BKWine Brief nr 104, April 2012
The weather in April in France has been quite cold and rainy and the small buds that started growing during the warm days in March have been suffering night time frost in some parts on France, notably in Champagne, Burgundy and in the Loire valley. How big the damage will be is uncertain but according to the reports, it does not look too bad. And the rain, although it can be a nuisance, is very welcome in some parts of the country. Guillaume Dugas, wine make at the Prieuré de Montézargues in Tavel, for instance, wants more of it. “It is too dry right now”, he says. “It will be a problem for the vines during the hot summer”.
But as always, one can not really know how the vintage will turn out until the grapes are harvested, and fermented, and that will not be soon.
It has been a very busy start of the year for us. Sometimes we say to ourselves “this winter we will catch up on everything” but no, that does not happen.
We have had a huge project with our forthcoming book, a book on wine and the environment – including organic wines, biodynamic, natural etc. But now it is finished and it should be going to the printer in good time. We expect to launch it in August.
Another big project has been the planning of our newest wine tour destination: South America. Next you we will organise a wine tour to Chile and Argentina. Very exciting! We have been to South America several times before but this is the first tour that we have on our travel program to that continent. A lot of people have already told us that they are interested so we have good hopes of filling it up soon. This tour will also be available on our English language wine tour program. The program will soon be available. But you can already pencil in February 4-19 if you want to come with us.
A not quite as big a project, but still time consuming, has been to work on our social media strategy. A big word for something that to a large extent has been about creating four new Facebook pages (plus some other things too). We hope that you “like” them. Read more in the Brief.
And then we have our “regular” job of course.
The regular job will soon take us to a big tasting of “amphora wines”. There is an increasing number of wine producers that experiment with making wine in amphorae and we will taste them. Even the maker (the clay man?) will be there and tell us about the secrets of the terracotta casks.
Upcoming is also the Grand Jury de Saint Bacchus where we will be in the judging or jury panel. Lots of Roussillon wines there. Doing “jury duty” in wine competitions is always interesting. This year we unfortunately missed out on participating in the Concours Mondial, on of the world’s biggest wine competitions, where we sometimes judge. It is a great exercise to learn humility to taste wines totally blind as you do at the Concours Mondial. Do you think it is obvious to tell a Bordeaux from a Rhone from a South African from an Argentinian? Well, perhaps occasionally… But that is part of the fun. You learn new things all the time.
On to the Brief.
But before that: it is high time to book your wine tour for this autumn! Bordeaux, Tuscany, Champagne… Book it now!
Britt & Per
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