disclosed. Kwok plans to combine the new property with his existing Château Tour Saint Christophe, to bring the vineyard surface for the estate’s first wine up to 20 hectares, all from the limestone plateau.

Director Jean-Christophe Meyrou told Decanter.com that the purchase was the result of a two year search for the right terroir. ‘We bought Tourans because it has similar terroir to Tour Saint Christophe. Currently we have 8ha in production and 11ha potential – with 9ha entirely on the limestone plateau.

‘The rest is clay limestone that we use for the second wine, but this size does not give us enough scope to build a significant distribution through Bordeaux négociants. The new purchase will bring our limestone terroir up to around 20 hectares, from vines in excellent condition and well maintained.’

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Written by Henry Conway

Category: News

Published: 30 October 2015

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Welcome back to our weekly news blast, full of news from around the wine world!

The 10 crus of Beaujolais have instructed a series of working groups to identify and list individual climats by June next year, as they seek to emulate Burgundy by linking vineyards more closely to terroir.

The programme follows a four year study into the terroir across the Beaujolais crus of Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Regnié, Morgon, Chiroubles, Fleurie, Moulin à Vent, Chénas, Juliénas and Saint Amour that was published through a series of maps in 2014. The maps identified that the soils types of the Beaujolais crus are far more complex than previously thought. This lends weight to the idea of profiling and recording individual plots of vines, or climats, in a similar way to the Côte d’Or or Côte Chalonnaise in Burgundy.

Audrey Charton, president of the ODG des Crus du Beaujolais, said that this will be the first step towards asking for recognition of Premier Cru sites in the region, and that the climat list will be submitted for official recognition by French authorities in June 2016.

US police have begun selling off the lavish purchases of imprisoned wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan in order to help repay millions of dollars that he owes to victims.

Rudy Kurniawan, who made cheap copies of some of the world’s finest and rarest wines in his Los Angeles kitchen, bought a range of luxury items with his profits. Fast cars were a particular penchant for the wine fraudster, also known as Dr Conti for his in-depth knowledge – and subsequent prolific counterfeiting – of Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée Conti wine estate.

US marshals will sell off three Kurniawan’s cars at auction on 29 October, including a 2008 Lamborghini Murciélago sports car with only 938 miles on the clock. The other cars to be auctioned, in Rancho Cucamonga, California, are a 2008 Land Rover Range Rover with 36,739 miles and a 2011 Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV with 866 miles on the clock. Prices estimates were not given.

Thousands of bottles of Kurniawan’s wine will also be sold off at a later date, the marshalls said. Those are the wines that were authenticated as genuine in Kurniawan’s cellar.

Winemakers in Priorat are pressuring Catalonia’s government to do more to replenish the Siurana river, claiming its absence has damaged local ecosystems.

Handmade signs dot roadsides in Priorat wine county stating in Catalan, ‘We want the Siurana River alive.’ The Siurana River snakes across Priorat until it reaches a diversion near the village of Poboleda.  From this point on the riverbed is dry, because water is piped to the neighboring Baix Camp and stored in the Riudecanyes Resevoir.

It is another example of water politics affecting the wine world. Frustration and increasingly hot vintages have fired up a group of Priorat winemakers to create a new association comprised of members from affected villages.

‘From the 1980s onwards, the river has been dry for the vast majority of the year,’ said Jordi Aixalà, the group’s spokesperson who is also winemaker at his Aixalà Alcait winery and the former mayor of Torroja. ‘This lack of water has heavily increased the overall humidity in Priorat and has been detrimental to curb the rising temperatures in the region overall as we’re lacking this natural climactic regulation.’

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Written by Henry Conway

Category: News

Published: 20 October 2015

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Welcome to our weekly newsletter! Containing interesting snippets of news from around the wine world...

A Chateau Margaux auction spanning more than 100 years of vintages was held by Sotheby's in New York. Sotheby’s said its Chateau Margaux auction held in New York on Saturday (17 October) fetched $2.77m, nearly double the firm’s pre-sale high estimate of $1.4m. Buyers from the Americas and Asia bid fiercely for top vintages of Chateau Margaux direct from the Medoc first growth’s cellars, reinforcing opinion within the trade that New York is a resurgent force in the fine wine auction game after several years as clear second best to Hong Kong. This latest result also offers a dose of perspective to those who decry Bordeaux as unfashionable and out of touch; albeit the auction scene is only one cog in a bigger fine wine trading market.

Chateau Margaux vintages sold during the auction dated from the early 1900s to 2010. A bottle of Margaux 1909 – recorked in 1979 – sold for $9,188, versus a pre-sale high estimate of $2,800.

Of the more recent vintages, many buyers showed interest in Bordeaux 2000. Several 12 bottle lots of Chateau Margaux 2000 were among the most sought after wines and the individual lots sold for $36,750 each against a pre-sale top estimate of $15,000.

Top lot in the auction was a vertical collection of Margaux magnums from 1978 to 2012 inclusive and all signed by the chateau’s managing director, Paul Pontallier. It fetched $67,375, including buyer’s premium, versus a pre-sale high estimate of $50,000.

Drinking a glass of wine with an evening meal could help those with type 2 diabetes improve the management of their blood sugar levels, according to a new long-term health study. The research also found that sufferers of type 2 diabetes increased their cardiac health and improved their cholesterol levels when they drank a glass of red wine – thanks to the presence of antioxidants such as resveratrol. 

The CASCADE (Cardiovascular Diabetes and Ethanol) trial is believed to be one of the first long-term alcohol health studies of its kind and was published in Annals of Internal Medicine. However, previous studies have urged caution in linking resveratrol in wine to specific health benefits. And diabetes support groups in the UK and US advise sufferers to manage their alcohol intake carefully to avoid potential problems.

The new study involved 224 people with type 2 diabetes, splitting them into three groups which consumed 150ml of mineral water, white wine or red wine with their evening meal every night for two years. Participants followed a Mediterranean diet without calorie restrictions.While red wine appeared to slightly improve heart health and suppress bad cholesterol, both red and white wine appeared to help to improve sugar control among those who metabolise alcohol slowly (roughly 80% of those studied). Those who drank wine also recorded a significant improvement in sleep quality, compared to those who consumed only mineral water.

Torres said that two revived wine grapes named Moneu and Gonfaus have ‘great promise’ for red wine production. It is the latest part of a long-running project that has seen Torres investigate and revive around 40 Spanish grape varieties previously cultivated in the Catalonia region since the 1980s.

And the move comes amid rising interest in forgotten grape varieties in several countries, with projects known to be underway in Italy, southern France, Switzerland and also Chile. Many of these are not deemed suitable for use in wine blends, but Torres is already using a couple of ancestral varieties – Querol and Garró – in its Gran Muralles blend. It thinks Moneu and Gonfaus could follow a similar path and may even be useful in dealing with the effects of climate change in Catalonia. ‘The Torres family discovered that these two varieties express their greatest potential in arid climates and under extreme conditions,’ said Torres. ‘Both varieties are extremely drought resistant.’