Newsletters
 February, 2014
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Bonjour
The main headings in this newsletter are shown below.
General
First, and somewhat belatedly, may I wish you a very Happy New Year – one that is filled with much laughter and happiness.
I apologise that there have been no newsletters over the last couple of months – as you might imagine, they do take a lot of time to compile: finding dinner venues, speakers, offers, checking prices as well as of course writing about current events. Whilst I am not complaining, November and December were strong trading months for us, so my eye was taken off the "writing" ball.
At the moment the euro rate is bobbing around 1.22 to the pound.
In case you didn’t know it already, before VAT the UK duty is £2.00 per bottle of still wine and £2.56 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 now being £5.03, this means that around 60% of the cost of that bottle is now consumed in tax.
In France there is only a negligible rate of duty on wine, thanks to the country being a major supplier of wine. So, its tax still remains at a comparatively non-existent rate of around £0.03 per bottle! You get a lot more wine for your money in France.
Many of you say the same thing – voiced by one happy customer 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 get a good selection of French wines here in Ardres with some huge savings over UK prices. You can rest assured that all the wines on this list, starting at just 3,30€ (around £2.80) 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.
We host a number of high quality wine dinners at some top local restaurants – and we have some especially entertaining ones coming up over the coming months. You should come, so please see below for details.
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Boursot's Reduced Cross Channel Fares
We have arranged for you as a Boursot customer a reduced fare with P&O until the 31st March 2014. For a day trip or overnight trip (meaning returning before midnight the following day), your return fare will be just £22. There is a small supplement of £3 for travelling on a Saturday.
The Afternoon Return Fare is £19. This means departure after midday and returning before midnight. So, after buying your wines in Ardres, you will also be able to fit in some fine dining!
These special rates are exclusive to Boursot's and apply to a car and up to 4 passengers and can be accessed through this link or on the Offers page of our website. As always, there may be some specific £5 supplement days but provided there is availability and that you're travelling in a standard car, you will pay these low rates.
You should book at least 24 hours in advance so as to take advantage of this P&O offer. We hope you find this helpful.
Eurotunnel is celebrating its 20th birthday with a special £20 day return offer available for travel on Tuesday 18th, Wednesday 19th or Thursday 20th February, subject to availability. Click this link to access the relevant Eurotunnel page.this link
In case you didn't know it already, we should point out that Tesco clubcard points can be exchanged for Eurotunnel tickets, although it may not be possible to use these in conjunction with any other Offer.
You may have seen that Eurotunnel has bought part of the old SeaFrance fleet, which has been smartened up and is being leased to a workers' group based in Calais. Having travelled on this line recently, I was struck by the improvement in quality of service over the old SeaFrance operation. Myferrylink.com is the name of the new company and you can now find some attractive prices with them. You get no prizes for guessing their web address!
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Boursot's Hotel Offers
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. 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 and over the Christmas period).
We are very fortunate to be in an area with several good eating establishments at all different price levels, so do ask us if you would like a recommendation.
If you are a "foodie " we are pleased to bring you our Special Offer from the 4 star Hostellerie de 3 Mousquetaires which is just 30 minutes' south of Ardres on the outskirts of Aire sur la Lys. Here you will enjoy a cosy atmosphere and fine cuisine as many of you have discovered already. Chef proprietor David Wojtkowiak worked at the Berkeley Hotel in London before setting up his own restaurants in northern France and so speaks good English.
This offer is available to you during the week but not at weekends. Normally a room for two would cost from 115€, breakfast 15€ per person and dinner typically 45€ per person: total 235€. The offer to Boursot's Wine Collection customers is an all-in price of dinner, bed and breakfast for two at 92€ per person. We have heard glowing reports from those of you who have taken up this Offer. When you book, you must mention Boursot's Wine Collection to get these special terms. You can call on +33 321 39 01 11 or there is a booking form on:
www.hostelleriedes3mousquetaires.com/fr/reservations.php
Also, as a Boursot’s Wine Collection customer, you have access to reduced rates at the 4 star Hôtel Château Tilques between here and Saint-Omer. Here they are giving you a special price on their superior "Luxe" room at 159€ per double or twin room (or 135€ per single room) any night of the week. While you may see a "special price" on their own and some other websites, that price excludes breakfast at 16€ per person whereas our Offer includes it.
When booking, please mention Boursot to get your special rates.
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New in at our UK online boutique are some Cellar Books Made in Britain, these are unlike anything else on the market, being practical as well as aesthetically pleasing. They are hand bound with marble paper and are available in 3 different colours.
Click on the Cellar Book underlined link above to view more information. You will also see that they are on special introductory offer, through G&V in the UK until the end of October only, so take advantage now for your Christmas presents.
Otherwise they are available in the Ardres shop at the normal price, along with our other wine-related gifts such as USB flash drives disguised as corks, framed copies of our exclusive Nick Newman wine cartoons, natural wine soaps, wine map tea towels, silver tastevin cufflinks, decanters, Screwpull wine accessories and many more.
Do also take a look at the G&V Blog, which includes articles about wine, recipes using wine and product information. Please feel free to add your comments and suggestions, as we welcome interaction.
New items appear regularly so do please keep coming back or sign up via this page to receive direct updates via ezine or Twitter.
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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, when planning your event, we would discuss your desired objectives and work backwards from there. We can liaise on your behalf with local restaurants and if required, hotels.
We use restaurants in and around Ardres that can happily accommodate your needs and provide good quality food at a sensible price, while we can provide our wines at shop prices with no cost of "corkage " to you. Typically a four course lunch or dinner works out at 27€ all-inclusive and six wines work out at 8€ per person.
Depending on whether you would like it, one of us 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.
"Many thanks for arranging our recent visit to Ardres. Everyone enjoyed themselves so much they want to come again." CW, Fetcham U3A.
You can also enjoy tastings, presentations or general events in our recently restored vaulted cellars under our shop. If you should be interested in holding a tasting or other event for up to 35 people in the cellars, please say and we will be happy to reserve the space for you.
Additionally we have been pleased to incorporate some vineyard visits for some groups as part of their overall trip. Typically a visit to Champagne going behind the scenes and meeting the producers involving two nights, two dinners, two lunches and all visits starts at around £350 per person. So do ask us if a visit to a vineyard area could be of interest for your group.
And finally, I am of course happy to travel to you to present wine related events to your groups or dinners, or simply to be your after-dinner speaker with a difference! I have a lot of experience in this, and is one reason, I imagine, why many clients continue to ask me back year after year.
Do please contact me by phone or through my speaker website guy@boursot.com to explore your options.
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Forthcoming Boursot Events
Boursot's dinners are held for our British customers and so are of course always conducted in English. Pretty much everything is taken care of, starting with our specially arranged crossing prices with P&O, through to a bubbly reception, followed by a four course dinner designed to go well with five more wines. Generally, we have also arranged accommodation for you at advantageous rates, so that all you need do after dinner is totter upstairs (perhaps via the bar?)!
Boursot's Wine Collection is open on the Sunday mornings after a Saturday evening dinner and an exceptional 5% discount is then available on purchases of the wines that were served at the dinner.
All in all, the Boursot events are designed to be highly enjoyable while offering phenomenal value. We take a private room where we normally restrict numbers to around 40, so as to retain a friendly atmosphere. Great food, great wine and great company. All you need to do is to come along and enjoy!
Vegetarian and alternative food options can be provided, as long as we receive ample advance notice. If a planned guest speaker is unable to attend, we will endeavour to find another speaker and if none is available, Guy Boursot will present the talk. All our events are planned to be enjoyable, interesting and unstuffy.
Perhaps you have an anniversary to celebrate or you just want to get away for a quick change of scenery? As many of you have testified already, we make it easy for you to get away for a weekend with a difference. And of course, you are most welcome to bring some friends.
Please contact us on ardres@boursot.co.uk or on +33 321 36 81 46 to book for any of our events below.
Saturday 15th March: "The good value wines of Bourgogne" Gourmet Dinner presented by Guy Boursot at Les Terrasses de l’Enclos, Boulogne-sur-Mer
The Boursot family has been making wine in the Côte de Nuits of Burgundy since the mid-sixteenth century, from the days before "wine" was of the style that we know nowadays. Guy Boursot has also travelled there extensively and has several friends among the region’s producers and is well qualified to discuss this controversial and oft-misunderstood wine region and to demonstrate that value can still be found, despite rising global demand for these unique and delicious wines.
Les Terrasses is the restaurant within L’Enclos de l’Évêche, a charming Boulonnais townhouse next to the cathedral in Boulogne’s Old Town. The quality of cuisine here is good and for our dinner we have blocked off all 5 bedrooms, so if you’d like us to allocate you one of our rooms, please say so at the time of booking. Alternatively there is a wide variety of hotels in Boulogne within easy walking distance. First come, first served!
There will be 6 wines to enjoy with the 4 courses, for which the price is 85€ per person, all-inclusive.
Saturday 26th April: Gourmet Dinner at Hôtel La Matelote, Boulogne-sur-Mer
We are awaiting confirmation from one of our invited guest speakers, but this looks to be an exciting event in the comfortable surroundings of the Michelin rated La Matelote, one of the area’s most renowned "foodie" hotels, and on the sea front in Boulogne.
Here we will enjoy a 4 course dinner and there will be at least 6 great wines served. The ticket price is 88€ per person, all-inclusive.
We have blocked off a number of bedrooms at the hotel with its pool and spa so please say if you would like to have a room from our reservation.
Other events in the pipeline are as follows and we will let you know as more venue and speaker bookings and confirmations appear:-
Saturday 31st May: Gourmet Dinner
Sunday 13th July: Mid-Summer Lunch
Saturday 27th September: Gourmet Dinner
Saturday 18th October: Gourmet Dinner
Saturday 15th November: Gourmet Dinner at Hôtel Château Tilques
Sunday 7th December: Ardres Christmas Market Lunch
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Views on the World of Wine
You often ask me as a wine presenter and writer to tell you my thoughts about what appears to be happening currently in the global wine market. Here is a collection of my latest thoughts!
As I am sure many of you are aware, the political commentator and writer, Simon Hoggart died recently after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Many of you will have heard him speak, mostly irreverently, at our Gourmet Dinners at the Hotel Atlantic in Wimereux. I was particularly astounded at our 2010 dinner, when he arrived directly after a session of chemotherapy to stand up and present a talk: few of us would have known that he was not well. He and I had hoped to run another wine dinner this Spring – his last words to me were: "My slight problem is treatment - things not going quite as swimmingly as before. But we are seeing the consultant tomorrow and I hope he can give us some idea of what is going on and what kind of shape I can expect to be in." Alas, he did not come back to me after that. Simon was an immensely kind man, as well as being a highly intelligent and incisive writer and I, for one, feel that British journalism has lost one of its brightest stars.
Simon could have been writing his own epitaph when he wrote in 2007 about his close friend Alan Coren, with whom he had worked on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, "Right to the end he was joking, not just telling gags, but revelling in the rich absurdity of all human life. Being dead means he is out of touch with his best source material. It must be appallingly frustrating."
Another recent death was that of the wine writer Pamela Vandyke Price who was Britain’s first female wine writer and who had regular columns in The Observer, The Sunday Times and The Times. She was perhaps at her best in the early days of the 1960s and 70s but when new rival writers arrived on the wine scene and demands were being put on her to "up her game" for a more knowledgeable public, she became disenchanted and lost several valuable writing commissions.
"PVP" could be argumentative to say the least and indeed in my previous UK incarnation, I recall her haughty reaction after I had described her in an introduction "as one of this country’s doyennes of wine writers", she retorted (quite correctly!) "there cannot be more than one doyenne". But she could be amusing when mixing such sharpness with humour: for example in one of my early newsletters she wrote "Burgundy should not be pretentiously served. Gigantic glasses may be useful to the glass factories and allow flouncy sommeliers to show off. I do not want to float a goldfish, said one of my French friends...".
Some months ago, news of a world wine shortage was widely headlined but at the time I could not help but feel that this "news" from Morgan Stanley was either outdated or exaggerated. Yes, there have been some small harvests across Europe but there has been some compensation from harvests in countries such as Chile and New Zealand. There is no glut, but neither is there yet a terminal shortage.
2013 saw small harvests across Europe. Generally speaking, quality was good but volumes are well down. Nicolas Faller from Alsace talked of having only 20% of a normal sized crop for his Gewürztraminer and Muscat and indeed you can see my interview with him here. Prices will edge up again across Europe and in some specific areas such as Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune and Bordeaux’s Entre Deux Mers, prices are hardening considerably. There is a difficult price line for producers to walk - they do not want to lose their traditional clients, yet they have no choice but to raise prices to cover some of their fixed costs.
The Asian clamour for some of the great red wines of Bordeaux has quietened down for the moment and probably until the next "great" harvest. In the meantime, as Chinese people are becoming more exposed to wine, they are turning towards other styles, and the areas of Burgundy and Champagne in particular are fast gaining popularity. This is causing some headaches in Burgundy, which never has enough to go around anyway these days
There has even been talk in Burgundy of converting some new areas to vineyard so as to address some of this shortfall. After two small harvests in 2012 and 2013, many producers are not taking on new customers and are eking out what little they have – not easy when there are new markets banging on their doors, in particular for Pinot Noir wines. The next stage will be to go to the national appellation authority, the INAO, to formally request extensions to planting rights. But none of this can have any meaningful effect for at least five years and probably nearer 10, as conversion, preparation and planting of vineyards take so long.
In reviewing sales during 2013, champagne’s governing body, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, or CIVC, which was set up in 1941 to protect and promote its members’ interests in the face of large scale looting by the Germans, has just announced a sales decrease of 2% to €4.3 billion owing to reduced demand in the mature European markets. Champagne sales recuperated slightly through some pre-Christmas brand discounting and to a 3.2% increase in sales to non-European countries. On the supply side, while the 2013 harvest had its fair share of problems, the area of Champagne got off relatively lightly; high quality with yield down marginally. The situation is still not unhealthy after another gradual reduction from the record high of 2007.
Champagne of course has always linked its marketing with fashion and luxury, in order to promote itself and the big champagne houses have been marketing hard in the emerging markets and especially in the Far East. Champagne is gaining popularity in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, where there is a growing young, fashion-conscious middle class. Sales of bubbly have risen by 51.8% over the last 18 months in China.
Australian wine exports slipped back by a further 6% during 2013, as wine drinkers in the world’s mature markets looked elsewhere for their purchases. Many Australian producers had hoped to fill some of the slack by selling wines in Asia but owing to the Chinese government’s new austerity measures, this became unachievable. Over recent years government and major Chinese companies’ banquets were estimated to be spending between $50 billion and $145 billion on corporate banquets, a figure which attracted public derision. Spurred on also by an economic slowdown, the government responded by introducing austerity measures that discourage extravagance and these are having a dramatic lowering effect on official wine consumption in China.
China appears to be the source of many counterfeit wine labels but nobody quite knows yet how many of these are finding their way on to sub-standard bottles of wine. It is for this reason that several more meticulous producers have in recent years applied special coding often disguised within the capsules and this should help over coming years to prove the authenticity of potentially valuable bottles if and when these wines come to auction.
It is becoming increasingly common to hear regular cries about changing weather patterns and how we have just seen the hottest/the driest/the warmest/the coldest season. In California, we hear that the water table is at its lowest since records began 119 years ago, and reservoirs are drying up. Whilst this is not yet catastrophic, the fear is that there will not be enough water to irrigate the vines (yes, they are allowed to do that in California). Over the last 12 months, California has seen just under two inches of rain, against an annual average of 12 inches. In addition, with only 20% of the normal snow on the Sierra Nevada, the fear is that not even the melted snow can supply enough water to the California vineyards and vines could well start budding early, which would open them to a risk of frost damage.
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Wine Tourism
Whilst much of Europe has been relatively slow to catch on, nowadays France's vineyard areas in particular have really embraced wine tourism. You just have to visit Epernay, Beaune or Bordeaux to appreciate how wine tourism has been accepted and developed and whilst you can try dropping in on whoever might see you, increasingly many top domaines will only see you as part of an officially recognised group. In addition, many big producers have managed to dumb down their tours for tourists with absolutely no wine knowledge to such an extent that you would probably feel disappointed if you know anything about wine, as clearly you do. It is increasingly clear that you need a specialist to get you behind the doors that are closed to everyone else.
Having visited the quality vineyards over many years, I set up Over The Top Tours some years ago to share my experiences with groups of interested customers. So if you should like to visit one of France's viticultural areas, go to our vineyard tours company www.overthetoptours.net - we will take you behind the scenes in many of the great vineyard areas where you will meet and often dine with some of the producers. Alsace, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Languedoc, Loire, Rhône and the South West are all areas that we visit and where we have great contacts who are happy to greet and inform you, as well as invite you to taste a wide selection of their wines.
Fine dining is also included as it goes hand in hand with good wine.
We tailor private tours specific to your preferences, so if you have a group of friends or colleagues whom you would like to get together on a vineyard tour, please do contact me on info@overthetoptours.net and we can start working out a schedule and budget. Do remember however that weekends, and especially Sundays, are often not good times for visits, as so many vineyards are small hands-on enterprises and do not employ teams of PR personnel to show you around!
Ideal sized groups are between 12 and 26 adults and typically two nights away with all meals and visits start at around £350. We do all the planning and make the bookings so all you will need do is to come along and enjoy a thoroughly memorable trip.
As you will see from our website, we also organise battlefield tours around northern France.
A couple of testimonials:
"People are still talking about the wine trip. Those that went have had great fun telling those that didn't just what they missed. The 49 wines tasted have somehow become 100 and the light lunches and dinners magnified out of all proportion. We must think about the next place to take them another year. " JM
Our group of eight recently spent three days in Burgundy with the hope of trying to broaden our understanding of the wines and the region. Having used guides before we had found that guides can be overly technical and insist on telling you what they know rather than what you are interested in. Through Over The Top Tours we struck 'gold' and found their guide Ursula and in doing so found someone who really knows their subject matter but also someone who was all about making sure we enjoyed ourselves during the process as well which given our diverse group was not easy. It's fair to say that Ursula made our trip to Burgundy and we would all unreservedly recommend her and Over The Top Tours to anyone thinking of visiting Burgundy. ND - September 2013
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TripAdvisor, Twitter and E-mail
In case you thought that TripAdvisor was only for hotels and restaurants, think again! It is also there for " Things to do" and for " Shopping" so if you are particularly happy with what we do, please help us by telling others and post your comments on TripAdvisor. This link will take you directly to our page. Your positive input will be most gratefully received. In most cases, one does not know who the contributors are because they use a pen name, but to those 19 people who have already put up favourable reviews, thank you very much. It all helps.
Our Twitter address is @Boursots_Wine. If you are pleased with the quality of our wines or our service, or if you simply would like some personal advice on wines, do please feel free to Tweet us, and we will be pleased to respond.
Hotmail.com and aol.com have particularly vicious spam filters which reject many mailshots, even though you might have asked to be mailed. So if you know of another Boursot customer who is not receiving our monthly e-mails, please ask him or her to check with us - perhaps it's because of these filters that they are not receiving our mailings, but we can also check the address that we have on file. Also, if you are about to change e-mail provider, please don't forget to advise us of your new address, so we can update your records.
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The Boursot Family History
As you probably know, I am fortunate enough to come from a very long family line in the wine business, passed from father to son continuously since the mid-16th century. Indeed it is one of the longest continuous family lines in the wine world.
I was very pleased to learn a few months ago that the historian Rodney Gilbert had taken the Boursot family as a project and presented it to an audience in Australia - a small but significant part of my family's wine history since the 18th century. Rodney Gilbert has extra-ordinary access to international historical records and with a keen eye to detail, he sent me a copy of his speech which took the theme "History captured in a 150 year old 1862 photo - The Boursot Family ". As an insight into European social history, I believe this makes a very "interesting read " on www.boursot.co.uk/boursot_history.html and I hope that you too might enjoy it.
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Boursot's New List
You can always see Boursot's latest list on this link and if you would like to print it, it's available on this link. The list is updated monthly but In the event that you see a previous version of the price list, try pressing Ctrl and F5 simultaneously on your computer so as to refresh the page.
If there is something that attracts your eye now, that you'd like us to put on one side for you, just say and we'll be happy to arrange it.
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 Rhône and Minervois, most of which are in wooden boxes at very sensible prices. As with our wine-related accessories, these make impressive and unusual gifts.
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In Conclusion
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, has been growing and is finding a wider audience with each passing month. Thank you.
We do not advertise and it is unlikely that you will read a review on us in the British media. 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, or tweet about us - or you could refer your friends to our "Receive Monthly Newsletter" button on the home page of www.boursot.co.uk. And mention us on TripAdvisor. 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.
If you are returning from a holiday, Boursot’s Wine Collection is situated just off the old main north-south road (RN943) and 5 minutes north of Junction 2 of the A26. Then from Ardres to the port or the tunnel in Calais takes 15 minutes.
Once again, please let us know if you should like to visit outside our normal opening hours; with a little advance notice, often 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.
Jean-Bertrand, Antoine and I hope to see you here again very soon, whether it’s for our delicious and easy to enjoy Petit Pont Réserve wines at just over £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
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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