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!

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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 fish where the only preparation involved bashing it on the floor a couple of times.
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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.





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“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.

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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 please the local palates, with minor tweaking of course!




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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 from the Old World and 14 from the New.

 

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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 the East Asian market buys expensive wine - in fact it has been a bumper year for top labels such as Lafite, now selling for a record breaking $24'500 USD for a case of 12 bottles - but who is buying this, and what will happen to the wines once customers take possession two years from now?

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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 pleasure, which is what I do for my own cellar.   Here is what I selected.

 

Chateau Rollan de By, Medoc

This is a superb estate right in the north of the Medoc, where the gravelly soils match those of the more famous appellations in Pauillac and Margaux.  The wines are classy and polished and very modern in style.

 

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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 you ask a teetotaller to name a wine-producing region, in all likelihood Bordeaux will be in the top two. The other, in case you are wondering, is Champagne.

 

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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 finance the year up to and after the vintage to come. 

 

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