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.