Bear markets, chickens and wine
This is just a short note to highlight what could be an interesting review at the year end, at least as far as the UK wine market is concerned. For the last ten years consumers have benefited from a strong currency vis-a-vis the US dollar and Euro, low rates of interest and low inflation. Their [...]
The Billionaire’s Vinegar
Subtitled: the mystery of the world’s most expensive bottle of wine.
This was a bottle of wine which was sold at auction some 25 years ago: Château Lafite 1787. Its authenticity is eventually brought into question. The bottle sold for just over $156,000 to the magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes, outbidding Wine Spectator publisher Marvin [...]
Bordeaux 2007
Sections of the press have already written off the 2007 vintage in Bordeaux — even as early as August 2007.
The assessment, led in the US, of classifying vintages as either terrific or not worthy of consideration is largely based on erroneous speculation and, it appears, they have already trounced 2007 — a wine that [...]
The Bordelais….!
Oh well… whilst we await the final assessment of the 2007 (a difficult year perhaps), the Bordelais are hoping that Bacchus might at least come to their aid in the rugby world cup. Take a look at their invocations at our new site drinksvideo.com.
By the way the opening passage is in French but you [...]
Not ink, not alcoholic, no wood
Whilst in Bordeaux I took the time to speak to Thierry Manoncourt at Chateau Figeac to ask him about his life and how things have changed during his stewardship of the estate since the 1940s - he will be ninety in September this year. The interview will be podcast in the near future (in [...]
Climate change
The Financial Times recently carried two articles which caught my eye. One was that “World scientists are certain that humans cause global warming” [FT 4 Feb 2007} and the other in the same paper was that property prices in ski resorts were suffering from a lack of snow (global warming?).
Presumably the first anthropomorphic statement [...]
Success - Burgundy style
Wine writers are sent a lot of press releases which all too often, to our shame, we take at face value. They are fodder for our publications and a demonstration of intentional influence on the market by PR and marketing companies on behalf of their clients. A recent press release came across my computer screen [...]
Interview with Francis Ford Coppola
Recently we published our first issue of Fine Wine. It contained an interview with Francis Coppola which I conducted specially for the magazine and I thought if you’re an avid blog reader and hadn’t seen a copy of the magazine then you might like to read it here. I asked him about his early days [...]
I want to be French? Or do I?
In a desperate attempt to sell more wine the French have hit on a terrific idea - make everyone believe that they really want to be French! Of course, the only thing wrong with this is that the French don’t want to drink French wine. Maybe it’s really a very clever way of bolstering declining [...]
Trading with the world’s corrupt nations: China
I was distressed to read that the environmental and human rights activist Fu Xiancai had been recently brutally assaulted following his meeting with the Public Security Bureau after his interview with German public television station Das Erste about the Three Gorges project (full story HERE ).
Only recently in the wine press one reads of [...]
en primeur
Bordeaux 2005. There’s a lot of talk out there as to whether this is the greatest vintage ever…
I travelled to Bordeaux recently to taste the wines from the various Appellations along with Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve. I will be producing several podcasts about our week there which feature a variety of interviews and [...]
Whilst on the subject of Yquem…
Just a day or so ago we posted our latest podcast from People in Wine. This is an interview with Alexandre de Lur Saluces whose family married into the estate over a couple of hundred years ago and who was running Yquem for thirty years up until the beginning of the new millenium. The questions [...]
1787…was it even a good year? /continued…
As I was saying…
The news that a bottle of wine had been sold for a staggering $90,000 swept around the world as if it had been poured into a glass and swirled around and around. The original press release which seemed to have gone through a number of mutations on various web sites [...]
Chocolate more beneficial than wine…
Whilst cruising around for various bits of research I came across some good news for wine lovers who like to eat chocolate too… It appeared on a research web site, and I have given the credit at the bottom of this entry:
“Researchers: chocolate is good for your heart
A team of researchers from the University of [...]
Pinot: the parties of the second part…
Well, the second part has been out a week or so. We have interviews with Jacky Barthelmè (Alsace, France), Paul Fürst (Germany), Joe Davis (California) and Michel Bettane. You can listen to it either through iTunes (and other podcatchers) or by clicking on our customised radio player either on the right hand side on Blog [...]
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