One of the things you discover when you travel around wine regions is that there are many, many more wine producers than those that are well-known and internationally distributed. He who is content to just try the large, big-name, well-known producers misses many exciting wineries. In Sweden, that I come from (bot don’t live in since many years) there is a monopoly that aggravates the matter further. The situation is no doubt the same in other markets with monopolies or where the large super-market chains totally dominate wine distribution.
This is partly because a monopoly (or a very big retail chain) often requires large volumes when purchasing that smaller producers cannot offer. But it can also be because a large retailer (like the monopolist Systembolaget in Sweden) in their purchasing process favours internationally renowned producers.
But when visiting wine regions it is actually often when coming to the smaller and more unknown producers that you can get the biggest and most memorable wine experiences. The small producers are often more individual (and perhaps also more individualistic) and less keen to maintain a certain “house style”.
Another advantage of the smaller and especially the lesser known producers is that prices may be more attractive. A certain celebrity status or a strong brand can help push up the prices. (If nothing else, the marketing and advertising campaigns must be financed in some way.)
I came to think about this now during my travels in Europe’s wine regions this autumn. This season, we make some twenty trips to various wine regions so we see quite a few regions and wine producers.
Some advice for the wine lover:
- Do not put too much weight on “big names” and famous winemakers.
- Try things that you may not even have heard of. It can give you many pleasant surprises.
- Go on adventures in wine regions that are less well known and that perhaps you know very little about.
- Do listen to advice and recommendations from those who have tried other wines than those that you usually drink.
- If you drink some famous and exclusive wines, make sure you have looked at the label first. Then the experience becomes even greater. Yes, the power of auto-suggestion is great.
The same advice applies broadly for he who looks for new wines as for he who heads out on a trip to wine country, whether it be alone or with a tour operator. Visit not only the “famous names” when you plan your itinerary, and do venture to travel with those who dare to (and knows how to) plan tour programs with some lesser-known, but at least as good, wine producers.
Speaking of travel, of course… Are you curious about South Africa’s wine country and want to join us on the next wine and food tour there? Then it is time to book your place now. The last booking date is fast approaching: November 15!
You can also take a look at our spring tour to Bordeaux. There will be a mix of both famous names and smaller family owned wineries on that tour.
More info below.
This month’s Brief is a bit shorter than usual. This time of the year we are virtually constantly travelling. But in November we will be back with many new articles!
Britt & Per
PS: Recommend to your friends to read the Brief!
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What’s on at BKWine Tours
- Chile and Argentina in South America, January 31 – February 15, 2015
- South Africa, February 27 – March 9, 2015
- Bordeaux, April 22-26
For more information please contact us on email or on phone (we’re on French time), or go to our wine travel site on www.bkwinetours.com!
We also make custom designed wine tours – on-demand tours for you and a group of friends, for your company (maybe to scout new winegrowers?), for a special event… We can combine winery visits and wine touring with other activities: gastronomic workshops, visit to an oyster farm, truffles hunting, cheese making, and more. More info on the custom designed and bespoke BKWine wine tours and travel here!
Wine tours in Finnish: We also do wine tours in Finnish. And in German, Norwegian, Spanish…
Do you want the latest news and updates on our wine travel activity? Subscribe here! (Second alternative BKWineTours.com)
From the World of Wine
Good year for Swedish wine growers
The beautiful summer in Sweden this year has given the Swedish wine growers a long-awaited perfect harvest. Lauri Pappinen at Gutevin announces that he has picked around 7000 kilos of grapes from his vineyards around Näsudden in the south west part of the island of Gotland. This is the best harvest ever experienced at Näsudden.
Spring started off well, the summer continued with fantastic weather which largely persisted right up to the harvest. The rain during the season also came at just the right moments. Lauri Pappinen thinks that he can produce about 5000 litres of wine. Gute Vineyard has three hectares of vineyards at Näsudden. Varieties are the white Solaris and Phoenix and the red Rondo. More info: www.gutevingard.se
Pictures and videos from wine regions, wineries and vineyards
In autumn it is peak season for wine tours. Many think it is the perfect time to go visiting vineyards. It is! (But travelling in wine regions in spring time is just as lovely, but different.) But not everyone has the time or the possibility to do it.
If you want to experience it a little, at a distance, or just see how it looks then you can follow our travels on our wine tour Facebook page: facebook.com/BKWineTours (Unfortunately you must have an FB account to see it since they have decided that you must be over 18 to see it.) We’ve published quite a few pictures there, and continue to do it, during this autumn. And quite a few wine tours too. There are several hundreds of photos to browse.
Esca, a big problem in the French vineyards
The French wine harvest 2014 has largely given the wine producers adequate quantity and a good quality. But all is not rosy in the vineyard. There is a disease that wreaks havoc in the vineyards and it is believed that this disease now affects 12% of the French total vineyard surface. And it is growing. The disease in question is not really one, but several fungal diseases that attack the vine itself.
The worst of these is esca. Vines affected by esca become weaker and weaker and die after a few years. No cure exists at present but wine growers hope that the research that is being done soon will get a breakthrough. 12% is almost 100 000 hectares, which is equivalent to nearly the whole of Bordeaux, so it is easy to understand the wine producers’ concern.
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Crozes-Hermitage Tardieu-Laurent Vieilles Vignes 2011 | Ulf’s Wine of the Month
Somehow, I cannot but smile at the story behind the Tardieu-Laurent wines. The young Michel Tardieu – a state employee chauffeur who spent his days driving the local dignitaries around in the south of France – discovered that he had a great passion and nose for wine. The thing being a private driver for local dignitaries has its benefits, you get often in contact with great restaurants! Soon, restaurants started to consult him about the wine and then the step was not big to start his own négociant business focusing on Rhone wines.
The story could have ended there, of course, but Michel Tardieu caught on to something that some others only suspect: there were plenty of growers in the Rhône valley that had excellent grape material, but this grape material disappeared into the large cooperatives’ wines. After a while he began to buy up some of this grape material and to sell the wine under his own name. And there we are today – we have a very talented winemaker who made his name by finding smaller growers and make excellent wine of their grapes.
In the Wine Trade Fair in Västerås I tried his Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Crozes-Hermitage Vieille Vignes. The Chateauneuf was good, but it was the Crozes-Hermitagen that really charmed. Once back home I order some bottles of the wine and tasted it again.
What a charm! This is a wine that is playing with you… The wine opens with aromas that you definitely would not expect in a red Rhône wine: exotic tones of for example lychee! So interesting. The wine is slim, not powerful, not any jamminess, no smokiness. Almost Burgundian in character. Slim, gluggable, good acidity. A total charm. I will buy more of this! Costs around 25 euro.
Wine fair with Loire wines on February 2-4, 2015
Loire is France’s longest river. About 1000 kilometres long. Along the river there are lots of exciting wines of many different types, ranging from simple everyday wines to magnificent quality wines. The “wine part” of the Loire starts at Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire and continues all the way out to the Atlantic.
Along its course the river passes districts like Touraine, with Vouvray and Montlouis, Chinon, Bourgueil, Savennières, Anjou and Muscadet, to name just a few of the most famous districts. Unfortunately, many of these wines are too little known and too little appreciated, not least by international wine lovers.
A great opportunity to discover more of these great wines is the Loire wine fair, Le Salon des Vins de Loire, which takes place for the 29th time on February 2-4, 2015 in Angers. More about this: salondesvinsdeloire.com. (The fair is a professional event.)
Another excellent way to discover the good wines of the Loire and its delicious food is to come on a wine tour to the Loire Valley with BKWine.
Bordeaux is so much more than just expensive chateaux, new marketing campaign
A new marketing campaign for Bordeaux wines is being launched in late October in France and the six major export countries, Belgium, Germany, UK, USA, Japan and China. This new campaign highlights Bordeaux diversity and variation rather than luxury and fine chateaux.
“The more you look, the more you discover” is the new slogan that are supposed to make people realize that Bordeaux is not only red wine and, most of all, not only expensive wines. See parts of the new campaign for Bordeaux wines here mon-viti.com.
Congratulations André Lurton!
We congratulate André Lurton who recently celebrated his 90th anniversary. And we do that by making a toast in a glass of white Bordeaux wine. Because white Bordeaux is André Lurton’s special darling. He wants nothing more than to make it better known and appreciated.
We fully agree. White Bordeaux is delicious, whether it is unpretentious Bordeaux Blanc or Entre-deux-Mers or more complex and oaked aged Graves and Pessac-Léognan.
André Lurton owns chateaux like Chateau la Louviere and Chateau Rochemorin in Pessac-Léognan and Château Bonnet, where he also lives, in the Entre-deux-Mers. They all make very good wines, as do many other producers of white Bordeaux!
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BKWine is finalist in the Great Wine Capitals Guest Blogger Competition; Ken Baldwin is the winner
This year’s edition of the Great Wine Capitals Guest Blogger Competition selected Ken Baldwin as the winner for an article about Rioja. A big congratulations to Ken for an article that talks about a wine region that is today very exciting.
BKWine’s Per Karlsson was in the final heat of the competition with an article about Argentina, on wine touring on a high level in Mendoza. BKWine participated in the competition with several articles on e.g. wine travel in South Africa and in Bordeaux. You can read all the articles on BKWine’s Travel Blog.
Suzukii fly in the vineyard
A brand new insect has made its debut in the French vineyards. This we were told at one of our visits to Champagne a few weeks ago. This insect is called drosophila suzukii and is a fly coming from Japan. It was first seen in Switzerland and in the Rhone Valley, where it lays its eggs in cherries and raspberries, but also in grapes.
Drosophila suzukii is something that should be taken seriously. Sébastien Toselli at Champagne Roger Coulon tells us that the fly is able to penetrate the skin of healthy grapes to lay its eggs inside the grape. Normally this kind of flies can only attack grapes where the skin has already been damaged by for instance hail. The mild winter of 2014 and the wet summer have been ideal conditions for the suzukii fly to spread rapidly. Read more about the wine growers’ new tormentor: bioactualites.ch (No, it is not Suzukii on the photo. It is a truffle fly. But it illustrates well what the wine growers would like to do with the fly.)
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