This weekend, wine-tasting in pitch darkness. A First in the Gironde region.

“Open your sensory receptors and prepare to be surprised.” For an experience unique in the Gironde, Langon invites you to discover the “wines of light.” After racking their brains to come up with the latest novelty, the organisers of the 25th Wine and Cheese Festival, which takes place on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of September in Langon, have taken up challenge of arousing curiosity by inviting the general public to a wine tasting in pitch darkness. The method is inspired by an experiment tried out at the Restaurant Français in Paris, where customers agreed to participate in a gourmet tasting experience while at the same time discovering the sensory world of the visually handicapped.

Light and darkness.

“By depriving yourself of sight, you unconsciously develop the other senses, like smell and taste,” explains Émeline Delong. This young wine grower from Caudrot is also a speaker at the Beauséjour training centre in Gironde-sur-Dropt, and regularly gives wine tasting sessions for both the trainee public and people employed in the wine business. “I would like to make people feel more relaxed about wine tasting. Some people have very complicated ideas about wine. I am here to break all that down. The idea is to create a situation in which people are comfortable enough to want to express themselves.” Why not try “Wines of Light”, a concept which recreates totally different tasting conditions? A place plunged into darkness has been specially prepared as part of the Wine and Cheese Festival which for many years has been developing methods of learning about wine. “When you are talking about tasting with your eyes closed, you are playing with the nuances and contrasts between light and dark. The idea is to wake up all our senses.”

The wines of Saint-Macaire

Finally, the selection of a range of dry white wines, mellow and noble rot sweet wines appears to be the best adapted to perfect the exercise. “This is the only appellation (territory) in the Gironde which produces the whole range, and wine producers of the ODG (Organisation of Defence and Management) of the Côtes de Bordeaux-Saint-Macaire need only cross the Garonne river to get to Langon”, explains a delighted Thierry Bos, president of the appellation.

Any tasting, whether here or anywhere else, is always a question of comparing flavours, aromas and balance, and then using the terminology to describe the experience. Conviviality is always ‘de rigueur’. But there is no doubt that the “wines of light” are going to create a surprise.

Basically, if there were one good reason to try out this experiment, Emeline Delong sums it up in a few words: “In the dark, there are no longer any tricks. You can get right to the heart of things, awaken all your senses and above all you can’t rely on appearances. Quite frankly, certain preconceptions may well be discarded…” All you need do now is to come and try it out.

Tastings Friday and Saturday only. Places limited. For all information, tel. 06 80 20 32 25 or email :  synd.bxstmacaire at orange.fr

Author:Pierre Lascourrèges

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Author:Jean-Charles Galiacy

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STRATEGY : Victim of a serious drop in sales and weighed down by a tarnished image, the vineyard is fighting back with the launch of the “Bordeaux tomorrow” project - the result of a year’s research and reflexion, with its 24 strategic measures at the ready.
Georges Haushalter (merchant), head of the interprofession for three years, is Bordeaux’s new strong man.

Fans of economic recovery plans for sectors in difficulty, involving correspondingly spectacular measures and financial adjustments, will be satisfied. “Bordeaux tomorrow”, the strategic action plan unveiled in the middle of summer, is rather an in-depth document of 130 pages, presenting a strategic, medium and long term road plan, with goals to reach by five to eight years. It lists, without any big surprises nor ready-made recipes, the transformations necessary to get back on track.

“We are starting off with group work sessions to establish the practical details for the implementation of the 24 measures announced. We must move quickly and, as soon as the inter-professional wine council’s 2011 budget comes out, the plan’s financing will be defined”, explains Georges Haushalter. Since 2002, Haushalter has been managing director of the “Compagnie Médocaine des grand crus” based in Blanquefort. He has also been President of the Inter-professional Council of Bordeaux Wine for the past three years.

“But this is not just the CIVB’s plan and that fact is its main asset. All the components in the industry, not merely general syndicalism and cooperation, but also local authorities, public administrations and banking sectors have taken part in its development. It is everybody’s widely consulted road map,” confirms Bordeaux’s new strong man.

And there is a vast amount of work to be done. Indeed, the whole vineyard went completely off track in 2009, following the serious world financial crisis, which in the end only served to highlight the well-known structural weaknesses in the Bordeaux region. One particular weakness being Bordeaux’s lack of competitiveness in the basic wines market (retailing from 2 euros per bottle) which makes up almost 20% of total sales!

Far from the much appreciated grands crus, Bordeaux is also a “bulk factory.” It still appears that, despite the accreditation reforms set up three years ago, a number of wines are simply not up to quality. The plan reacts to this by recommending a measure loaded with meaning: “the suppression of products whose level of quality is not coherent with the brand image.”

“We deplore the fact that the Bordeaux brand has been somewhat tainted in recent years . It no longer plays a benchmark role, either in terms of quality standards, or on the value-for-money front,” the report reads. This is a harsh observation proved by statistics: in 2009, sales dropped under the 5 million hectolitres mark, although on average the Gironde region produces 6 every year! Export volumes fell back to the level they were at twenty years ago. This is worrying food for thought.

Organising the bulk market

The most urgent challenge is therefore to organise the bulk market. This is the “reactor core” or driving force of the vineyard and concerns transactions carried out between wine growers (individual or cooperatives) and merchants ; the latter packaging the wines and selling them to big chain stores and the hotel/restaurant trade.

The market prices of this raw material have been falling for months, and the cooperatives in particular, making up a quarter of the Department’s production capacity, are in trouble. The plan aims to push them into merging, although the practical details are not yet complete. Another of the plan’s urgent measures is a tightened quality control on operators practising abnormally low prices. Despite the free market context, the plan aims to put pressure on the industry by checking that the wine concerned is up to standard.

Consequently, the audits on concerns in difficulty will be intensified (as has already been the case for years) and everything will be done to develop the practise of the buying grapes : rather than making poor wine, it is better to sell the grapes. This is not common practise in the Bordeaux region, contrary to the Alsace or Champagne vineyards for example.

Winning back the hotel–restaurant trade

So the general movement is towards a definitive reduction of the number of contributors in an industry which, in order to succeed, must become more professional. The objective is to sell 6.3 million hectolitres of wine annually by five to eight years, and to increase the turnover to 4.6 billion euros from today’s 3.3. This is to be achieved through a general quality improvement of those wines proposed to customers.

In fact “Bordeaux tomorrow” dissects the offer into four segments each with different targets. At the foot of the pyramid, the “ordinary wine”, with its not very promising future. Then comes the “fun wine” at 2 to 6 €, followed by the “exploration wine” at 6 to 20 €, and, at the top, the “fine wine” which proposes the most prestigious crus. This is a fundamental niche, and one which must be developed to ensure the vineyard’s future.

Promotional budgets, including more than 20 million euros for the CIVB, will therefore be granted, based on better defined priorities. The hotel and restaurant trade - the poor relation of recent marketing strategies – is in reality a fragmented market and so difficult to work, will become a priority sector once again.

This plan – the previous one dates back to 2004 – must be put into action within three years.

Author:Cesar.Compadre

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Welcoming the general public to the château throughout the year is a very demanding job.
Tour de France Time Trial on 24th July. Photo maxppp

“Things are moving, but there is still so much to do to make the Chateaux Route come alive…I would welcome a little more enthusiasm, but you simply cannot run wine tourism based on Monday to Friday office hours with holiday closures…” For six years Marc Verpaalen has been in charge of reception activities at Châteaux Giscours and Le Tertre, two crus classés which represent almost 200 hectares, owned by the Dutchman Eric Albada.

This Margaux ensemble, open 7 days a week, reduced to 6 days during the winter, one of the Bordeaux heavyweights involved in these new activities linking wine, tourism – and sometimes cuisine – like the Village of Bages (Pauillac), ‘Les Sources de Caudalie’ or the Bernard Magrez group in the Graves region. Château Giscours, which also has a guesthouse, hosts a great many activities throughout the year : from weddings to individual visits for 7 € per person, from conferences such as a dinner for 1,500 lawyers to professional seminars. “These activities create rapid spin-offs via wine sales but also, in time, win many ambassadors over to our cause. It’s impossible to estimate the figures generated, but the activity is viable with a full-time staff of 10; and this 2010 season is a good one”, continues our specialist, who believes in the future spin-offs following the passage of the Tour de France on July 14th, with over one billion viewers glued to the pictures of the pack along the narrow chateau-lined D2.

Off-season work as well

But outside spring, with its Médoc Open Doors in April, or summer, events must also be created which will sustain activity off-season. This is, for example, the idea behind Margaux Saveurs (see below), with Margaux town councillor Serge Fourton as the key man behind the event.

“A great many chateaux are opening up to the general public – or would like to be – but many don’t know where to start. Ideas are evolving thanks to the new generation of wine growers and we are working as a network with Saint-Julien, Pauillac and Saint-Estephe,” our spokesman explains. With the drop in sales of many wines, hitting the accelerator could certainly help the industry out ; this time in response to a very real need for development.

Author:Cesar.Compadre

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The start-up, Vinoreco has launched an interactive wine terminal to help guide wine buyers in supermarkets.
Yann Mondon (left) et Stéphane Hareng on either side of the terminal. photo dr

A new kind of interactive wine terminal has gone into service in the Carrefour hypermarkets of Vénissieux and Ecully in the Rhone region. The aim of this terminal, named Max, is to guide buyers along the wine shelves of hypermarkets and supermarkets. It has been developed by the Bordeaux firm Vinoreco, started up this year by Yann Mondon, Stéphane Hareng and Luc Guilmin.

Read : Full Article…….

Author:Bernard.Broustet

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Bordeaux will take part in the 2010 World Expo at the French Pavilion in September.

60 000 people are expected to visit the French Pavilioneach day.

Eighteen months ago the French company for Shanghai World Expo solicited the participation of Bordeaux city council because of the city’s work with Agora, an event dedicated to architecture, town-planning and design. Bordeaux’s exhibition at the World Expo will be based upon Agora 2010. But most of all, it will meet the requirements of the Expo’s central topic: « Better city, better life ».

Read :Full Article….

Author:Laurence.Gallois

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Visiting Colmar after the trashing of a GMO trial ground established by INRA (National Institute for Agronomic Research), Bruno Le Maire and Valérie Pécresse confirm their intention to resume the experiments.

Valérie Pécresse, Research Minister, and Bruno Le Maire, Agriculture Minister, yesterday surveyed the GM grapevines located near Colmar which were vandalized on the 15th August. Photo AFP FREDERICK FLORIN)

“We will make the required financial means available to INRA so it can resume its research,” declared Bruno Le Maire, Agriculture Minister, accompanied by Valérie Pécresse, his colleague in charge of research. They wanted to make a strong political gesture yesterday by visiting Colmar in the Upper-Rhine region for their first field trip after the holidays.

Here, in a centre belonging to the National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA), at dawn on the 15th August a group of about sixty “ crop saboteurs” destroyed the only trial carried out in France with genetically modified graft stocks. This trial vineyard contained a total of 70 vines and was an attempt to put a stop to the spread of the Grapevine Fan-leaf virus, known in French as ‘court-noué’.
link : Full Article …..

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SUDOUEST EXCLUSIVE

CIVB, the trade and marketing inter-professional wine board, is setting up a database of chateaux and brands. It will be available for consultation as from this Autumn both on the Internet and iPhone, then on all smartphones.

Christophe Chateau has been piloting the operation, in which 9,000 wine-estates are taking part.

The scene takes place in October 2010 in the wine department of a store in Tokyo, Lyon or New York. A lover of Bordeaux wine hesitates between several bottles. Want to know more? He needs only to wave his iPhone in front of the label, the barcodes or a 2D counter-label code. Basic information in text and pictures about the chateau or the brand in question now appears on the screen of his smartphone. These include the owner, grape varieties, ‘terroir’(soils and micro-climate), medals, and suggested food pairings.

The same information will also be available on a website. In this way Bordeaux is revitalizing its image. “With Bordeaux previously being perceived as complicated and out of touch, we have been looking for a clearer way to show that it’s no longer old-fashioned,” explains Christophe Chateau who has been piloting this operation from the public relations department of the Inter-professional Council of Bordeaux Wine (CIVB). “We are the first appellation to launch an iPhone App”, he adds.

A wine producer’s ideaVotre navigateur ne gère peut-être pas l’affichage de cette image.

The project has been christened “Smart”. Smart is synonymous with clever. And the Smartphone market, made up of these Internet-linked mobile phones, as driven by Apple’s iPhone, is expanding rapidly. Whether they are living in Toulouse, London, San Francisco or Beijing, the social and occupational class of business executives from 25 to 45 years’ old, can no longer do without this hi-tech tool.

Not long ago, the Franprix and Carrefour supermarket chains carried out an iPhone App.test with a reduced catalogue. Noticing their initiative, a Saint-Emilion wine producer suggested it to the CIVB. In June, the board gave its go-ahead for the “Smart” project.

Although initiated by a professional body, it is both the producers themselves and the merchants who are the project’s main operators. This Summer, an initial list of chateaux and brands was established, in collaboration with the federation of the fine wines syndicates and the traders federation. For technical support, the CIVB has called on the firms CIS Valley (Bruges) and Kasual (Bordeaux).

Starting at the end of this week, 9,000 operators (independent wine producers, dealers, cooperatives, distributors…) will receive a letter from the CIVB containing a name and a password. They will be invited to connect to the Internet website, www.bordeauxprof.com in order to check out and complete the information which concerns them.

The chateau in detail

The CIVB’s “smart” iPhone App. deals with the name or names of the chateaux, the grape varieties, the nature of the soil, the microclimate, the harvesting method (manual or mechanical) and ageing methods. It also features medals awarded and point scores obtained during competitions and in guides by critics such as Robert Parker. Then there is practical information about the best year for opening, food pairings, how to get to the chateau and finally, scientific details like, for example, the presence of albumin.

The iPresentation can be almost infinitely drawn out with photos of the estates, vineyards and vines, video clips, a link with the chateau’s website if it exists, public opening hours, possible wine-oriented tourist activities, etc. According to the CIVB, you only need ten minutes to check out and fill in each form, which should encourage professionals to swiftly complete their entry, preferably before the end of September.

Wine producers, merchants and cooperatives will be able to regularly edit and modify their own space. Of course, “moderators” from the inter-profession will be checking out the authenticity of the information provided.

Ultimately, CIVB’s “Smart” will result in a gigantic database about Bordeaux fine wines. As from October (the wine fair season), it will be accessible to the general public in both French and English on the Internet  www.bordeaux.com) and in iPhone App. Access for users of BlackBerry and of The Droid Incredible, Google Nexus One, and other Android-based Smartphones (Samsung, HTC,….) will be available by 2011. Before that, just before the Christmas holidays, the “smart” App. will be available in Spanish and Chinese versions.

Author:Michel.Monteil

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