Newsletters
 July, 2009
Dear Customer,
Our newsletters are unfashionably verbose, so if you prefer to go straight to a particular topic, the main headings are below.
E-mail Disruption
We apologise if you have tried to e-mail us recently. Our router has been “down” for some many days and we have been unable to send or receive your messages. We believe we are back to normal now but because of this and other delays, this has now become our combined June and July newsletter.
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Boursot’s Cross Channel Fare Deal
As always, our specially reduced day return fares are available to you but as we are coming into holiday season, our £23 fares for Sundays to Fridays and £30 fares for Saturdays are only available until 9th July. After that, we are all in the hands of the ferry companies and their availability. For all fare enquiries and bookings, please call the Ferry Travel Club on 0870 264 2644 - your special code is “Boursot”.
Recent Gourmet Dinner at the Restaurant François Premier, Ardres
Our Gourmet Dinner at Le François Premier in Ardres was a magnificent and entertaining occasion. It is always a pleasure to experience the extra-ordinary culinary skills of chef owner Gérard Lewandowski and we managed to partner some exquisite wines alongside his various outstanding dishes. I can say with confidence that those who came to this dinner thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
For us, it is wonderful to have such a good and reliable restaurant immediately opposite our shop, and if by chance you have never tried the François Premier among the many restaurant choices of Ardres, we strongly recommend that you do.
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Forthcoming Events
We have a variety of great events for you to come to. Each of our events is really enjoyable and you always learn a little more about the world of wine. Many of these events are expected to be popular so we suggest letting us know as soon as you can if you believe you might be interested in coming, so we can block off some spaces for you.
Main Square Festival, Arras, 2nd – 5th July
I have only just learned of this event and if you are interested in live rock music you may want to know about the Main Square Festival in Arras, an hour’s drive south of Ardres, between 2nd – 5th July. You can get further details of this major Rock Festival held in the beautiful main square of Arras on this link and then click on “English”. Artists include Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Lennie Kravitz, Duffy, Lily Allen, Kaiser Chiefs, Kanye West, the Ting Tings and Moby ... and many more. Prices at around £40 are reasonable compared to those charged in the UK.
Lunch: Hotel Clément, Ardres, Sunday 19th July
Join Guy Boursot at a relaxed Sunday lunch at the great value Hotel Clément in Ardres. This will be a lunch with local specialities, as always accompanied by a selection of delicious and interesting wines! This will be, simply, a summer Sunday lunch for which you may like to hop over just for the day and enjoy a complete change of tempo and scenery. If you’d like to learn a little more about wine over a relaxing lunch with a few like-minded and friendly people, this is an event for you.
The price of this lunch will be just 45€ (about £38 at today’s rate) to include 4 courses, 6 wines and all entertainment!
Lunch: Auberge du Moulin d’Audenfort, Sunday 30th August
The Refreshing Wines of Alsace with Nicolas Faller of Robert Faller et Fils, Ribeauvillé
For your Bank Holiday weekend, we have a special treat organised.
Discover the diversity of refreshing wines from Alsace, guided by Nicolas Faller from the family wine producer, Robert Faller et Fils based in the picturesque town of Ribeauvillé.
We are assured a wonderful four course lunch prepared by Madame Cadet at the waterside Moulin d’Audenfort accompanied by a selection of delicious wines that make lovely summer drinking. If you are tired of the usual range of wines on the UK market, come and try a variety of these refreshing Alsace wines – Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Gewürztraminer and of course Vendange Tardive wines - all of course at our low French prices.
You could use this as an excuse for a quiet get-away-from-it-all weekend. We have booked a few bedrooms at this old mill, which has long been a favourite among British visitors, so please indicate at the time of booking whether you might like to stay here. The Moulin at Audenfort has a cosy atmosphere in a waterside setting, and is only 15 minutes south of Ardres.
The price of this lunch will be 62€ (about £52 at today’s rate) to include 4 courses, at least 6 wines and all entertainment.
Dinner: Saturday 19 September at 4 star Hôtel Château Tilques
“The Dream, The Reality and The Wines”
Martin Krajewski, a charming and urbane Brit, a few years ago bought Château de Sours which is perhaps best known in the UK for its rosé wine. Famously, Auberon Waugh once said that Château de Sours made “probably the best rosé in the world”!
In addition Martin has bought “Clos Cantenac”, a Grand Cru Saint-Emilion property, where he has set about the transformation of the winery. And as if these responsibilities were not enough, more recently he has become a partner in “Songlines”, a vineyard in the McLaren Vale region of Australian where he intends that his wine will become the next Grange Hermitage, one of the world’s most highly sought wines. Working with him is one of the former winemakers of Penfold’s Grange Hermitage, so with the correct combination of climate, soil and know-how, they stand a good chance of success.
For further background on this remarkable man and his vineyards, you can follow this link to a recent Spectator magazine article.
This is an opportunity for you to discover the various trials and tribulations of buying, converting and running a vineyard. It promises to be a fascinating evening and its all-inclusive price is just 69€ per person (about £58 at today’s rate) to include 4 courses, at least 6 wines from Martin’s various vineyards and a complete evening’s entertainment.
This Boursot’s Gourmet Dinner will be in the idyllic setting of the 4 star Hôtel Château Tilques, 25 minutes south of Ardres. Rooms are available at Boursot’s specially discounted rates, so please indicate when booking whether you would like to stay over.
Anniversary Weekend Dinner: Saturday 13th October
Boursot’s Third Anniversary Dinner will be held at the celebrated Hotel l’Atlantic on the seafront in Wimereux. There are not many hotels in the world that have such an unparalleled setting.
Our guest presenter that evening will be Charles Metcalfe, one of the best-known, most spontaneous and amusing wine critics in Britain. Charles is co-chairman of the International Wine Challenge, the world’s biggest wine competition, held annually in London, and was one of the founders of WINE International magazine. For 12 years, he presented drinks as one of the Richard and Judy team on the ITV programme ‘This Morning’, also working at ‘Taste Today’ on the Taste TV CFW channel, ‘Great Food Live’ and ‘Sunday Lunch Live’ on UK Food (BBC digital TV/Sky TV).
Charles, who is married to Kathryn McWhirter, another prominent wine critic, will be enlightening us about new trends in the wine world and about what goes on behind the scenes to select medal winners at the prestigious International Wine Challenge.
Alain Delpierre chef patron of the Atlantic is one of the few Maitre Cuisiniers of France, and so we should be assured of a first class dinner! This highly entertaining evening in the luxurious environment of the Atlantic Hotel offers exceptional value – just compare our price to those of other similar dinners being charged by other companies or so-called Societies!
As always, we have block-booked a number of sea-view rooms at the Atlantic so if you should wish to stay, we can allocate these to you on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. Please indicate at the time of booking whether you would like to stay. If you feel you would like to come
This Gourmet Evening offers exceptional value at 95€ (about £80 at today’s rate) to include 4 courses, at least 6 wines and a complete evening’s entertainment.
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Wine News
Since the relatively large gains of the pound against the euro (today standing at 1.18€/£), many of you are coming back to Ardres to top up your wine supplies with our guarantee of quality and our very low prices. At Boursot’s Wine Collection you are guaranteed excellent quality and great value, whether you are buying at £1.90 or £19.00 per bottle. And of course you can also enjoy a complete change of pace as soon as you cross that Channel.
Meanwhile, the drinks business in the UK seems to be in a state of turmoil for two main reasons: government and the mass retailers.
For the first time in my memory, representatives of the drinks industry went to the Chancellor this year and lobbied him not to raise duty yet again, only to find that he ignored their request and slapped on a further 2%. Supermarkets and mass retailers refuse to pay this extra tax and pass such a cost increase back up the supply chain to their producers, some of whom are still keen to unload stocks in this world of global oversupply.
Whilst this may sound like insider grieving, duty increases are intended to be tax rises on the consumer but in most cases, these rises are being funded by the wine supplier of the supermarket chain. If a supplier refuses, its products are delisted: very simple. Profit remains more important to any supermarket than quality. So any governmental talk of raising the retail price to discourage drinking simply does not wash in the current circumstances: supermarket drink prices are exactly where they were whilst their suppliers are poorer for it and less able to invest in innovation. With more than 50% of UK wine sales now being made on “promotion” (or is that “artificial discounting”?) also subsidised by the suppliers, that provides a worry for the future of several of the world’s wineries. Oversupply remains a problem.
As intimated in our previous newsletters, many of the world’s wine suppliers have been turning their backs on the UK for other more profitable markets where retailers are, for the time being at least, prepared to pay a fair price for a fair quality.
For the first time in 50 years, wine sales volume in the UK is reported to have fallen whilst the sales value has risen. The current sales statistics are still an impressive 96 million cases worth £4.9 billion. Sales value rises are due to duty and raw cost increases – and all this despite the efforts of multiple retailers to introduce more and more deals to the mass market.
In France, I have heard that a couple of major French supermarkets are seeking out and buying up some ailing wine co-operatives so as to achieve more control and profitability on their products.
As announced in our April newsletter, a new champagne bottle screwcap was launched in London last month by Champagne Duval-Leroy and we now wait to hear customer reactions. From a personal point of view, I hope that these do not become commonplace as I, for one, enjoy the “theatre” of opening a bottle of wine or champagne. However I would not be surprised to see the financial muscle of Rio Tinto Alcan (which already has 15% of the world’s lucrative closure market with its Stelvin screwcaps) being used to sway opinion.
As you may have read in the national press, there was a strange twist to the 2008 Bordeaux vintage when the American wine critic Robert Parker gave unexpectedly high points to a large number of 2008 clarets. The market responded immediately with a large price increase on their second tranches of these wines which were never of “great” quality. In my view these wines are now overpriced for the state of the world market meaning that despite Parker, many of these wines are simply not going to sell for some time.
I recently made a whirlwind tour of some of our producers in the south – in Minervois, Pic Saint-Loup and the Rhône to be more precise. In general 2007 was an excellent year for the reds and whilst 2008 provided wines of less concentration of fruit, this year has made a perfectly respectable follow-up vintage. During these early months of 2009 the very low water table has been topped up by a prolonged deluge in January, and more recently the temperatures have been near-perfect for the flowering of the vines and the eventual ripening of the grapes. All the growers that I visited were very content.
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July Wine List, Summer Drinking and New Wines
You will see many new wines on our New List and you can of course print it from this link.
With the improved exchange rate we are delighted to be bringing back some of Philippe Jonquères d’Oriola’s excellent wines from Château de Corneilla just north of the Pyrenees. Included are his excellent unoaked fruity Chardonnay (now with a more classic label), a rich Cabernet Sauvignon, his Côtes du Roussillon Prestige, the grapey and sweet Muscat de Rivesaltes dessert wine and the famous sweet red Rivesaltes Tuilé which is similar to a port but without the spirit. And of course, in response to those of you who have asked after his excellent “Grand Cru” Extra Virgin Olive Oil - it’s back!
We have also bought a handful of clarets including an old favourite, Château Tour Bicheau which as a family producer, makes an excellent red Graves at a very sensible price. This wine from 2006 is, yet again, a medal winner and may be enjoyed now or kept over the next five years. You can also buy this wine in magnums – the optimum size for longer term ageing.
You can also choose from many other new wines from Lalande de Pomerol, Margaux, Moulis, Pauillac, Saint-Emilion and Sauternes in Bordeaux and prices start at around £7.30
As you might have guessed, the excellent rosé wine from Chateau de Sours is set to remain a regular wine on our list. You can compare our price of around £4.80 most favourably against other so-called “Special Offers” (£8.99) at other retailers! Perfect for enjoying on these warm summer days.
And finally we have bought the wine that earned Chateau Massamier la Mignarde, producer of our popular red Minervois, the title Best Wine of the World in the International Wine Challenge’s category Syrah-Grenache-Mourvèdre: Domus Maximus is a rich, powerful wine and is probably the best wine produced in the Minervois....
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Opening Hours
If passing through on your way back from holidays outside our normal opening hours of 10 – 6 MONDAY to SATURDAY, as a customer, always assuming we are around of course, we can open up for you. So please do call or e-mail in advance so as not to be disappointed.
Enjoy the summer weather and I look forward to seeing you here again soon. Otherwise I hope to see you at one of our several fun events.
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With my best wishes
Yours sincerely,
Guy
Guy BOURSOT
Wine Consultants SARL
Tel: +33 3 21 36 81 46
Mob: +33 6 76 10 32 41
www.boursot.co.uk
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