Newsletters

August, 2007

Welcome, if this is the first newsletter that you have received from Boursot's Wine Collection - you have now joined up with a “select bunch” that has bought wines from Ardres and many of you have expressed interest in getting to know more about the world of wine. I hope you will all continue to enjoy these newsletters and that you will get a flavour of the many things that we do.

This particular newsletter divides under five headings: “Offers”, “Anniversary Weekend”, “Trends”, “Here” and “Finally”.

OFFERS

Despite Britain's recent appalling weather, sales of rosé here have been running well – partly helped along of course by our Special Offer on Montirius' dry but flavoursome rosé from the village of Vacqueyras in the southern Rhône - reduced exceptionally from £6.75 to £3.75. Having recently topped up our stock, we are pleased to hold this amazing Offer open for you until 15th September or until these stocks run out.

As an additional Offer, but during August only, if you buy 12 bottles of our delicious non-vintage Saint-Réol Grand Cru champagne, we will be pleased to offer you a case of Saint-Réol's Vintage 1998 (normally at €27,00 / £18.50) at the price of the non-vintage (€18,70 / £12.75) whilst stocks last. This fine vintage champagne has that lovely “biscuity” aroma so sought after by aficionados and which, to me, is reminiscent of the Bollinger style. If you'd like us to reserve your orders, do please let us know as soon as possible.

Many of you have said how happy you are with the quality of our wines and often I am asked to highlight some specific fail-safe wines that are currently at peak performance. A small selection of “stars” is shown below with sterling equivalent prices – fuller descriptions can be found on our August Wine List.

White

Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine, La Griffe, Domaine Chereau Carré (Loire), 2006 £2.75

Viognier, Domaine de Lascours (Languedoc), 2006 £4.00

Château Marie du Fou, Vendée (Loire), 2006 £5.00

Riesling, Trottacker de Ribeauvillé, Robert Faller et Fils (Alsace), 2004 £6.25

Chablis, Saint-Martin, Domaine Laroche (Chablis), 2005 £9.25

Red

Côtes du Ventoux, Les Chalons (Rhône),2005 £2.50

Nobilis, Pic Saint-Loup, Château Lascours (Languedoc), 2004 £4.00

Château Tour Bicheau, Graves (Claret), 2004 £5.00

Rasteau, Domaine des Escaravailles (Rhône), 2006 £5.00

Château Baret, Pessac-Léognan (Claret), 2000 £9.25

We are currently working on a very Special Offer on Olivier Leflaive's wines from Burgundy and should be able to bring this to you shortly. Our prices should be much cheaper than anything you can find in the UK for this winemaker of excellence based in Puligny-Montrachet so you might wish to take advantage for your “special drinking” requirements.

In our list you can see that we have many high quality wines at fantastic prices – a whole world of difference away from what you would be forced to pay in the UK (even with supermarkets' “special offers” – read on below). As I have worked for many years in the quality wine business in both the UK and France, you can rely on my expertise to select you some great wines at sensible prices.

ANNIVERSARY WEEKEND

As stated in our previous newsletter, there has been an enormous amount of interest in our Anniversary Weekend on 13th – 14th October with its various vinous activities. There will be:-

A Wine Masterclass (about 60 minutes) explaining how to taste, wine faults and general chat about the wine world. We also normally taste a minimum of 4 wines. Cost €10 per person.

Both overground (about 60 minutes) and underground (about 30 minutes) conducted tours of the historic 17th century town of Ardres: free to Boursot customers.

A tasting of a wide selection of our wines in the shop from 2 – 5pm: free of charge.

The Anniversary Gourmet Dinner at Hotel l'Atlantic, Wimereux On the Saturday evening, we have Paul Bouchard from Beaune (for around 35 years he was head of Bouchard Ainé in Beaune and was co-founder of Bouchard Finlayson in South Africa) talking about Burgundy wines at our Gourmet Dinner. The menu will be the Hotel l'Atlantic's six-course Promenade en Mer which comprises several different fish courses. We cannot be precise yet as to the exact content of the October menu - presumably it depends on what the catches are bringing in! However an early expectation is copied in below.

The price of our Anniversary Gourmet Dinner evening with Paul Bouchard is €110 (approx £75) which includes all food and fine Burgundy wines throughout.

There are only a few places remaining at the dinner, so I recommend that you let us know as soon as possible if you should like to attend. We can, as always, help you with hotel rooms (the Atlantic is already sold out).

TRENDS

There is constant debate in the world of wine and I will continue in these newsletters to look at some of the current discussions – whether about cork or screwcap, global wine supply or about wine as an alcoholic beverage and its resultant effects. This month I touch upon the discussion about wine as an alcoholic beverage and its not-unrelated global supply; next month it will be bottle closures and the progress of the EU's proposed Wine Reforms, whose prime aims are to reduce Europe's wine surplus. Fuller discussions of all these topics will be appearing soon on our website www.boursot.co.uk.

You may have noticed over the last couple of years, Champagne prices have been creeping up. Globally sales of Champagne are going through the roof and a shortage is expected as markets such as Russia, India and China continue to grow. To give you some idea of the extent, sales in 2007 are expected to reach 330 million bottles against a figure of 287 million in 2002 – that's almost a 15% increase. The problem is that with Champagne's tightly defined geographic region, it is simply not possible to extract more production and under the EU's draft Wine Reform, there is a “catch-all” ban on new plantings so, barring a series of bumper harvests, it seems that this situation of higher prices is here to stay for at least the next 10 years.

What a confusing world this has become. Wine has never been so popular and the proven health benefits of moderate drinking of wine are being eclipsed by media reports of the behaviour of a relatively small number of, generally, younger people who seem to want a short-term kick out of alcohol – and wine is of course by nature a part of that.

Britain has long been known as the most sophisticated market for wine in the world and whenever I talk to producers from anywhere between, say, Adelaide and Yountville, they all want to have their wines showcased in Britain because this is considered to be an aficionados' market. Mintel too has recently reported that “UK drinkers are becoming much more sophisticated when it comes to alcohol and this trend looks set to continue” but despite all this, there have been recent murmurings in the British press of increasing the taxation on alcohol (I wonder who or what started this off?!).

The official, and to me somewhat short-sighted “lowest common denominator”, suggestion appears to be to increase the tax on all alcohol. It is hard to see how price rises can make any difference to those who are determined to indulge in anything to excess – although, of course, such a move would benefit the Treasury enormously without any real impact on behaviour. Surely the problem of social responsibility is much more deep-rooted? However if this further tax rise should be implemented, we will obviously not be complaining on this side of the channel as even more people can be expected to come across to elude the Chancellor's additional tax!

But it may be that tax may not be needed to raise some wine prices. We have already talked about Champagne, and in 2007 and 2008 there is expected to be a 30% drop in Australian wine production as a result of a prolonged drought – so you can expect to see the price of several well-known brands rising sharply.

Wine has of course become much more of an everyday commodity than it was, but there comes with that a need to educate all consumers. Unfortunately in the commercial process, there has been virtually no education about how this newly accessible commodity needs to be handled. Providers of alcohol should take their reasonable share of responsibility. “Happy Hours” in bars and so-called “half price” wine retailer offers often project less than responsible (or honest!) images.

Although many of us know how the system works, it was reassuring to see the head of one of the drinks giants admitting recently in The Guardian that wines designed for sale at £3.99 are introduced at an artificially inflated price and then brought down on “Special Offer”. “They start at £7.99 and are discounted down to half price, which is crazy" said the Chief Executive of Pernod Ricard which owns Jacobs Creek, Campo Viejo, Montana and Mumm among its various interests. He added “Consumers know they are being misled. They get used to it.” The last part of his statement makes depressing reading and I remain to be convinced that so many consumers realise the extent of the trickery that can be involved in mass retailing.

With sustained media fuelled concern about alcohol and its effects on younger people, albeit that wine is hardly the most concerning of all the alcoholic beverages available, in this context is it not also the time to address the new situation of rising alcoholic degree?

Over some years now we have seen ever-rising alcoholic degrees in what were once (mostly red) wines that were “balanced” with fruit, acidity and tannins, meaning that wines were built to develop over several years. In an increasingly commercial world, vineyard owners all over the world nowadays pick their grapes later, thus producing rounder, softer and richer flavours (always popular with some wine critics) but with less youthful acidity and therefore less potential longevity. In short, the wines can be enjoyed earlier. But at the same time, by being picked later the grapes have reached higher levels of ripeness and alcoholic degree. Personally I don't like knowing that I'm drinking wines of 14 degrees plus – and I always thought that the job of a winemaker, bar or restaurant was to sell the second glass or the second bottle of wine, which they won't normally do if the customer has already had his share of alcoholic degree.

Is this another part of the dumbing down of wine, in the face of commercialism? Some years ago, the art of winemaking became the science of winemaking and it will now take the invention of some new technique to produce soft flavoured wines with “more normal” alcoholic levels. We wait to see, but I don't believe that this will come about in the near future.

German wine sales are once again surging too, and much of this has been led by the resurgence of interest in the Riesling grape. Britain is still Germany's largest export market but with a combination of short harvests recently and burgeoning prices, it seems as if there may soon be another shortage. Another surprising statistic is that Germany is the world's third largest producer of Pinot Noir (Spätburgunder), with more land under this vine than Australia, New Zealand and Chile combined.

So what do I conclude from all this? Quality wine sales are in a healthy state right now, but there needs to be a lot of fine-tuning of some of wine's fundamentals to adapt to modern demands.

HERE

Many of you will have met George Adams who works here regularly. Currently he and I are working on a project which will bring you the best of “Modern Wines”, whether they be from France, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, South Africa or several other regions of the world. There will be more news on this soon, and we expect to be showcasing some of these wines in our Ardres shop very soon, as well as launching an independent new website.

If there is one new wine from Boursot's Wine Collection that you should try, it is our new Muscadet sur lie from the highly talented Bernard Chereau at the equivalent of just £2.75. I admit to not having been a fan of Muscadet wines which can tend to be thin, acidic and without much flavour. However this wine is fresh and really fruity – to those of you who have tasted it since it arrived, it has been very popular and a huge improvement on its predecessor which has now been delisted. Our list continues to evolve.

We now also roast Columbian coffee beans in our shop and you can buy this exquisite coffee either in beans or in ground form to whichever preference you may have, whether it be for cafetière, filter or espresso. At £2 per 250 gram pack, this is a great price for such high quality. Try a pack when you next come.

We are now helping to co-ordinate lunches for groups of customers at some of Ardres' restaurants at which, if you want, we can talk entertainingly about the wines being served and thereby, we hope, contributing to an increased sense of enjoyment. The all-in costs of an excellent 4 course lunch, including one of us to talk about the wines, starts at around €40 per head so please do ask if you would like us to help you organise an original alternative event as we get into the busy Christmas season. We are happy to help.

FINALLY

...in returning through Calais, on your drive back from your European trip, don't forget to pull off the A26 motorway at Junction 2 so as to be able to top up on your favourite wines at our low French prices. Unlike some other shops, we are open all through the summer holiday season, but do remember if you feel you will be here outside our normal office hours, call ahead and we should be able to open up for you.

We hope to see you here in Ardres again very soon.

With all best wishes

Guy

Guy Boursot
Wine Consultants SARL
Boursot's Wine Collection
9 Rue de l'Arsenal
62610 ARDRES

+33 3 21 36 81 46
www.boursot.co.uk