Newsletters

May, 2009

Dear Customer,

Our newsletters are unfashionably verbose, so if you prefer to go straight to a particular topic, the main headings are below.

• Gourmet Dinner at the Restaurant François Premier, Ardres
• Boursot’s Wine Collection 2 Day Trip to Champagne
• Boursot’s Cross Channel Fare Deal
• Wine News
• May Wine List and its New Wines

Dear Customer,

As the sun continues to shine with its promise of a long warm summer, together with a vastly improving exchange rate, things are looking up here in Ardres.

Gourmet Dinner at the Restaurant François Premier, Ardres

We still have places available for our Gourmet Dinner at the excellent Restaurant François Premier in Ardres on Saturday 16th May. As you may recall from our last newsletter, the mouth-watering menu with its spectacular wines are planned to be:-

but as always if you have any special dietary requirements, alternatives can be arranged for you. Also if you need help in the translation of the above, do please ask!

With plenty of rooms available in and around Ardres at very reasonable rates (see our web page for details of places to stay in the area), this will be a weekend of incredible value. It should also provide you with the perfect excuse to come and stock up! With the improved exchange rate, you can be assured of having a great time whilst buying some really good quality wines here at substantially reduced prices over their equivalent in the UK.

Whilst I am working on a selection of other dates currently, two other dates for your diary are Saturday 19th September and our Anniversary Dinner on Saturday 17th October, when we have a very special Guest Speaker. And read on for the June Gourmet Dinner – in Champagne!

Remember also that if you would like a Wine Event for a group of friends or colleagues either here in Ardres or in England, we can help organise it for you. For example, one of the good restaurants in the area can be matched up with your taste and budget, and a meal with four courses, six wines, coffee, water and the entertainment of having someone talk about the wines can be in the region of as little as 39€ per head. For tasting groups, we can also lay on a full tasting followed by a bread, charcuterie and cheese lunch for around 10€ per person and all this can be held in our vaulted cellars. Do please call or e-mail if you would like to discover more – you will not be disappointed, as can be witnessed from this glowing note received recently from one very happy customer! You can see this and other Testimonials on This Link.

"Firstly, I must say how much I enjoyed my 60th birthday event in Ardres last week, and I must sincerely thank you for all the hard work you put in on my behalf to make it special. The combination of fine food & wine, and a short break "off the beaten track" in France (with the fascinating underground sightseeing tour thrown in too), made it a memorable occasion for us all. Please convey my thanks to Le Clement too, for their help and flexibility. I could not have organised it this way without your help - thank you once more. I am sure we will see you again before long - maybe at one of your gourmet dinners. P.S: Feel free you use this as a testimonial - it is well deserved !." (MM)

On Thursday 4th June Boursot’s Wine Collection is planning a Gourmet Dinner in Champagne and there will also be visits to Houses for our customers. At this early stage, it seems that we will be visiting two contrasting Champagne Houses, Perrier-Jouët and Krug, as well as one of my favourite small family producers. This will be an exclusive opportunity for you to go behind the scenes at some of the greatest names in the champagne industry.

As a past chairman of the Champagne Academy, the organisation that fosters the education and appreciation of Grande Marque Champagne in the UK, I have extensive knowledge of Champagne – the wine and its region – indeed, it is one of my specialist speaking subjects. The Boursot family has been at the forefront of the champagne business since 1828 and has, for instance, been recognised as being responsible for the introduction of dry Champagne to the market, so you can understand why the Boursot name is well respected in the world of champagne. You will be in good hands!

Everything for this sensational two day trip will be included in the price, which looks to be around £320 per person to include one night’s double occupancy and breakfast in a three star hotel, various tastings and visits, two lunches, a tutored four course dinner in the cellars of a Champagne House, and all guiding.

If you should be interested in coming on this trip from Thursday 4th to Friday 5th June 2009 please let us know as soon as possible on +33 321 36 81 46 or by e-mail on ardres@boursot.co.uk so that we can gauge the level of interest; first-come, first-served. Alternatively if you should be interested in trips to other wine regions at other times, we’d be keen to hear your preferences.

As a Boursot’s customer, you can get specially priced day return trips at £23 for a car and all passengers Sundays to Fridays, and £30 for Saturdays. However the only exclusions when these specially priced day returns will not be available are the 23rd and the 30th May.

As always, these fares are only available by calling the Ferry Travel Club on 0870 264 2644 and by quoting our code “Boursot”.

If you spend more than 500€ with us, we will be happy to reimburse your day return fare booked through the Ferry Travel Club, so please remember to bring along your receipt

So once again, I am one of the few people thanking Mr. Darling for his Budget which again raised the UK duty by a further 4p on a bottle of wine, which roughly translated should mean about 6p on the retail price (o.k., call it 10p by the time retailers have finished rounding their prices). This will add pressure on suppliers as retailers try to stick within their coveted “price points” of £4.99, £5.99 or whatever. With already less-than-easy trading conditions, this further tax increase will not help anybody, and the British government has set up its 2% above inflation tax escalator, meaning that combined with last year’s duty increase of 17% tax is expected to have risen by a minimum of 40% by 2012.

And so, yes again, I shall take this opportunity to point out that there is next to no duty on a bottle of wine bought here in France. What you pay here goes into the quality of the wine rather than into UK tax (now at a whisker under 50% of the value of your £4.99 bottle of wine).

Nobody could be unaware that sales of Champagne have been diving recently – from its euphoric position 12 months ago, this has been an especially rapid decline. In the first two months of this year the CIVC (Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne) registered a 34% drop in champagne sales volume.

In the meantime, sales of good sparkling wines at a fraction of the price of champagne have been soaring. Whilst many people are cutting their expenditure, there is also the view that it might appear extravagant to be popping the corks of champagne bottles. Many of us have seen all this before of course and a healthier situation will return in time, although this time I for one feel it will be a long time in coming back to “normality” (whatever that is supposed to mean).

There is rumour in the trade that Moët Hennessy which owns Moët, Ruinart, Veuve Clicquot, Krug and Mercier champagne brands might be sold off by its parent LVMH to the UK drinks giant Diageo which currently lacks any champagne or cognac interests.

As anticipated in our newsletter last December, the Fosters Group, which owns among its 200 drinks brands such vineyard names as Beringer and Stag’s Leap in the USA, Lindemans, Wolf Blass, Penfolds, Rosemount and Wynns Coonawarrra in Australia, Matua Valley in New Zealand and Castello di Gabbiano in Italy, has now decided to sell off 31 vineyards in its 11,500 hectares across various parts of Australia as well as in the USA. Instead the Fosters Group says it wishes to focus on wines from cooler climate areas, so one might imagine they may be buying vineyards in New Zealand, a country that is suffering currently from huge overproduction.

Among our new wines this month is a top of the range red Côtes du Rhône, Grand Nicolet, 2007 which thanks to some spectacular notes from the well-known American wine critic Robert Parker, sold out of its 12,000 bottle production in just two days! The wine has some spectacular credentials as you will see from our New List. Or you can print this May list from This Link.

Robert Faller & Fils is a company I have been following, and buying from, over the last 20 years and I have not yet found another Alsace house that produces wines of such purity, typicity and most importantly, excellent value. Many aficionados have compared the style of Faller’s wines very favourably with those from the considerably more expensive and ubiquitous Trimbach. I am awaiting confirmation of a date for a Boursot’s Gourmet Dinner in this area. I find that Faller’s cuvées (blends) made from specific terroirs (soil, aspect etc), such as the dry Riesling “Trottacker de Ribeauvillé” and dry Gewürztraminer “Les Trois Coteaux” offer extra-ordinary value. I have now bought in addition, their wonderful Pinot Gris “Cuvée Bénédicte” to complement this fine collection. If you enjoy fine Alsace wines, I am convinced you will love these wines and you will certainly appreciate their very reasonable prices.

Now that summer seems to be here, we have brought back the lovely wines of Picpoul de Pinet and the full rich Syrah Rosé from our friends at Domaine Morin-Langaran near Agde. If you have never tried these wines, you will find them refreshingly different - a real discovery.

I hope that the world is treating you all right in these difficult times and I look forward to seeing you here in Ardres again soon when we can put the world to rights over a glass or two.

With all best wishes

Guy

Guy BOURSOT
Wine Consultants SARL

Tel: +33 3 21 36 81 46
Mob: +33 6 76 10 32 41
www.boursot.co.uk