Once again the British press is reporting investment wine scams. This is a regular occurrence. Anyone investing in wine or in other commodities or works of art should only do so after they have established the credentials of the company they are dealing with and how they operate.
Some unscrupulous wine traders will take your money without purchasing the wine and keeping it in an honest manner on your behalf. You risk losing both your money and your wine.
There are many honest wine traders who will sell you a wine contract with the genuine intention of settling the wine contract in the future even if they have not actually purchased the wine. This is all well and good if the wine trading company is solvent and competently managed. However, the trader could mismanage the cash flow of his company and go broke; you therefore lose both your money and the wine.
If you borrow money to buy wine with the expectation of making a capital gain and the deal fails, either because you have traded with a cheat or you have traded with an incompetent broker, then you could be hit by a triple "whammy": losing your wine, losing your capital and having to pay interest on the capital which you have lost.
Buyer beware.
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/14454941.Solicitor_facing_jail_over___200_000_fine_wine_con/?commentSort=newest
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4X2ZXXtVrP9Tl0fcdfbtnND/further-information
Friday 29 April 2016
Friday 15 April 2016
Château Arnauton 2011 Bordeaux red versus Château Chasse-Spleen 2010 Bordeaux red
I have been lucky recently to have been able to drink two fine red wines from Bordeaux. The first is from Fronsac - Château Arnauton 2011. This is a fine example of a Libournais wine similar in style to St Emilion. The town of Libourne is situated on the right bank of the Dordogne river.The soil in Fronsac is limestone based and it it well suited to making good wine. Château Arnauton is produced from a Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Côt grapes.
We drank the Château Arnauton 2011 with Bavette steak and the wine is well suited to red meats including beef and lamb. The wine was typical of the region with a very fruity and complex aroma. I could taste vanilla and the typical tobacco box flavour of a Bordeaux red. It was of full body and was well balanced for acidity, tannin and sweetness and of course the wine was dry. The 2011 vintage is now ready for drinking but will keep longer. It is one step up from everyday drinking wine and deserves to be served with a good meal.You can buy this wine for around £10 a bottle in the UK and it is exceptional value for money. If you go to France you will find it a lot cheaper. I recommend it highly.
Château Chasse-Spleen is one of my favourites; it is produced in Moulis-en-Médoc. The wine really is up at another level from the Fronsac. If you want to get an appreciation of what a top Bordeaux wine tastes like without paying an enormous price then try some Château Chasse-Spleen 2010. The wine has all the regional taste of a Bordeaux and more, as it has its own distinctive flavour which marks it out as a special wine in my point of view. It stands out from the Fronsac in being more complex and concentrated with a much longer length on the palate.
The Chasse -Spleen vineyard is situated in the Haut Médoc on the left bank of the Gironde. The soil here is a mixture of limestone marls and clays and gravel. And, of course the soil, weather and climate are perfect for growing the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes which are used to produce this best of wines.
We drank our wine with friends over lunch and we ate lamb. One of our friends is a wine lover who knows his stuff and another of our friends knows nothing about wine but I can always trust him to sniff out something special and he was not disappointed. Both of my friends agreed that this is top wine. My wife agreed too.
The Château Chasse-Spleen 2010 was ready for drinking but it will keep a lot longer. 2010 was a good vintage so it augurs well for the keeping quality of the wine.
My wife was impressed with my selection of wine and I was impressed with her French style preparation and cooking of the lamb. Two of the other ladies present chose to drink white wine so I served them a 2012 Hugel Gewurztraminer from Alsace so they were not left out in the quality stakes.
A bottle of Château Chasse-Spleen 2010 will set you back around £30 in the UK so it is a lot more expensive than the Fronsac Château Arnauton 2011. The Fronsac manages to hold its own however, even if it cannot reach the heights of the Chasse-Spleen.
I don't usually buy wine that costs more than about £18 a bottle and at that only rarely but sometimes it is worth paying a good bit more to treat yourself and your friends for a special occasion which was a belated birthday celebration for me. For this reason the Chasse-Spleen was worth every penny and especially when it can also give a top Bordeaux costing ten times as much a good run for its money. I highly recommend this wine for a special occasion.
Thursday 7 April 2016
Exquisite Champagne from the Aube
A few weeks ago I visited the cellars of Michel Furdyna at Celles-sur-Ource in the Aube with some friends and family. We tasted some special Champagne.
Michel is a grower-maker or a "Récoltant Manipulant" as they say in France, so look for RM on the label.
The Furdyna family farm about 8 hectares of vineyards in the rolling hills surrounding Celles-sur -Ource which is situated close to Bar-sur-Seine. In the southern area of the Champagne region, the Aube, the soil and climate are much more similar to the nearby Tonnerre and Chablis areas of northern Burgundy than they are to the north of the region near Reims. In the Aube, the geology is limestone based and Kimmeridgian based soils dominate the topography. You can easily notice the difference between the Champagne of the Aube and the Champagne from the chalk based soils further to the north of the region. This is not to say that Champagne from the the Aube is in anyway inferior. Many Négociants in Reims and Epernay blend Champagne from the Aube into their house brands. So most Champagne lovers will have drunk Champagne from the Aube even if they have never heard of the district.
Michel does not restrict himself to growing the three Champagne noble grapes - Pinor Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay but he also grows Pinot Gris. He has parcels of land dedicated to the local grape varieties Arbane, Petit Meslier and Pinot Droit. These latter grape varieties have all but disappeared in the Champagne region. It is interesting that Petit Meslier grapes are grown in the Eden Valley wine district of South Australia.
The Pinot Gris and local varieties of grapes contribute to the unique style of the Furdyna Champagne. The wines are so good that I can still taste them in my olfactory memory. Quite often you can identify the wines of a specific area within a region such as Chablis, the Medoc,or Epernay. All good wine should have a specific taste. It is not often however, that a wine really has a taste of its own which stands out from its neighbours. Michel Furdyna's wine stands out in a class of its own. This is due in part to the use of the Pinot Gris grape and the local varieties.
Michel's wine is produced with the most modern techniques without forgetting the strengths of tradition. Whilst he uses an auto-riddling machine for most of his wines, his Prestige Cuvée is riddled by hand.
His love of wine is reflected in the quality of his vine growing techniques and his production of the finest Champagne that money can buy.
Visiting his cellars was a memorable experience and I could not leave with buying a couple of cases of some of the best Champagne that I have ever tasted and at a reasonable price: what more could I ask for?
Michel is a grower-maker or a "Récoltant Manipulant" as they say in France, so look for RM on the label.
The Furdyna family farm about 8 hectares of vineyards in the rolling hills surrounding Celles-sur -Ource which is situated close to Bar-sur-Seine. In the southern area of the Champagne region, the Aube, the soil and climate are much more similar to the nearby Tonnerre and Chablis areas of northern Burgundy than they are to the north of the region near Reims. In the Aube, the geology is limestone based and Kimmeridgian based soils dominate the topography. You can easily notice the difference between the Champagne of the Aube and the Champagne from the chalk based soils further to the north of the region. This is not to say that Champagne from the the Aube is in anyway inferior. Many Négociants in Reims and Epernay blend Champagne from the Aube into their house brands. So most Champagne lovers will have drunk Champagne from the Aube even if they have never heard of the district.
Michel does not restrict himself to growing the three Champagne noble grapes - Pinor Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay but he also grows Pinot Gris. He has parcels of land dedicated to the local grape varieties Arbane, Petit Meslier and Pinot Droit. These latter grape varieties have all but disappeared in the Champagne region. It is interesting that Petit Meslier grapes are grown in the Eden Valley wine district of South Australia.
The Pinot Gris and local varieties of grapes contribute to the unique style of the Furdyna Champagne. The wines are so good that I can still taste them in my olfactory memory. Quite often you can identify the wines of a specific area within a region such as Chablis, the Medoc,or Epernay. All good wine should have a specific taste. It is not often however, that a wine really has a taste of its own which stands out from its neighbours. Michel Furdyna's wine stands out in a class of its own. This is due in part to the use of the Pinot Gris grape and the local varieties.
Michel's wine is produced with the most modern techniques without forgetting the strengths of tradition. Whilst he uses an auto-riddling machine for most of his wines, his Prestige Cuvée is riddled by hand.
His love of wine is reflected in the quality of his vine growing techniques and his production of the finest Champagne that money can buy.
Visiting his cellars was a memorable experience and I could not leave with buying a couple of cases of some of the best Champagne that I have ever tasted and at a reasonable price: what more could I ask for?
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