by Richard Woodard – Port producers in the Douro Valley expect yields to be down this year after being hit by hail, and extreme heat, in the past two months.
After an unusually hot May and a cool early June, temperatures soared into the low 40s Celsius during the last weekend of the month, inflicting the worst sunburn in living memory on the vineyards.
Writing in his Graham’s Port blog, Symington Family Estates viticulturist Miles Edlmann said the heat particularly affected the Vilariça Valley, which had also been damaged by hail earlier in the month.
Auch im Jahr 1 nach dem VDP Jubiläum möchten wir weiterhin Aktionen etablieren und unterstützen, die den Traubenadler in das Bewusstsein der Weinkunden rücken.
Vom 3. bis 17. September 2011 rufen wir zum zweiten Mal die VDP Weinwochen im gesamten Bundesgebiet aus. Damit unterstützen wir ganz gezielt Sie, die Fachhändler und Gastronomen, die sich täglich für Deutsche Spitzenweine einsetzen.
by Richard Woodard – A 200-year-old bottle of Château d’Yquem has been sold for £75,000, becoming the most expensive bottle of white wine in the world.
French collector and restaurateur Christian Vanneque bought the record-breaking 1811 Sauternes from The Antique Wine Company at London’s Ritz Hotel and will put it on display – behind bullet-proof glass – at his new restaurant, Sip Sunset Grill, in Bali, Indonesia.
The former head sommelier at La Tour d’Argent in Paris said he fully intended to open and drink the wine, telling BBC News: ‘I call it my “petite folie”. Petite folie is a little craziness, something you buy furtively like this, which is expensive of course, but you buy it for you.’
Stephen Williams, managing director of The Antique Wine Company, said the wine was part of a cellar bought from a European client four years ago, and was put on the market after being verified at Chateau d’Yquem.
Ten barrels of 1811 Yquem were made – about 3,000 bottles – most of it exported to Russia, he added, but there are now only 10 confirmed bottles left in existence.
‘I always have a tear in my eye when I sell a bottle like this,’ Williams said, ‘but it’s some consolation when you know it’s going to a good home.’
The 1811 vintage is renowned as the most famous of the ‘Comet vintages’
Weintourismus am Kap – Südafrika setzt neue Akzente
Südafrikas Regierung integriert Weinurlaub in die nationale Tourismusstrategie
Südafrikas Wein- und Tourismusbranche präsentiert vom 25.–27. September 2012 die erste gemeinsame Messe für Weintourimus: die Vindaba. Zeitgleich lockt auch die CapeWine, Südafrikas international anerkannte Weinfachmesse, zahlreiche Weinexperten und Medienvertreter in das moderne Convention Center nach Kapstadt. Südafrikas Tourismusminister Marthinus van Schalkwyk integriert Weintourismus von nun an in die „National Tourism Sector Strategy“. Gemeinsam mit den beteiligten Organisationen will die Regierung die positiven Synergien beider Branchen fördern, um Südafrika als eine der 20 weltweit führenden Fernreisedestinationen zu positionieren.
by Panos Kakaviatos – A journalist’s libel conviction for describing a wine as ‘shit’ has been quashed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Hungarian journalist Péter Uj was fiercely critical of a wine made by the state-owned T. Zrt wine company.
He wrote that the wine ‘had been enough to make me cry: sour, blunt and over-oxidised stuff, bad-quality ingredients collected from all kinds of leftovers, grey mould plus a bit of sugar from Szerencs, musty barrel – but because we are still there … hundreds of thousands of Hungarians drink [this] shit with pride.’