Newsletters
 March, 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.
The recent fine spring weather in Ardres, together with Eurotunnel’s recent £22 day returns, has brought many of you out of “hibernation” – perhaps spring trading has started early in 2011!
At the outset of each year, I review our sales and purchasing to ensure that we are providing good wines for every type of customer - whether it’s for easy drinking with a bowl of pasta, a decent white Burgundy for special dinner parties or for providing good but inexpensive drinking all the way through a wedding. One of our great new additions is a lovely champagne from a Premier and Grand Cru producer – and at around only £12.40 a bottle, I hope you will enjoy this excellent discovery. Further details are below.
Couples planning their weddings can see immediately from our list that they can save hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pounds by doing their wine shopping here (and again, if you’re in the market for a quantity of bubbly, you must see our new wedding champagne below). But in addition, these couples escape for the day from the pressures of their wedding plans – an easy hop over for a change of pace and culture, served up with a great lunch, a bit of wine tasting and some French food shopping. We hear all too often what a real pleasure it is.
Customers also tell me how wine prices in the UK have been rising steadily over recent months, and how nothing decent can be found any more at a sensible price. Our prices in the main have not moved at all. There is (almost) no excise duty, lower VAT, fewer distribution and storage costs meaning that the savings are an absolute minimum of £2 per bottle, even on the so-called “promotional prices” found in the UK. Boursot’s has Great Prices for Great Quality. Guaranteed.
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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 just £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, I should also point out that Tesco clubcard points can be exchanged for Eurotunnel tickets.
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SeaFrance
I have it on good authority that SeaFrance’s ownership is being retained by the French government, subject to final approval by Brussels. The company had a good year’s trading in 2010 with increased sales and reduced costs.
When you travel again on SeaFrance, you should find an improvement in general quality and that their on-board boutiques are fully open once again.
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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.
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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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 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 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.
Saturday 26th March: Grande Champagne Cognac with Maison Jean Fillioux at Le Cygne Restaurant, Saint-Omer
This will be a fascinating and unusual evening! Bring a couple of chums – it should be fun! Our dinner will be in the vaulted cellar of Saint-Omer’s finest restaurant, Le Cygne.
You need not worry, this is not a dinner during which you will be drinking cognac all the way through! We will start with a glass of Cognac’s local Pineau des Charentes wine and then our white and red wines will be served through the dinner in the normal way. Here’s the menu.
Amuse bouche
*****
Tartelette Fine de Saumon Fumé au Copeau de Parmesan
*****
Pavé de Veau, Farandole de Champignons des Bois et Légumes du Moment
*****
Parfait Glacé Spéculoos
*****
Café et Chocolats
Christophe Fillioux will tell us about the Cognac region and at the end of the meal, we will compare and enjoy a few examples of old cognacs, typically of 20, 25 and 40 years’ age.
The house of Jean Fillioux is respected as one of Cognac’s very best producers. It was established in 1880 and remains to this day in family hands. These cognacs are in a far higher league than the major brands that can be found so commonly on the market; they are also much less expensive!
Our cognac prices represent exceptional value and typically you would pay an additional £15 per bottle on these fine cognacs in the UK!
The pretty town of Saint-Omer has a number of bars and restaurants around the main square, as well as a beautiful cathedral, and makes a great destination. There is of course a selection of local hotels within easy walking distance and as always, we have a list of local hotels and can help you find a room.
Tickets for this very special dinner are 89€ all inclusive (about £75 at today’s rate).
Saturday 14th May: A Fundamental Guide to Burgundy by Guy Boursot at Hostellerie de 3 Mousquetaires, Aire-sur-la-Lys
Burgundy is one of France’s most confusing viticultural areas. It produces highly sought exquisite wines from Pinot Noir for its reds and from Chardonnay for its whites - names include Meursault, Montrachet and Musigny. It’s an area that is different to, say, Bordeaux where one name produces one wine. In Burgundy, just when you think you’ve found a name that you enjoy, such as Gevrey-Chambertin, you might see a bottle with the identical name but with a slightly different label, you buy it and it is simply not the same as the one you had previously. Why not? Is there a guaranteed route to finding the right Burgundy at the right price at all times? Is it best to buy from growers or from négociants?
We have had dinners with experts such as Faiveley and Leflaive, never forgetting of course the late Paul Bouchard, but on a more fundamental level how can we begin to understand this area and get the best from its wines? During our evening we will contrast the “same” wines from different growers, and we will then work up the quality scale towards some great names and we will accompany these wines with a fine four course menu.
Being from a Burgundy family, and knowing the area and its wines well, I will be unravelling some of the mysteries behind one of the greatest wine producing regions of the world.
The Hostellerie 3 Mousquetaires changed hands six months ago and refurbishments are almost complete. We have eaten there recently and were delighted to find that the restaurant has been restored to its former quality – perhaps partly due to the fact that the chef proprietor “cheffed” at the Berkeley Hotel and Pied à Terre in London: two great references.
www.hostelleriedes3mousquetaires.com
Tickets for this dinner will be 69€ (about £58 at today’s rate) all-inclusive. Accommodation is also available at a specially reduced rate of 120€ (from 150€) per couple.
Sunday 10th July: Mid-Summer Lunch at the Moulin d’Audenfort
Our mid-summer “do” is going to be on Sunday 10th July – an informal four course lunch at the waterside mill hotel Le Moulin at Audenfort just outside Licques, 10 minutes from Ardres. As usual we will start with a bubbly reception and then move on to five wines with our lunch.
I will be talking about the wines as well as about what is going on generally in the world of wine at the moment. Tickets for the lunch will be 49€ (about £43 at today’s rate) and accommodation at around 55€ per room is available. It’s a good inexpensive day or weekend away. And it will be fun.
Saturday 15th October: Anniversary Dinner at the Hotel Atlantic, Wimereux
Our annual dinner on the sea front in Wimereux is impressive in more ways than one. The hotel is a favourite gastronomic destination and haven for those wishing to escape and spend a relaxing weekend on the French seafront.
We hope to be able to reveal to you soon the identity of our guest speaker.
There will of course be several other dinners held during 2011 and as soon as we are able to confirm details to you, we will.
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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 in the global wine market.
There are now just a few weeks to go before hundreds of wine journalists and professionals from all over the world descend on the city of Bordeaux to taste the infant 2010 red Bordeaux harvest. And that’s when you will start to hear the media noise about how good, bad or indifferent the young claret vintage is and whether it might be a good idea to invest in the young wines or not.
Following the triumphal 2009 Bordeaux harvest, 2010 is expected to be of high to very high quality with good ageing potential, but as I have said here before, few are making much noise yet about 2010. In another month we will know if we have another vintage of the decade!
Asian buyers continue to make a lot of noise on the Bordeaux market; their appetite for luxury items seems to be unstoppable. Sales of properties to Chinese buyers are hardly news any more (another 22 hectare Cru Bourgeois estate in the Médoc has just been sold to a Chinese buyer) and a phenomenon of the last two sales is that the new owners want to divert all sales of their new châteaux to China to supply the burgeoning demand for fine wine.
The high prices being achieved in the fine wine market inevitably encourage certain unscrupulous traders to commit fraud. Château Margaux, one of Bordeaux’ five most exclusive wines has just announced that it is fitting anti-fraud seals on its bottles in addition to its existing unique reference numbers, special printing inks, laser etching of bottles and bar coding. Sadly, such measures are vital to safeguard authenticity in a world where people are prepared to pay such high prices for their own bit of liquid gold.
The ongoing problems at “new” Oddbins are seeming hard to shake off. Bought out in 2008 by Simon Baile, son of one of the early managing directors, who initially seemed to bring back an air of excitement to this company which has now changed ownership over the years so many times. Despite improving trade, there are ongoing title issues with Castel, the previous owners and I have heard mention of unpaid dues and less than perfect credit ratings. To me, the company made best sense when it was owned by the giant Seagram Corporation which owned so many of the brands that were sold by Oddbins. In the 1970s and 1980s Oddbins was a popular shop for winelovers - even if its profits left a little to be desired.
The state of the UK drinks trade is not as healthy as one might like and whilst wishing new Oddbins all the success they rightfully deserve, I remain unconvinced about how high street wine retailers can survive with high rents and rates and a lack of parking. Add to that, all the new competition as a result of the fragmenting of the First Quench empire (which comprised Peter Dominic, Bottoms Up and Haddows among other names) and I do not see happy times ahead, either for the wine retailing trade in Britain or for Oddbins.
Oddbins has just employed business analysts to advise them on their strategic options...
More selling off big brand winery interests: Fetzer, with its 429 hectares of vineyards in California has just been sold by Brown-Forman to Chile’s Concha y Toro for $238 million. One of the world’s top 10 wine companies, Concha y Toro exports 16 million cases, one third of them to the UK. It is expected that this acquisition will give the Chilean wine company new opportunities in the North American market.
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.
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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.
For some long time, we have been looking for an inexpensive champagne that we could feel proud enough to recommend. After all, that is what our reputation has been founded upon. But now, we have found a good champagne that we can sell for the equivalent of just £12.40. Champagne Richard-Dhondt, Cuvée de Réserve is not just any old “reduced price” champagne – Monsieur Richard is a grower based in the Premier Cru village of Dizy just outside Epernay, and he produces both Premier Cru and Grand Cru champagne! His wine is made from equal proportions of the three champagne grapes, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier and it has that lovely “biscuity” flavour that many champagne lovers go wild for. This wine is of serious quality and we are pleased to be able to offer you this find which we feel offers exceptional value at just 14,90€ (around £12.40). As a result of a reduced quantity harvest in 2010, the price is expected to rise in June. Take advantage now!
In terms of soft fruity flavour, our Saint-Réol Grand Cru champagne, made only from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, is still hard to beat. Saint-Réol provides champagne to many of the great names that command very much higher prices – I’m not supposed to mention names so, to give you a flavour here are some clues of some of the Grande Marque (in English, “big brand”) champagne houses they supply – LP, M&C, PR, VC...
Grand Cru is the highest quality tier in Champagne. There are 319 villages that have the right to produce champagne and of these, just 17 can put the precious words Grand Cru on their labels – villages such as Ambonnay, Avize and Bouzy (I am not joking!).
This “Grand Cru” champagne remains in a different league which explains its higher price. It still offers fantastic value, especially compared with much of the indifferent champagne offered on the UK market. And if you have not yet tried their Rosé champagne, you must. Can I say this? Why not, because I believe it... half the price of Laurent-Perrier Rosé and far superior in quality.
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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 jeroboams (double magnums) and imperials (quadruple magnums) of Bordeaux, Champagne and Minervois in wooden boxes at very sensible prices.
Many people tell us that we have good wines at the right prices and that our offering is so much more exciting and wide ranging than the equivalent retail operation in Britain. This is what I aimed to achieve all of 10 years ago when I came down here.
We do not advertise, but have found that your word of mouth is our most powerful source of new customers and 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.
Some of you have met Jean-Bertrand (he answers to Jean, in case you should forget!) who works in our Ardres shop. Having spent the last 11 years living and working in Britain, he understands very well the tastes and demands of the British client and he is now being fine-tuned to the Boursot ways. Having worked all that time (and previously in France) in the quality hotel and restaurant trade, he is particularly good at advising on styles and quantities of wine for weddings and parties.
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 £2.90 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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