If you’d like to help support Australia’s recovery from the bushfires, consider lifting a glass of Aussie’s finest. Like so many local businesses, Australia’s wine producers have felt the impact of the devastating bushfires and many top producers will not be making wine in 2020. While research suggests only 1% of total vineyard area suffered…
Tag: travel
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Bordeaux Breakdown: Do the Big Châteaux have Social Savvy?
You’re a prestigious, classified château in Bordeaux and you sell 90% of your wine without lifting a marketing finger (en primeur, anyone?). So why would a region with centuries old traditions embrace social media platforms? As it happens, the itinerary for my inaugural trip to Bordeaux was decided by a Twitter post exploring that very…
Culmina Family Estate Winery: The Triggs of the Trade
I don’t think it would be a stretch to describe Culmina’s Sales and Marketing Manager, Sara Triggs as a tour de force. Like Gordon Fitzpatrick who you met in my last post – Sara is a second-generation winemaker, and like Gordon, a descendant of Canadian winemaking royalty. Sara’s parents are Don and Elaine Triggs (see…
Second Generation Winemaking Families: Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards Sparkle
Kiefer Sutherland, Kate Hudson, Angelina Jolie, Rashida Jones…….Sara Triggs? Gordon Fitzpatrick? What do they have in common? Some serious star power and a lot of familial fame. In the next two posts, you’ll meet the sons and daughters of industry legends who have stepped out of their parent’s shadows to carry on a family tradition….
CheckMate: Anthony von Mandl’s Master Class in Terroir Curation
Checkmate Artisanal Winery: 4799 Wild Rose Street, Oliver, Okanagan Valley, BC CheckMate doesn’t boast a high-end, architecturally inspiring winery – yet. What it has, instead, is a chessboard of ten, site-specific, small-lot vineyards in the southern region of the Okanagan Valley that provide a fabulously distinct range of Chardonnay and Merlot fruit. If you are a…
Anthony von Mandl’s Kelowna Triple Threat: Mission Hill, Cedar Creek & Martin’s Lane Wineries
If you live inside (or outside) of Canada there’s a good chance you have limited experience with the full breadth of Canadian wine…and by limited I mean not much at all! Protectionist provincial politics, byzantine interprovincial shipping laws, and the generally glacial pace of change in industry regulations mean we have an utter dearth of…
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