The Real Wine Company

Wine allergies

Mark — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:09:06 +0000

Christophe Bousquet

I went to Vinisud with, amongst other things, the aim of getting to the bottom of sulphur allergy in wine. Several friends, customers, family members have complained of this, so I went to find out.

My destination was Christophe Bousquet at Ch. Pech Redon because his ’Les Cades’ Cuvee which we ship is produced from organically grown grapes and made with minimum intervention. His immediate reaction was that it’s unlikely to be a sulphur allergy as most foodstuffs contain sulphur at varying levels, so you’d be allergic to almost any food.

Les Cades grapes are hand-picked, hand-loaded into small bins and taken to the fermentation tanks without the addition of any sulphur - not in the vineyard and not during fermentation. Often SO2 is added at both these stages to avoid oxidation and to stop any rogue yeasts or bacteria getting into the wine. If your grapes are healthy and your winery spotless, then you don’t need SO2.

He adds a smidge of SO2 to the wine in October to stop malo-lactic fermentation, but that’s it. The wine is neither fined nor filtered, just left to settle naturally before bottling, so what you drink is as natural as it gets.

Pech Redon Les Cades has about as little SO2 as any wine and Christophe is proud of that and how clean his wines are, but he does not think people who react badly to certain red wines are reacting to the Sulphur.

So, no answers here, but will keep asking.

www.pech-redon.fr

Vinisud Day 2 - in the sick bay

Mark — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:47:17 +0000

Why the delay in posting Day 2? Well, when you spend the day at Vinisud in the sick bay with delirium and then lose your digital camera’s cable as I did, then it takes a while to catch up again. Anyway a photo of the sick bay is probably not that interesting.

So I lost a day’s tasting but the experience was worthwhile and I do have some great new wines lined up to ship.

Vinisud Day 1 evening

Mark — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:14:39 +0000

After a busy day tasting what do you do in the evening? Taste more wine! This time it’s back at Diane’s Chateau d’Or et de Gueules where we are staying. She has all of her French regional distributors coming round to taste the latest vintages and to share the biggest Paella I’ve ever seen. The 2009 is another superb vintage, of most obvious and immediate note are the roses. The Trassegum Rose is deep, complex and partially oak aged for serious food accompaniment, whilst the Cimels Rose is unoaked and deliberately much lighter in colour this year to highlight the contrast between the two styles.

All I had to do was taste and eat, Diane, on the other hand was non-stop hosting and caught here finding a new bottle to open, but always with a smile no matter how tired she may be.

Vinisud Day 1 afternoon

Mark — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:43:45 +0000

The white wine tasting was as I should have expected; mainly ordinary wines, some good, few exceptional. But I have shortlisted a couple to see tomorrow;
Domaine Ste Rose is a name I have had in the back of my mind for some time, so when fellow Gerrards Cross resident, Mark Bingham, said he had once played drums in the same band as Charles Simpson who owns the Domaine with his wife Ruth, then I just had to call in on them, didn’t I?

Good job I did because as a result I hope to show you some of their wines on our list before long. Their wines come from the Cotes de Thongue (no Thong jokes please - The Thongue is the river running by their Domaine near Pézenas.
Just time for a quick coffee and brushing of blackened teeth before seeing Stéphane Védeau.

We took his Cotes du Rhone Villages 2006 just before Christmas and soon sold out. Now was a chance to taste the follow on vintage from the stellar 2007 harvest. No disappointment here, and also the white 2009 which I had not tasted before was excellent. We ended with a little taste of his 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape which was awarded 96/100 by Robert Parker in US. I may be able to get 12 out of him, and even at 35 quid (no symbol for pound sterling on a french keyboard either!) q bottle I’ll be holding back 6 bottles for myself.

Vinisud 2010 Day 1 morning

Mark — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:51:30 +0000

Vinisud Day 1

Here we go! After the traditional queue of traffic through the roadworks especially timed to coincide with thousands of Wine Trade professionals descending on Montpellier, and scraping the mud off my shoes from the quagmire that is the carpark I had a quick run through six consecutive vintages of Bolida from Ch d’Or et de Gueules - just to loosen the palate you understand! Here is Mathieu, Diane’s husband doing the honours. For me it’s the 2005 which stands out as you might expect from that sublime vintage, and just as well as I have bought good stocks of that vintage.

Now it’ s on to the serious business of tasting my way through over 1000 wines starting with the whites. Will let you know how I get on.

Vinisud 2010 Day Minus 1

Mark — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:52:17 +0000

Vinisud Day Minus1

Back to Montpellier where I came four years ago and discovered Forca Real and Tour Trencavel, but time for a bit of sightseeing before the Fair. Here we are at the Pont Du Gard which is a “must visit” if ever you come here, and out of season like today is perfect because we are pretty much the only ones here.

We also recommend a fantastic restaurant in St Maxim just outside Uzes. It is called La Table de Julien (0466 22 93 24) run by a young couple and you must book a couple of weeks in advance. For my money it is verging on Michelin quaility at a fraction of the price - €29 for a three course set lunch (wine not included)

It’s not just about wine

Mark — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:48:53 +0000

We had a very busy sales period over Christmas, and as a result, now in the relative calm of January we are having to increase our storage capacity. This means making more storage space upwards as we can’t expand outwards. So here’s Charles doing a spot of angle grinding as we install some pallet racking to allow us to go higher.

It’s not just about wine skills in a small business, it’s also about DIY to keep our costs down.

Champagne Guessing Game - the results.

Mark — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:19:17 +0000

Well, we’ve been to check what’s happened since we spotted the obvious contenders for “half price” Champagne. Who had the most bare-faced cheek this year? (so far);

Adsa - Pierre Darcys £23.98, and Francois Rozay £23.98. The Pierre Darcys is down 60% to £10.00

Waitrose - Bredon £20.99 Down 33% to £14.00

Tesco - G.H.Martel & Co £26.97, and Rene Florancy £30.00 Rene Florency down over 50% to £14,25

Sainsburys -Etienne Dumont £27.99 Down 50% to £14.00

So, apart from Asda, they’ve all gone for a curiously consistent full-margin-making £14.

Our Bare-faced Cheek Award probably goes to Tesco for claiming a £30 retail and still going with the £14 flow.

Let’s play a Champagne guessing game…

Mark — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:43:06 +0000

We are about to enter the Christmas promotional period in the supermarkets so I have been round to see if I can spot the Champagnes intended to be “half-priced”; you know - bring in a product, pretend it’s on sale at a high price for a month, then surprise, surprise, it’s at a massive discount for Christmas.

My guesses are these;

Adsa - Pierre Darcys £23.98, and Francois Rozay £23.98
Waitrose - Bredon £20.99
Tesco - G.H.Martel & Co £26.97, and Rene Florancy £30.00
Sainsburys -Etienne Dumont £27.99

My guess is that none of these costs much over £10.00, so let’s wait and see what they end up selling them for. Watch this space and I’ll report back.

A sign of the times…thankfully!

Mark — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:18:27 +0000

As I was sitting down to my first glass of the evening just now (Les Cimels Blanc, as it happens -great wine. If you like Gavi di Gavi try this) to watch Eggheads (6p.m. start) I realised that three years ago when we had just started up the business I was sitting down to watch Countdown at 3.30 p.m. and hoping orders would come in!!!

Three years on and I don’t have time to watch Countdown. Excellent!