Blog Entries

Looking back, and peering ahead

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:28:03 +0100

There is something about the Yuletide spirit that makes me want to call in sick at my AAA and maybe even buy a gift for my parole officer. Maybe you can tell me why, but the inmates at this facility don’t seem to quite understand me.

Off all my vices, I list forgetfulness as highly problematic. It doesn’t help when conversation veers towards old vintages of Bordeaux wines and I find myself fumbling for my phone to see if I have my notes there, or else to crank up [...]

Very Old Burgundies

akash@envigo.co.uk — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:51:57 +0100

The invitation read: “I’ve got a lot of old Burgundies and don’t know whether they are still drinkable, so can you come to dinner and we will see”. This was from Roy Richards, partner in Richards Walford, one of the key importers and wholesalers of wine in the UK, dealing only in the best family-owned estates, where wines are still hand-made in a manner that pleases the owner.

I first met Roy [...]

The true art of Sommellerie

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:30:00 +0100

Recently a lot of tripe has been published about sommeliers and their irrepressible habit to upsell wine just so to maximise profits. This question has been asked of me very often recently, so I think it is time someone addressed it. Not just to justify the stance or the situation of this metier in India but also to try and wipe out the ignorance that persists on the subject.

Sommellerie is an art. It is NOT about, to put it simply, selling wines. It is about serving the wine, the rig [...]

A Milestone Birthday with Wine

akash@envigo.co.uk — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:30:00 +0100

In early October I turned 70, and this milestone birthday was the subject of three celebrations, one in Singapore, and two at our home in Dorset. They could not have been better and provided great compensation for being born in such a rotten year.

The first celebration was organised prebirthday by Australian Michael Hill-Smith, MW in late September in Singapore at the time of our and Hong Kong–based Jeannie Cho Lee, MW’s visit as wine consultants for Singapore Airlines. < [...]

Bordeaux First-Day First-Show

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:30:00 +0100

There is a certain pleasure to be derived from being the first to taste it. A certain sense of privilege and premium attached to the notion of having experienced what others haven’t been able to reach yet. This is exactly the kind of high that lies in store for anybody at the Bordeaux en primeur tastings.

Imagine, the one wine region which is more spoken about than any other region singularly. Now imagine the best of the winemakers in this region. They receive a demand for [...]

Bordeaux 2010 An Embarrassingly Good Vintage

akash@envigo.co.uk — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:30:00 +0100

Having had the quote “the best vintage of my lifetime” splashed across the cover of last June’s Decanter Magazine, I agree with this title from Bill Blatch’s highly regarded Vintage Report and I am happy that most of the chateaux owners are of the same opinion. While none of them committed themselves in the weeks preceding the early April tastings to saying which they preferred, during the week itself the general agreement was that 2010 was more &ldqu [...]

2010 Bordeaux - Patchwork Genius

piyush.gadkari@gmail.com — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:30:00 +0100

The 2010 vintage is a problem. It is brilliant – radically different to the superb 2009, but just as brilliant.

As a merchant to have so fine a vintage come directly off the back of a year like 2009, billed as the finest in a century, is a problem – ‘an embarrassingly good vintage’ to quote Bordeaux expert Bill Blatch.

But the 2010 vintage is not only brilliant, it is also fascinating, diverse, difficult, moody and utterly wonderful. If 2009 [...]

My Southern Burgundy Masterclass

akash@envigo.co.uk — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0100

This October, I headed up a wine tour under the title Master Class in Southern Burgundy.

First stop was L’Hameau du Vin in Villefranche-sur-Saone, Georges Duboeuf’s magnificent creation that can rival any wine museum in the world, with its stunning collection of artifacts and the dedication to explaining this historic and under-valued region.

Wine lovers who miss out on the exceptional 2009s, described by Duboeuf himself as “the vintage of a lifetim [...]

Quad Bikes and Crystal Decanters: Opposites Attract in Harvest Time France

piyush.gadkari@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0100

By Myles Mayall

The décor in the country home of the Bouard de Laforest family is a genteel 1930’s blend of bright, angular art deco period paintings, white stone Victorian fireplaces, and colourful shagpile rugs. Modern necessities, like cordless house-phones are tucked discreetly away behind miniature spaniel-shaped statues, and everything is brightly illuminated by sunlight streaming through massive, 19th Century bay windows. It’s a breezily elegant place, perfec [...]

Sons of the Soil

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:00:00 +0100

They say kids take on the traits of their parents. Apart from the resembling nose, eye or jawline, they also seem to get infused with their habits, their mannerisms and general way of life. Wines aren’t too different in that sense. They are very representative of the grape that they come from (lineage) and reflect a strong sense of the place where they are grown (background). Further, they can be interpreted in a hundred different ways and are complex (like women!).

&n [...]

Argentina: Not just Malbec country

akash@envigo.co.uk — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:00:00 +0100

I was in Argentina in early October, along with the Decanter team to wave the flag for the Decanter World Wine Awards that I wrote about last month and to congratulate the wine producers for getting 4 International Trophies – the same as the whole of France!

Argentina as a wine country is the world’s 5th largest wine producer, the 7th largest wine exporter, the 8th largest wine consumer (8 gallons per capita) and with 228,575 hectares, the 9th in cultivated s [...]

Why everything might soon taste like Bordeaux

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:00:00 +0100

I remember trying a salmon Carpaccio for the first time. Even before the dish arrived, I was trying to ascertain what exactly it could be about thin strips of raw fish with some oil on top that could have others around me so eagerly salivating. The dish came and sure enough it didn’t quite do it for me. The taste was bland, fishy, salty and far from anything that I perceived as delicious. Nobody, I thought, in their right mind would ever pay any amount - no matter how small - to eat [...]

France 2.0: How France has reinvented itself

piyush.gadkari@gmail.com — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Last week the results of the Decanter World Wine Awards were published – with rather an interesting twist: surprisingly it is New World countries that dominate the higher price categories, and clear winner in the lower categories not Australia, or Chile (countries famous for producing reliable value-for-money wines) but France!

‘Sacré Bleu!’ might the French say.

Fine; I have never heard a French person actually utter this marvellous phrase, [...]

The Art of Giving

piyush.gadkari@gmail.com — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0100

“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself”, so said Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosophically putting suffering and self-denial over material pleasures. Some may interpret the saying at a slightly different level, that a gift should represent the giver, a little piece of themselves. Either way you read it, most people would admit that there’s nothing better than to receive a well thought through gift, something useful, or which may just give plain hedonistic pleasure.

< [...]

The New Eastern Wave

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0100

From call centres to construction, nuclear presence to new industries, India and China are the closest contenders for future world powers. While that may take some time, a more local war being fought is between Indian and Chinese restaurants to woo the local diner.

And China seems to have the hold as there just aren’t as many Indian restaurants in the Pan-Asian belt as we can find right here in our homeland. Chinese cuisine finds wide acceptance and always manages to pleas [...]

The Judgement of London - The Decanter World Wine Awards

akash@envigo.co.uk — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0100

On September 1st at London’s Royal Opera House, Decanter held the Presentation Dinner for the Decanter World Wine Awards. From 4,500 entries in the 2004, exactly 10,983 wines were judged this year, making the DWWA the largest wine competition on the planet. 66% received a Commended, Bronze or Silver Medal and 208 (2%) a Gold, 99 Regional Trophies selected only from wines that have already won a Gold, and 28 International Trophies selected from these, with 14 f [...]

When to drink your Bordeaux

piyush.gadkari@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Is it rude to ask how old you are?

The East Asian market has already spent somewhere upwards of $700 million on Bordeaux futures from the 2009 vintage. But it's the trend, not the volume that is raising eyebrows in the fine wine engine rooms of Bordeaux, Hong Kong and London. Farr Vintners, a top global fine wine merchant, released its figures for the 2009 En Primeur (futures) campaign citing 15% by volume sold to East Asia, and yet 40% by value.

So t [...]

Twelve of the best

akash@envigo.co.uk — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:00:00 +0100

When choosing the wines for the WSI offer, it was natural to choose those that I had particularly liked during the “en primeur” tastings, wines that had not only impressed me for their intrinsic quality, but what had also stood out amongst their peers. In making the selection there were, of course, some choices and I tended to choose the wines that represented for me the best value for money as well as the best value for [...]

The Tale of Bordeaux

harsh@envigo.co.uk — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +0100

We all have heard how Bordeaux is to wines what Lucknow is to kebabs, and Hyderabad is to Biryanis. The region is always in the news, for good reasons or otherwise, and with every sip taken or spat, the popularity and notoriety of this region only grows.

I strongly believe that nothing builds a brand better than measured conspiracies and monitored rumours, and in that sense, the plethora of writers and reporters have unwittingly elevated Bordeaux, so much so that today, if y [...]

Why it pays to buy En Primeur

akash@envigo.co.uk — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Buying “en primeur” is buying forward, buying wines when they are first on the market, but before they are bottled and will be sold for general commercialisation.

This is a practice that dates back to the 1960s, when the estates who produced Bordeaux wines, known as “chateaux”, began to offer their wines to the powerful wine merchants in the City of Bordeaux in the spring following the vintage, for they needed the money to pay the back bills and to fi [...]