Rebuilding a web site is exciting. There is always something new and unexpected that happens. Many of you have had some troubles accessing our site recently and we apologise for that. That is one of the adventures that we have had when we have redesigned our site. Or more accurately, completely changed our web presence. From having had everything on one busy site we have changed to four different sites. One for each thing we do: writing on wine, organising wine tours (in English and in Swedish), and wine photography.
We will have another type of adventure next week when we will be in South Africa. We are there to manage this year’s wine tour to this interesting wine country, including Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, Paarl, Durbanville and Wellington. If you’d like to join us on a future tour do send us a message. For those that are really into adventure the trip also includes an add-on option for a safari. That is really something special. It is a curious feeling sitting in an open jeep less than ten metres away from a lion. The only comfort was that we knew it had eaten a zebra a few days ago so he wasn’t too hungry.
Take a look at our scheduled wine tour program (info below) or let us know if you would be interested in a custom designed tour for you. Later this year we will be introducing some novelties on the program too: a wine tour to Sicily, a luxury tour to the Douro Valley, an organic tour to the Languedoc to mention some of it.
Now it is time to pack the bags for South Africa!
Britt & Per
PS: Recommend to your friends to read the Brief or forward it to them!
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What’s on at BKWine Tours
“World’s Top Wine Tours” – Travel + Leisure Magazine, on TravelAndLeisure.com
2012 wine tour program
- Bordeaux 9-13 May
- Bordeaux 19-23 September
- Tuscany 10-14 October
- Champagne 14-18 November
Details soon to be published.
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!
What do people think about a wine tour with BKWine?
That is of course a question that we think is very important. We want it to be a wonderful and memorable experience for everyone. Here are some of the comments we’ve had from customers this season:
- “Many thanks for a fantastic trip. You are so keen to make everything the best for your guests and you are so knowledgeable about wine. A pleasure to travel with you.”, W-A
- ”Thank you for a wonderful trip to Umbria and southern Tuscany. Wonderful in many ways – our initial ideas for the trip on food and wine in Umbria and Tuscany – and discovering sagrantino and sangiovese – were more than fulfilled”, I & P in Umbria and Tuscany
More wine tour customer testimonials here.
Custom wine tours
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. We’ve done tours for wine clubs, for sommelier educations, for corporate events, for wine importers, for wine course study groups… just to mention a few.
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
Trattoria Nunzia, Benevento restaurant | BKWine Pick
Trattoria Nunzia is a family run, family style restaurant. Very Italian. La Mama heads the kitchen and the son in the dining room. Don’t think you can skimp on your portions. La Mama watches you to make sure you are enjoying it! It is small, it is crowded, it is friendly, and it is impossible to find. Actually it is right in the centre of Benevento, just two blocks behind the municipal office on the Piazza Roma. Food is plentiful and very nice. Unless you are careful (and who wants to be?) you will get a sequence of dishes of traditional Italian, Campanian, cooking: charcuteries, cheese, vegetables, pasta.
Some things you might want to try: the real Capreses (the salad with tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella; after all this is mozzarella country!) and the La Parmigiana that is a local kind of gratin with aubergine, mozzarella and parmigiano reggiano (parmesan cheese) – according to Italians one of the most filling things you can eat… To drink you should of course try a local wine made from aglianico (a popular grape here). And to finish, to digest all you have had, either a limoncello, the spirit flavoured with lemon from Sorrento, served freezing cold, or a Strega that comes from Benevento! Or both? A very good place to savour the local cuisine – family style, without luxury.
Trattoria Nunzia, Via Annunzata 152, 82100 Benevento, ph 0824 29 431 or 335 687 15 00
Taste of ladybird
We all like ladybirds, don’t we? But maybe not the taste of them! Drinks Business reports from the “Cool climate conference” that recently took place in Tasmania that ladybugs often are seen as a positive presence in the vineyards because they eat insects that could harm the vines. But if you have a lot of them in the vineyard, and especially around harvest time, you risk getting some of them inside the fermentation tanks. Which is not a good thing because they bring with them a compound called IPMP (2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine) that taints the wine and you risk getting bitter and green flavours.
You can reduce the number of ladybugs in the vineyards by spraying with potassium metabisulphite. Or try singing “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home…” More: www.thedrinksbusiness.com
Vintage champagne despite the heat
The summer of 2003 in France was very hot and subsequently the grapes in most regions were picked with unusually low acidity. For most people, this was not a vintage to lay down in you cellar. With low acidity you don’t make a wine with ageing potential, was the general idea. This has proved not quite right. In Champagne several houses believe in the ageing potential of the 2003 and have made vintage champagnes. Moët-Chandon launched their Vintage 2003 four years ago and recently Dom Perignon launched their.
The cellar master of Dom Perignon, Richard Geoffroy, says to Drinks Business that it is not the acidity that determines whether the champagne can be aged or not, but the balance between all the different components. Moët-Chandon’s cellar master said much the same thing four years ago, that the ageing potential comes from the phenols, not only from the acidity. Champagne Roederar has also launched a Brut Vintage 2003, but the house chose not to make any Cristal in 2003.
Read more here: www.thedrinksbusiness.com
Freshness and minerality
It is very fashionable nowadays to talk about the minerality of a wine. It is easy to describe a wine as having minerality but it is more difficult to explain what it really means. Wine tasters in all countries use the word. In the past, they never did. It is a word that has appeared out of the blue in recent years and it makes you wonder how you described these wines in the past. Or is the taste, like the word, a new phenomenon?
The chemical company Lallemand has made an interesting investigation into this matter and we read about it in the last issue of La Vigne (No. 239). Lallemand has looked at numerous tasting notes made by the American magazine Wine Spectator and found that 10% of the comments contain the word “minerality”. The word occurs more frequently than oaky, fruity and floral. The results were similar results for the English magazine Decanter and their tasting notes. But when the tasters are asked to explain what they mean by the word and where they think the minerality comes from, well, they are not so sure. No one knows, although most believe that it comes from the soil.
We believe that minerality, wherever it comes from, gives liveliness to the wine, a certain sharpness, which means that you do not get tired of the wine. A wine that we describe as having minerality has a pleasant acidity and a certain austerity. And it is always very positive.
Soon we will have organic wines
The member countries in the European Union have finally (on February 8 ) voted for an agreement concerning which rules should apply for an organic wine. As from the vintage 2012 we will se “organic wine” on the label instead of “wines made of organic grapes”. This should have happened already two years ago, in 2010, but the different countries could not reach an agreement concerning certain additives, mainly sulphur. Countries with cool climates, especially Germany, objected to the proposed reduction of the sulphur content.
The proposal that was now adopted means that the maximum permitted level for organic wines will be 50 mg per liter less than for conventional wines for wines with less than 2 grams of residual sugar. For other wines, the level will be only 30 grams less. A dry white organic wine (less than 2 grams of residual sugar) may thus have a maximum of 150 mg of sulphur per liter compared to 200 for a conventional wine. Is the residual sugar more than 2 grams but less than 5 grams, the organic wine may have 170 mg of sulphur. This is a compromise compared to 2010, when the proposal was to reduce all levels with 50 milligram.
Many organic growers are already well below these limits.
Otherwise, the rules already developed for 2010 were basically adopted concerning other permitted additives and permitted techniques in the cellar. Several additives, allowed for conventional growers, will be banned and also certain techniques, such as flash-detente. On the other hand, the controversial method of reverse osmosis will be allowed for organic wine, at least to start with.
But to decide rules for the vinification is not obvious. It is a little bit easier for the work in the vineyard.
What do the producers think of the new rules? Since the rules in detail have not yet been officially published, many growers are a little cautious in their statements. Jean-Pierre Vanel at Domaine Lacroix-Vanel in the Languedoc says the new rules don’t really change anything for him but it is a good thing, he says, to be able to put “organic wine” on the label. Many others agree with him. The sulphur is important, says Sylvain Fadat at Domaine d’Aupilhac, also in the Languedoc, “because the wine’s true nature is actually vinegar. But there are natural ways to keep the sulphur level low. The malolactic fermentation, for example, stabilizes the wine naturally. If you make wines without sulphur you may succeed or you may not. There is also the added risk of having your wine spoilt by brettanomyces.”
Three Faugeres wines from Domaine Binet Jacquet
Domaine Binet Jacquet is a small organic and biodynamic wine producer in the Languedoc. It is in the sub-region called Faugeres that is inland, close to the Cevennes mountains. It is a remote an empty landscape and the soil is dominated by schist (slate).
Magnus Reuterdahl, who writes for BKWine Magazine, recently had the opportunity to taste three of the wines at a launch tasting of the domaine in Sweden. Read more on Binet-Jacquet here.
All (?) Swedish wine importers
The Swedish wine trade is split in two parts: the importers and the retailer. Retail is a monopoly and it is the Systembolaget AB company who is the monopolist, operating some 400 shops around the country. Systembolaget is owned by the Swedish state. It exists because of claimed public health concerns.
The import side is not a monopoly. We have seen the number 800 mentioned as the number of licenses for importers. It may be true or not. But only a handful are of any significance. Less than twenty importers account for the vast majority of all sales. There is a somewhat larger number that are focussed on a niche. There is also a very large number of hobby importers among the smaller companies.
There is one other way to segment the wine importers: 1) Importers selling to the monopoly, and 2) importers selling to the restaurant trade. Most are of course a mix of both but there is a significant number of importers who focus on restaurants only. Restaurants can buy directly from importers. They do not need to go through the monopoly. It is not unusual for ambitious restaurants to try and differentiate by having a wine selection that is not available in the monopoly shops.
We have put together a (no doubt incomplete) list of active wine importers: An extensive list of importers of wine to Sweden
Restaurant Albion, Paris | BKWine Pick
When you live in the southwest part of Paris, as we do, you feel like you are a bit far from the center of things. At least when it comes to new wine bars and wine restaurants that almost always seem to be located in the northeastern arrondissement: 10th , 11th , 12th, 19th and 20th . But the metro is fast so there is no harm done. A recent “outing” up north took us to the newly opened Albion (same ownership as the popular Fish – La Boissonerie near Odéon in the 6th).
Albion is decorated in a classic, quite elegant French brasserie style. It feels warm and inviting, with hardwood floors and muted colors. The service is attentive and quick. The wine list is excellent and because the restaurant is also a wine shop you can buy bottles to take home if you drink something you like. And chances are that you do. The focus is on producers who work organically and naturally. We drank the white Terroir Maconnais from the Bret Brothers in Macon, fermented with natural yeasts and with a minimum of sulphur. A very tasty and full bodied wine for 22 euros for a pot (carafe of 47 cl). Another positive thing about the wine list is that almost all the wines are served by the glass (12.5 cl), pot (47 cl) and bottle. Many good wines for around 6 euro a glass and 25-35 euro a bottle.
You eat a la carte for lunch and for dinner. Starters at 8-10 euros, main courses 12-21, cheese and dessert 8-12. We had citrus and ginger-marinated scallops, which were beautiful to look at and delicious to eat, as a starter and we tried two main courses: calf’s liver with mashed potatoes and sea bass fillet served with thin-cut slices of fried sausage. Both courses got high scores.
It was hard to leave without buying anything and I chose a favorite Beaujolais, Morgon Côte de Py from Jean Foillot (19 euros).
Albion, Restaurant – Cave à Vin, 80 rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, 75010 Paris, ph 01 42 46 02 44
Southern flavours from 21 producers
Just a few weeks after Millésime Bio (which we wrote about in the last issue of the brief), it was time for Vinisud, also in Montpellier. Vinisud is held every two years for three days around the 20th of February and this year was the twentieth edition. It’s a wine fair that wants to include the entire Mediterranean region but is actually (and not so surprisingly) much dominated by southern French producers from Languedoc-Roussillon, southern Rhone Valley and Provence. South-West is also represented as are a smaller number of exhibitors from Italy and Spain.
At Vinisud you will find both the major players, such as large companies and cooperatives, and the small producers. This year there were nearly 1700 exhibitors and even if you work hard for three days, you will, of course, only try wines from a fraction of these. We made some new, interesting acquaintances, and we renewed some old acquaintances whose wines we hadn’t tried for some time. Here are some favourites (in no particular order):
- Domaine Sainte Croix, Corbières
- Coume de Roy, Roussillon
- Clos Marie, Languedoc Pic Saint Loup
- Domaine Lacroix-Vanel, Languedoc Pezenas
- Mas Bruguieres, Languedoc Pic Saint Loup
- Domaine Grecaux, Languedoc Montpeyroux
- Domaine Pouderoux, Roussillon
- Domaine des Enfants, Roussillon
- Domaine Serre Romani, Roussillon
- Domaine des Trois Orris, Roussillon
- La Nouvelle Don(n)é, Roussillon
- Mas Camps Maury
- Domaine Alain Chabanon, Languedoc
- Domaine du Nouveau Monde, Languedoc
- Domaine Caujolle Gazet, Languedoc, Terrasses de Larzac
- L’Ermitage du Pic Saint Loup, Languedoc Pic Saint Loup
- Domaine du Cazeneuve, Languedoc Pic Saint Loup
- Château des Estanilles, Faugères
- Domaine Pech Redon, Languedoc La Clape
- Domaine d’Aupilhac, Languedoc Montpeyroux
- Château Fontvert, Luberon
- Campriano, Chianti Colli Senesi
- Candialle, Chianti Classico
- De Muller, Tarragona
Organic wines from Lavinia
Lavinia is one of our favourite wine stores in Paris. Whatever you are looking for, it seems that you find it at Lavinia. If you want, for example, to have a tasting with organic wines, you will find lots of them at Lavinia, at different price levels. At a very reasonable price level I selected these five wines for a tasting of organic wines the other day.
Château Richard, Cuvée Osée, 2010, Bergerac
Grapes are merlot and cabernet franc and no added sulphur. This is a very drinkable wine with generous fruit and lovely freshness. It has much more fruit than your average Bergerac, if it is due to the fact that it has no sulphur, I don’t know. Anyway it is a bargain for 10 €.
Château La Grolet, L´Eglantier, 2009, Côte de Bourg, Bordeaux
I discovered this biodynamic château last year and it has quickly become one of my Bordeaux favourites in the lower price range. Grapes are merlot, cabernet franc and cabernet sauvignon, ripe, but still fresh fruit dominates the nose and the palace. There is structure and also complexity. If you can get a Bordeaux as good as this one for 11, 50 €, why complain about the Bordeaux prices?
Epaulé Jeté 2010, Domaine Breton, Bourgueil
Catherine and Pierre Breton in Bourgueil have been working organically and biodynamically for a long time, although I think they never applied for a certificate. They make superb wines from the star grape of Bourgueil, cabernet franc. People who do not like cabernet franc (sometimes people complain about too much green pepper) should try the wines from Breton. We tasted the cuvée Epaulé Jeté 2010 (with a funny label) at 13,10 €, so fruity and refreshing that you long for another glass.
Domaine Gramenon, Haut-Gramenon, 2007, Côtes-du-Rhône
Michelle Aubery-Laurent at Domaine Gramenon does things as naturally as possible and she has found her own wine style, often based on a lot of grenache. This wine is quite dense, with a lot of flavours and a juicy fruit. 13,45 €
Domaine Borie La Vitarèle 2009 Les Schistes, Saint Chinian
The domain is hidden away in the Saint Chinian mountains, with no neighbours for miles and miles. The owner and winemaker Jean-François Izarn makes powerful, yet elegant wines, with a lot of Languedoc character. The soil is schist in parts of Saint Chinian and here it helps the wine to keep the freshness despite the heat in the summer. 16 €
Cultural vineyards in Burgundy
Just before Christmas we wrote about the applications of Burgundy and Champagne to be the French candidate for the 2012 UNESCO world cultural heritage. The happy winner was announced a few weeks ago and it was Burgundy. Together with the other winner, La Grotte orné Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, with cave paintings that are 35 000 years old, the Côte d’Or of Burgundy will be presented to the UNESCO committee later this year. www.climats-bourgogne.com
Independent Swedish internet wine merchants – a new sales channel for producers?
Internet wine shops can today sell directly to Swedish consumers and bypass the monopoly. The Swedish wine market is dominated by the monopoly retailer, Systembolaget (just like Alko in Finland and Vinmonopolet in Norway).
Since a few years back there are a number of independent internet-based wine merchants selling directly to Swedish consumers. A interesting new channel to market. This new feature of the Swedish wine market comes from an EU-ruling a few years back.
In this article we explain how it works and gives you the list of all the shops (all those that we are aware of): The ultimate list of Swedish internet wine shops, wine clubs, ecommerce sites etc for wine.
Interview with Mas Gabinele in Languedoc (Faugeres)
Found in a dusty corner (on YouTube) a video that we had done quite some time back but that has never been published on BKWine TV on the site. It is an interview with Thierry Rodriguez, a wine négociant that some years back also created his own winery in Faugeres and Saint Chinian. He has in a relatively sort time established himself as a very well-respected producer of ambitious Languedoc wines. His wines are often quite modern in style. Here is the interview, in his vineyard, with Thierry Rodrigues at Mas Gabinele: Mas Gabinele in the Faugeres, Languedoc | BKWine TV
Most read articles in January 2012
Here is the list of the top ten articles for January, i.e. those that had the most readers (in English):
- Wine Tweeting 1: how to get started on Wine Twitter
- 11 wine regions to discover (or rediscover) during 2012
- The 2012 calendar with sexy winemakers launched
- A selection of “grower’s champagne” producers
- Wine tweeting 2: More useful tips on Twitter
- Word of mouth for wine bars in Paris
- The wine shops on the internet, are they all rubbish?
- Reader suggestions for growers’ champagnes
- Food Dictionary – Gastronomic Glossary
- When the vineyard land is more expensive than your apartment
Wine events calendar
Send us an email if you have some event you want on the calendar.
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