Newsletters
 July, 2011
Dear Customer,
And so to our usual verbiage: our newsletters can be unfashionably verbose, so if you prefer to go straight to a particular topic, the main headings are below.
General
In case you should ever wonder, before VAT the UK duty currently stands at £1.81 per bottle of still wine and £2.32 on each bottle of sparkling wine. Add 20% VAT to both the duty and to the value of the wine and you have a very unhappy situation for UK wine drinkers. With the average sale price of a bottle of wine in the UK being £4.55, this means that just over 56% of the cost of that bottle is now consumed in tax.
Many of you say the same thing but one happy customer said to me not so long ago "One has to be crazy to buy wines in England. Virtually no choice on the high street and when you can find something interesting, it’s ridiculously expensive... This (coming to Ardres) is so much fun, it’s so easy, we make a day of it and everyone is happy".
On our list you will see some net price comparisons between our wines and their net prices charged in the UK. You get a much better selection of wines here in Ardres with some huge savings.
You can rest assured that all the wines on the Boursot list, starting at just 2,90€ (around £2.50) per bottle, have been tasted and selected by me as being "good" in their own different ways – it’s then simply a question of your personal preferences and of course everyone has different tastes.
With both numbers of customers and our sales volume increasing, these are very happy times for us in Ardres.
Don’t forget to call in on your way to or from holiday if you are in your car. Being situated between junctions 1 and 2 of the main north/south A26 motorway from Calais to Reims, you hardly need to go out of your way at all. If you should like to come outside our normal opening hours, do please let us know. Sometimes it is possible to open up, or else to leave your order nearby for you to collect - and we have a secure web page on which you can leave your card details.
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Boursot's Reduced Cross Channel Fares
As a Boursot’s Wine Collection customer you should take advantage of our special arrangement with SeaFrance whereby you can get a special day return crossing fare for just £25 for your car and all passengers Sundays to Fridays, or £29 on Saturdays.
In addition, SeaFrance is offering you a 36 hour return of £35 (£40 for Saturdays) as a Boursot customer.
These savings over SeaFrance’s normal prices are only available to you as a registered member of our database, and are not visible on our website. You can book at these special rates directly on this link. If you lose this link, you can also go to www.seafrance.com and in the Offer Code panel, enter the word Boursot.
In addition if you spend more than 600€ with us, we will be happy to reimburse your day return fare booked through SeaFrance, so please remember to bring along your receipt.
In case you didn’t know it already, we should also point out that Tesco clubcard points can be exchanged for Eurotunnel tickets.
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SeaFrance
Following recent press articles, inevitably there has been a certain amount of speculation about SeaFrance. However the facts are:-
SeaFrance remains in a period of safeguard, under the protection of the commercial court in Paris, and can do so until 28th October 2011. The appointed representatives of the commercial court are reviewing the options for the business, with a view to preserving the greatest number of jobs on a long-term basis.
The company has submitted a business plan to the competition authorities in Brussels and has now presented it also to the council of staff representatives and the trade unions.
At the same time, the administrators requested offers for the assets and activities of SeaFrance and a joint offer was submitted by DFDS Seaways and Louis Dreyfus Armateurs. This proposed acquiring a substantial proportion of the SeaFrance business but as it was a conditional bid, it is not receivable in its current form.
The SeaFrance plan remains superior to any other proposed offers and it is hoped that the necessary approvals will be achieved by the end of October. In the meantime, SeaFrance services continue to run normally and it’s business as usual.
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Boursot's Hotel Offer
As you may know, we have a list of local hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, golf clubs and places of interest on our website under the Local Info button from our Home Page - or directly here. We hope you will find this helpful. Whilst talking about Local Info, we also list the Bank Holidays so that you do not find, on getting here, that everything is closed (except Boursot’s Wine Collection of course which remains open every day except Sundays and Mondays).
It is probably true to say that about three or four years ago, the 4 star Hôtel Château Tilques between here and Saint-Omer, was overly crowded with partying Brits and the consequence of that was that the hotel’s quality and value seemed to slip.
Now, things are very different as those of you who have been to our Gourmet Evenings there can testify, and we have no hesitation in recommending the hotel and its restaurant. The food is great, the service is impeccable and the bedrooms are characterful, light and spacious. With its idyllic setting, and proximity to the bustling and pretty town of Saint-Omer with its historic cathedral, I can’t think of a much better combination for an easy and tranquil getaway for a night or two.
As a Boursot’s Wine Collection customer, through 2011 you will continue to receive reduced rates of 129€ per room Sundays to Fridays and 159€ for Saturday nights; these prices are per night for two people, including breakfast and are of course offered subject to availability. When booking, please mention Boursot to get your special rates.
Also between Monday and Friday, if you’d like to eat in the Brasserie du Parc, Château Tilques’ attractive conservatory, you will be offered a free kir – again, provided that you mention Boursot’s Wine Collection!
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Boursot’s New UK Venture: Grapes & Vines Gift Designs
As promised in the last newsletter, I am now able to tell you about our new online wine gift boutique which is based in the UK.
As wine lovers ourselves, we have been frustrated by trying to find wine related gifts that are not just about accessories. So several of the gifts at our online boutique have been specifically designed and made for us, some of which are yet to appear.
The address is www.grapesandvines-giftdesigns.co.uk. You will see an initial selection of our exclusive Nick Newman cartoons that you may have already admired in the Ardres shop, gift packs of handmade soaps made with wine, our wine map tea towels, as well as more practical items such as bottle chillers, bottle tags, wine preservation systems, fine antique decanters and wine books. We are also currently designing some silver cufflinks. This selection will grow over the coming months so do come back and check the site from time to time – or here you can sign up for the ezine, read the blog or tweets to learn of new items added.
These make great presents for your wine loving friends - or even for yourself!
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Your Own Events in France
You may know it already but we are often asked to help organise various social events - for groups such as Golf Clubs, Rotary Clubs, U3A, Wine Clubs, Car Clubs, birthday parties, office parties, pre-wedding parties etc.
Typically, we would discuss your desired objectives for your event and then work backwards from there. We can liaise on your behalf with local restaurants and if required, hotels. Being locals, often we are allowed to provide our wines in restaurants at our shop prices and with no cost of "corkage" to you.
Depending on whether you would like it, I can talk a little about the various wines being served, probably concluding with some entertaining words about what’s going on in the World of Wine. These events are always fun and they are different: with only 23 miles across that English Channel, but a million miles away in cultural terms, people always seem delighted to get away for a complete change of scenery and for a bit of French life.
With our advantageous deals with SeaFrance as well as with local restaurants and hotels, you can really entertain your guests here in northern France at extraordinary value.
In addition of course, I am happy to travel to you to present wine related events to your groups or dinners.
Do please contact me by phone or on guy@boursot.com to explore your options.
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Forthcoming Boursot Events
All our customer lunches and dinners are of course held in English. Vegetarian and alternative food options can also be provided, as long as we receive notice at the time of booking. Please contact us on ardres@boursot.co.uk or on +33 321 36 81 46 to book for any of our events below.
If a guest speaker is unable to attend, we will endeavour to find another speaker and if none is available, Guy Boursot will present the talk.
Boursot’s Wine Collection is usually open on the Sunday morning after a Saturday night dinner.
Saturday 24th September: Dinner at the Restaurant de la Plage, Boulogne: "39 Not Out" presented by Guy Boursot
We were particularly struck recently by the excellent quality of this restaurant on the sea front in Boulogne. The quality of the cuisine was one of the finest we have enjoyed in a long time and we felt that it would be good to pass on this experience to you.
However, there is limited capacity for only 35 in the restaurant’s private room so we recommend you book early for this dinner. With luck we’ll have fine weather and thereby enjoy the sunset over the sea, whilst having some wonderful wines to accompany the restaurant’s great food.
I will be talking about the changes in the wine world over the last 39 years, when I followed in my family’s footsteps by joining the wine trade in London: about some of the phenomena that came and went as well as those that lasted, recounting some of many experiences in the business over all these years. For instance, how back in 1972 very few people knew the words "Chardonnay" or "Cabernet Sauvignon"; the rise of the "New World"; the improvement in vinification techniques enabling attractive wines to be produced in warmer climates; the demise of the wine retail chains; the impact of the media and the internet and where it might take us all over the next five years.
I believe you should enjoy a delightful evening of four courses of excellent cuisine, wonderful wines and entertainment and for all this the price will be 78€ per head (about £69 at today’s rate).
In addition, during the Saturday afternoon we are teaming up with local brewer, Christophe Noyon, whose Deux Caps brewery is situated nearby on the coast at Cap Blanc Nez. He will take you around his brewery and you will be able to taste his acclaimed range of beers. You may recall that when Oz Clarke came to Boursot’s Wine Collection a couple of years ago, he then went on to this brewery. You can see the video clip of Oz’s wine and beer day here.
Saturday 15th October: Boursot’s Anniversary Weekend
Our Anniversary event this year will be even more of a food and wine extravaganza! On the Saturday afternoon in the Ardres shop, we will be hosting an informal wine tasting of several of our new discoveries. There will also be a Cheese and Chocolate Tasting in our underground vaulted cellar ... and as if that were not enough, we have arranged a visit to Ardres’ best Boulangerie where the owners will explain and demonstrate how their various different breads are made. All these activities will be free of charge to you as a Boursot’s Wine Collection customer.
Then, to Wimereux...
Anniversary Dinner at the Hotel Atlantic, Wimereux
That evening our Gourmet Dinner will be held at the Hotel Atlantic on the seafront in Wimereux, 30 minutes to the west of Ardres. The hotel is a favourite gastronomic destination for those wishing to escape and spend a relaxing weekend on the French seafront.
There are a few places remaining for this dinner. We have now used up our full allocation of rooms at the Atlantic for the Saturday night but there are plenty of other hotels within easy walking distance, such as the Hotel Saint-Louis and the Hotel du Centre to name but two.
I am delighted that journalist and broadcaster Simon Hoggart has agreed to be our guest speaker again this year. Simon will probably be well known to you as the Guardian’s political sketch writer as well as the wine columnist for The Spectator. In addition of course he was for 13 years the chairman of BBC Radio 4’s comedy show "The News Quiz".
I am sure that Simon Hoggart needs little further introduction but in case you should be wavering, you can be assured of a highly entertaining evening.
Tickets for this Gourmet Dinner will be, as last year, 96€ (around £85) per person to include a champagne reception, four course dinner and five more wines. And of course all entertainment - and there should be plenty of that!
Saturday 19th November: Dinner at Château Tilques: "Riesling and Gewürztraminer – the greatest grape varieties in the world?" Presented by Nicolas Faller from Ribeauvillé.
Many people enthuse wildly about Riesling; many people also go into raptures about Alsace wines. We would have loved to have had an evening exclusively of Riesling but that might have gone too far! So for the purposes of the dinner, we have also introduced Gewurztraminer and for our red wine, the Pinot Noir. All these will be from the family house of Robert Faller & Fils in the picturesque town of Ribeauvillé. And who better to introduce his wines and talk about the current developments than Monsieur Faller himself?
The name of Faller is legendary among quality wine producers in Alsace. The house was founded in 1697 and the business as propriétaire-viticulteur has been passed down from father to son to this day. Faller has many valuable hectares of Grand Cru vineyards dotted around Ribeauvillé, growing all the main grapes but arguably working best with Riesling and Gewürztraminer.
The Riesling grape in particular has of late been enjoying a renaissance among aficionados for its different and distinctive style. We will be enjoying Rieslings and Gewürztraminers from simple to the top, Grand Cru, level as well as late harvest sweet wines, demonstrating the grapes’ versatility.
As usual, we have blocked off a number of bedrooms at the 4 star Hotel Chateau Tilques for this dinner, so please let us know if you would like to stay so we can allocate you a room at our advantageous rate of 159€ per double room with breakfasts included.
Four courses and at least six wines and all entertainment will be 79€ per person. We are of course happy to take your reservations for this exciting evening now.
Sunday 11th December: Christmas Market Lunch at Restaurant La Griotte, Ardres
Our Christmas Lunch is perhaps the fun highlight of the year and this year we are dining at the Restaurant La Griotte on the green in Ardres where the owner Madame Dacheville cooks very good, honest and uncomplicated food. This lunch comprising four courses and six wines at 55€ per person all-inclusive is now officially sold out but in case of cancellations, we are starting a waiting list.
However, you can still come for a day of pre-Christmas fun.
From 10am that day, the annual Turkey Festival will be held about 20 minutes away in Licques, a village famed for its outdoor reared chickens and turkeys. Here, a flock of local turkeys is "shepherded" up the main street. Dotted along the route you can enjoy stew served from a huge steaming cauldron, eat roasted meat from street barbecues and you can even try out "Licquoise", a fiery local liqueur that will help to keep you warm. All for free. There are musicians and confrères and there is also a simple Christmas Market brimming with local produce. It is all typically "local French".
Then I suggest come and have lunch in Ardres and then "do" its Christmas Market in the afternoon, by which time everyone’s spirits and the general atmosphere will have warmed up! Père Noël (Father Christmas, not the local priest!) is normally to be found abseiling down the church spire at around 6pm throwing goodies to all the children assembled below.
This is an inexpensive fun day out and accommodation can of course be arranged for you in and around Ardres, should you wish to stay over.
Saturday 28th January: Boursot’s "Blues Buster" Gourmet Dinner: Venue to be arranged
January is when most of us need a bit of cheering up. So, on the weekend of the 28th we will be hosting a thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable evening in some cosy surroundings.
The venue and theme will be announced in the next newsletter.
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News in the World of Wine
You often ask me as a wine writer and presenter to tell you my thoughts about what appears to be happening currently in the global wine market.
Often one hears that alcohol in moderation is good for the health, just as drinking to excess is bad for the health. Consume anything to excess and it’s bad for you! Research published by the British Medical Journal found that drinking a glass of wine or a pint of beer every day reduces the risk of heart disease by up to a quarter.
So I was interested to hear that British MPs are due to review the government’s previous alcohol guidelines. Government advice is based on recommendations in 1987 made by a committee of doctors, but since then it has been admitted that the figures were "plucked out of the air" in the absence of any clear evidence about how much alcohol constitutes a risk to health. A former editor of the British Medical Journal, recalled that the committee could find "no decent data" on the subject, but felt obliged to make a recommendation nonetheless.
You will have seen me here previously warning you that if you are going to buy En Primeur Bordeaux wines, whereby effectively you are giving a company a cheque for wines that are not yet made and that you will not see for a couple of years, it is important to use blue-chip wine companies. This type of trading is simply too tempting for some less scrupulous traders. Recently two directors of a legitimate sounding "Bordeaux Wine Trading Ltd" have been found guilty of fraud, reportedly taking payments of £1.2 million of en primeur orders - but rather than ordering any wine from Bordeaux, they are said to have spent most of the money on fast cars and cocaine!
The hot weather in April, in particular, has produced an exceptionally early harvest around many parts of France. Château de Sours in Bordeaux reports that it has already started picking grapes, and in Champagne harvesting has also recently started. Whilst their summer months do not bear much comparison, such an early harvest in August is on a par with the very hot 2003.
In terms of potential quality of the 2011 grape harvest (or vintage), there are some excited voices coming especially from the Rhône where recent storms have brought much needed water to the grapes. Harvesting has also started in the southern Rhône and conditions look to be near perfect. In the Languedoc, the farmers are more used to arid conditions, but this year they have had no shortage of rain and again, they are set to produce high quality wine. The discussion of the moment among French wine producers is the changing climate and how they all have to adapt for the future.
Bordeaux is virtually silent (so far) as after a somewhat overheated and protracted 2010 En Primeur campaign, the question is "could Bordeaux really produce a third consecutive great vintage?". Indeed, would this not stretch the Bordeaux wine trade’s credibility? Although in 2011 the red Bordeaux wines are expected to be very respectable in quality, this is very unlikely.
The point is that in these days of global warming and improved technology, it is increasingly difficult to make poor quality wine. Investment Grade Wine is a new term that has crept into wine parlance, especially in Far Eastern markets: red Bordeaux from 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2010 fit into this category. But the other intervening years produced perfectly respectable wines that can be enjoyed without the investment price premium.
It was a different story 30 years ago (come to our September dinner to hear more about this) when there could be huge variations between the qualities of annual harvests – indeed you really need to go back to the 1970s to see when one might have advised against buying a vintage claret on the basis of its quality. Wine hardly featured then as an investment commodity and the now-commonplace consultant winemakers were not evident in those days.
I believe that the Bordeaux market now needs to try and reconnect with wine drinkers rather than investors, and restore some of its credibility by restraining, perhaps even reducing, its prices. It has happened before, albeit not very often. Some of the négociants in the Bordeaux market are getting worried about "eggs in one Asian basket" syndrome.
You will have seen me talking here in previous months about increasing sales of champagne. In 2010, its shipments reached 319.5 million bottles: a not unhealthy sales increase of 9%. Clearly because it takes so long to produce a bottle of champagne, the producers have to try and forecast what the state of the market will be in two to three years’ time and any sudden acceleration or deceleration in sales unsettles them.
The CIVC, Champagne’s governing body, has increased the permitted yield for the 2011 harvest from 10,500 kilos to 12,500 kilos per hectare – thereby increasing the flow by 20% to cope with anticipated growing demand.
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Twitter
Our address is @Boursots_Wine. Do please feel free to mention us and our wines if you are happy with what we do, and we will be pleased to retweet your comments to our own followers.
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Boursot's New List
You can always see our latest list on this link and if you would like to print it, it's available on this link.
In terms of new wines, there is an excellent and powerfully fruity Château de Nages Réserve from the Costières de Nimes close to the Rhône. There is also a delicious new top white Burgundy: Saint Aubin Premier Cru, En Remilly at an unbeatable price of 16,20€ as well as a Gewurztraminer Kirchberg Grand Cru from Alsace. Returning to stock are our Riesling Trottacker, Eau de Vies de Mirabelle and de Framboise all from Faller (see our forthcoming dinners above for more insight). We have also managed to secure a (final?) parcel of the rich and fruity claret from Château Liversan 2004 – I have tasted several more recent vintages of this wine, but none of them compare to this 2004’s quality.
We are for a while reducing the price of our lovely new Champagne Richard-Dhondt to just 15,20€ (around £13.50 at today’s rate). Made by a Premier Cru producer in the village of Dizy just outside Epernay, this wine is ideal for large parties or weddings – it is of excellent quality and has plenty of dry fruity flavour. We do not believe you will find a better champagne at the price, and with prices in Champagne hardening now, this is an excellent time for you to stock up.
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Stocks
Inevitably our stocks rise and fall according to the season. If there is something that attracts your eye in our current list, do call or e-mail us and we shall be pleased to put some stock on one side for you, so as to guarantee that you can have it for when you want to visit.
We also have a range of unusual sizes in wooden boxes, making smart gifts. For example, we have magnums, jeroboams (double magnums) and imperials (quadruple magnums) of Bordeaux, Champagne and Minervois, most of which are in wooden boxes at very sensible prices. They make great gifts.
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In Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, we are constantly being told that our offering is so much more exciting and wide ranging than the equivalent retail operation in Britain. We are proud of our wine selection which, thanks to your support, is finding a wider audience with each passing month. We do not advertise and it is very unlikely that you will read a review on us in the British media, but we have found that your word of mouth continues to be our best source of new customers. So, if you are happy with what we do, please help us by telling your wine loving friends about us - or you could refer them to our "Receive Monthly Newsletter" button on the home page of www.boursot.co.uk. We will be very grateful to you.
As with all our wines, we stand by our guarantee to take back any resaleable bottles if you find that the wine is not to your taste or if you have too many bottles left over after a party.
Remember: according to HM Customs & Excise you can take back as much wine as you like from France to Britain, provided that it’s for your personal consumption. If you want to take back a lorry full of wine for your own use at weddings and parties, you are perfectly within your rights to do so.
We are open from 10 to 6 from MONDAY to SATURDAY, and we do not close for lunch. If you should like to visit outside these hours, do please let us know. Sometimes it is possible to open up or to leave your order nearby for you to collect - and we have a secure web page on which you can leave your card details.
We hope to see you here again very soon, whether it’s for our delicious and easy to enjoy Petit Pont Réserve wines at around £3 a bottle or whether it’s for something more exclusive for your special dinner parties. We have them all.
A bientôt!
With all best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
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
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