September 2021
Bonjour!
Having just put our new September wine list up on our UK website, I thought I’d take this opportunity to update you a little on what’s happening in the wine world at the moment. I hope that everything in your world is as well as can be achieved under these very trying new circumstances.
The Boursot List and Ordering
If you simply wish to look at our list of wines, then this is always visible and printable through the View/Print Current Wine List button on the right hand side of our home page or here if that’s easier www.boursot.co.uk/winelist.pdf.
If you should wish to place an order either for collection from Ardres or for delivery in the UK or across the EU, you can do this easily enough on our new system www.boursot.co.uk/buy.html. Or if you prefer to use a full ecommerce system go to www.boursot.fr/en/ . Deliveries in France are effected within two days and to the UK and across the EU take three days.
As we head towards present giving season, remember that we can despatch orders of wine to your contacts across the EU, so that you do not pay any UK export tax.
And remember if you should introduce one of your friends to us, and they spend more than 150€ on wine, you will receive a free bottle of Richard-Dhondt champagne on your next order.
Boursot's Wine Dinners
Our season of dinners is picking up again now and our next events are:
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25 September – Bordeaux dinner at Hotel La Matelote, Boulogne
30 October – dinner at venue to be confirmed
27 November – Loire dinner at Chateau des Tourelles, Le Wast
and the Ardres Christmas Market Lunch on Sunday 5 December.
Fuller details can be found in the Events panel on the home page of www.boursot.co.uk
Across restaurants in France one is required to produce your proof of double vaccination, either on your phone or on paper. There are few other health restrictions.
News in the World of Wine
As said at the end of the last newsletter, news was just coming in about the Grand Cru classification of Saint-Emilion, a process that happens each 10 years and which is due again next year. Normally any movement between the grades is based on quality, judged by samples being tasted blind across the châteaux’ last 15 vintage years.
Any reclassification with its inevitable financial life-changing repercussions is bound to be controversial, but it does strike me that maybe this well-intentioned institution should now be reformed. After each of the last reclassifications, many producers have ended up in court fighting over the right to have the official decisions reviewed. The 2012 classification included 64 estates as Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Classé, with 14 as Saint-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé. And within that last structure there are two classes A and B. Yes, the terminology is confusing. Such reclassification is unlike that of the Médoc which has remained set in stone since 1855.
Two of the biggest names in Premier Grand Cru “A” Saint-Emilion, Châteaux Ausone and Cheval Blanc, have announced their decisions to withdraw from next year’s round, primarily because they feel that there had become too much commercialisation in the decision-making and that any classification should be based on the quality of the terroir, its viticulture and its resultant wines. Pure and simple.
About five years ago Château Latour, a First Growth on the Médoc, decided that it was not going to take part in the annual en primeur circus in which a château’s latest wines were tasted, assessed and then offered for sale on the market. There was a certain amount of shock at the time, but in fact the rest of the market has stayed unaffected. The en primeur process is particular to Bordeaux.
If you should like to hear more about the wines of Bordeaux and what is really happening here, do come to our dinner at the Hotel la Matelote in Boulogne sur Mer on Saturday 25 September when we will taste a selection of wines from different appellations and I will share the latest thoughts and news.
Another potential disrupter that you may have heard about is Russia’s insistence that it would not respect geographic protections, for example “Cheddar” and more particularly “Champagne”. Russia has always been a big market for champagne; indeed in the early 19th century its preference of a sweeter style dominated the market and it was only in the mid-19th century that dry champagne was launched on the British market (by the Boursots) and this then became so popular a style that dry champagne has become the norm. The end of the 1950s and early 1960s saw the champagne body in court fighting to protect the name of its product and this became the benchmark for future court actions. Nothing has been able to pass itself off or name itself anything vaguely reminiscent of that hallowed terroir 100km east of Paris.
The Russian president it seems has different ideas and has signed off a new law that says what was Russian sparkling should be called shampanskoye (champagne) and that the real stuff that comes from a place called Champagne should be demoted to sparkling wine! It’s yet another example of the value in a name.
There has been recent erroneous talk in the UK media about how wine drinkers had been saved one or two pounds on the cost of a bottle of wine by the abolition of a new type of import VI-1 form that had been sought by the post-Brexit UK government. This press speculation was not actually true because it had not yet been implemented – it was a bit like arguing that by not going shopping, you are making huge savings! There were furious exchanges behind the scenes in which one minister told Parliament that the wine trade had requested these forms when all the official trade bodies and wine sellers maintained they had never even been consulted. Besides which, why would the wine trade opt for yet another new bit of red tape, on top of all the new burdens they have to contend with since 1st January?
The VI-1 certificate was intended to prove the provenance of a wine – information that was already supplied in accompanying documents – in other words a certificate to guarantee what another certificate already guaranteed! In some circumstances, samples would be drawn from bottles and in particular this would have had a major impact on the trading of older wines, where bottles are often stored abroad but brought into the UK for sale at auction. Just imagine the potential effect of taking a sample from an old bottle – ruin! It was all nonsense and has rightly been consigned to the bin.
On the subject of new bureaucracy, I said previously that it seemed that below 150€ worthof wine order, there was no new UK import tax to pay. It appears that the UK government might have now modified this by excluding alcohol from this exemption, because while some receive their wines with no request for payment, others do not. For example we had one customer who ordered three consignments each for approx. 145€ of wine value and he paid no tax on the first and the third, but did on the second! The only consolation was that the tax spread across all three orders was minimal.
One of the biggest problems we have found in the importation of wine into the UK is that there seem to have been no definitive rules written so it appears that tax might or might not be applied according to the interpretation of the customs officer on “the front desk”. It continues to be a nightmare to try and get any clarity.
We have recently been splashing out a bit to extend our wine selection. Recently we have just brought back three wines from the excellent Domaine Coste-Caumartin in the village of Pommard in the Côte de Beaune. The domaine is now run by Benoit Sordet who has taken over the reins from his father. In chatting with Benoit, he told me of his potential loss of 80% of his white crop this year following April’s frost at -6°. The problem was particularly compounded this year because after the warm spring weather, the vines had started to bud. It is hard to know yet what the quality will be like of the remaining crop and harvest this year will start around the 25th September. Pinot Noir has not been affected quite so badly, especially in the more northerly Côte de Nuits.
Your Travel
It has been good to see many of you coming over recently and of course regarding travel, there are no restrictions on this side of the water provided that you have a double vaccination certificate, either on your phone or on paper. However the UK says that before heading back to home, you need to have a covid test taken in France within the last 72 hours before travel and then you would need a test at two days after arrival in the UK: quite why is anyone’s guess! In France a covid test is generally priced at around 14€, a result takes 15 minutes and is available at most pharmacies and walk-in centres.
The UK government announced that after Brexit, restrictions would be re-imposed on the amounts of wine you can travel back with from the EU. This does not (yet) seem to have been introduced and many of you have been travelling back with 120, 150, 240 and 402 bottles to name but four instances. Others have gone back with the paltry new limits, not been asked about car contents and emailed me afterwards to say “I wish I’d taken more”. There is no red channel and so you are not obliged to declare anything until asked and nobody yet, to my knowledge, has been asked; customs are too busy checking covid paperwork together with passports. I have been reassured to hear customers saying recently they would come back very soon to fill up their large cars!
Under these difficult new conditions we will be very grateful for all your support Sheryl and look forward to seeing you again before too long.
With all best wishes
Guy
