Postscript: On May 11, 2020 Jean-Michel Comme resigned his position at Pontet-Canet, saying the pressure of the job had become unbearable. In our interview, he spoke openly and honestly about that incredible stress and the emotional toll of managing an estate with first growth expectations. It was an incredible interview for me. I wish Jean-Michel…
Tag: France
A little Green with your Bordeaux? Château de La Dauphine’s Green Wine Tour
Perched on a rolling hill above the winding Dordogne River, Château de La Dauphine is one of the most visually stunning properties in Bordeaux. I first eyed this peaceful right bank beauty last year, as we drove westbound into Bordeaux along D670, the highway framing the south Fronsac appellation. It was my first trip to…
Eco-Savvy Château de Chantegrive: Trailblazing Bordeaux Vineyards are Rolling out Green Wine Tours
For me, the really juicy story swirling around the food and beverage category – and indeed just about every retail category – is the changing values of customers. Many consumers now rank a company’s environmental record higher on their list of “purchase considerations”. Seminal research is indicating this ‘sustainability mindset’ is a marketing game-changer. Some…
A Second French Revolution: Château Guiraud’s Sweet Eco Manifesto
Xavier Planty and his son Luc Planty may not be direct descendants of the 16th century owners of Château Guiraud in Sauternes, but they definitely inherited their revolutionary spirit. In fact, if there’s one word that best describes the wine business modus operandi of the Planty family, it’s rebellious. Which is exactly how one might…
Going Going Green: The Noble Winemaking Efforts of Bordeaux’s Domaine de Chevalier
It’s a bright, refreshingly cool morning in the vineyards of Domaine de Chevalier in Pessac-Léognan when the gravel soil of the namesake Graves region really starts to make its presence known. I’m in minute four of a low-level, half-squat, half-kneel position wrestling with an unbelievably prodigious Sauvignon Blanc vine. The current challenge: to wedge my…
Digging into Bordeaux’s Green Movement
I’m back from Bordeaux. Yes, again. How many visits to Bordeaux in a year constitute an addiction? No need to answer; it’s a rhetorical question. But for the record, I’m up to three. Some of my friends are calling me a wannabe Bordelaise. I am happy to report that’s true. Disclosures aside, the focus of…
Tasting the 2018 Bordeaux Futures: a palate-expanding experience
Tasting red wine en primeur is not for the faint of heart or faint of palate. Wine tasters participating in Bordeaux’s annual spring “futures” marathon go long and go hard. They must push themselves physically and mentally. Tasting schedules can be gruelling, demanding ~14 days of heavy lifting and one hundred plus Grands Crus Classé…
The Future of Futures: An En Primeur Newbie’s Wine Week in Bordeaux
Sometimes, the wine gods smile down on us from on high and good things happen. In my case, that good thing was news that my wine blog post on social media adoption in Bordeaux had been awarded the wine and technology top prize in the 2019 Millésima blog awards. It was paragraph two of…
Bordeaux’s Château de Reignac: a Case Study in Risk and Reward – PART 2
In a region with over 7,000 chateaux, it’s hard to find an estate offering a truly unique selling proposition. Quality is the attribute most Bordeaux producers hang their hat on. But how are you going to convince audiences of your quality when all 7,000 of your competitors are making the same claim? You start by…
Bordeaux’s Château de Reignac: a Case Study in Risk and Reward
If you’re of a certain vintage – or a student of advertising – you may be familiar with the seminal 1962 advertising campaign for Avis. The car rental company summed up their ‘customer promise’ in the pithy advertising tagline “We Try Harder”. Of course, consumers everywhere wondered try harder than whom? Without saying as much,…
Château Margaux in the Digital Age: There’s no Looking Back
Many years ago, before I started studying wine, I had an opportunity to drink a Château Margaux at an advertising client lunch. I declined, because I knew my associates would expect me to say something pithy about the wine, and the weight of that expectation was crippling. I could describe the colour, but after that,…
Bordeaux’s Château Cos d’Estournel: A Digital Future Guided by the Past
“Is the wine as good as the architecture?” asked my professor-of-architecture friend when I sent him a photo of Bordeaux’s Château Cos d’Estournel. “And then some!” I say, as I attempt to absorb a lecture on “Saracenic style” – a mix of Indian, Islamic and classical architecture, a result of the British colonization of…
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