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French Country Wine Travel Life
France Country Wine Travel Life – What better way to travel than with Wine? It’s worked wonders for DA BG for many years. And you too I hope.
Now French Wine is travelling to China. Not just as exports, but as a new place of production.
Our pals in the not so mysterious east at the dailystar.com fill in the Wine blanks:
PENGLAI, China: The world’s finest winemakers have exacting standards for soil, climate and cultivation to produce the perfect grape. And they are looking to recreate that unlikely blend in China – a country better known for cheap mass production. The potential harvest will be more drinkers in the world’s most populous country, where wine consumption more than doubled in the four years to 2011 and is set to rise another 40 percent by 2016, according to the industry’s top trade fair organizer Vinexpo.
France’s Domaines Barons de Rothschild, maker of the renowned Chateau Lafite reds, is planting roots in China with an initial 15 hectares (37 acres) in Penglai, a hilly green peninsula dotted with vineyards on the east coast of Shandong province with a century-long history of wine-making.
Its great rival, French luxury group LVMH – owner of Dom Perignon champagne among other brands – has 66 hectares for sparkling wine in the up-and-coming wine province of Ningxia in the north.
LVMH is also harvesting its first cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes from 30 hectares in the cool hills of southwestern Yunnan.
“It’s a new El Dorado, it’s a New World,” said Jean-Guillaume Prats, who oversees the firm’s wine division.
“No one knows really where and how vines should be grown. We have some ideas. People have tried. But nothing has been proved.”
The three areas’ winemaking reputations are just beginning to develop, with experts gaining confidence in Ningxia – whose products have won international tasting competitions – and seeing promising conditions in Yunnan, but worrying that Shandong’s wetness could encourage disease.
Even so, bottled results could still take years, as winemakers experiment with the terroir – the soil, climate and other conditions that influence the grape – going so far as remaking the land to improve their odds.
China’s first wine company began production in Shandong in 1892, but a tradition of high-quality vintages never took root.
DBR chose the province after scouting several sites and has spent years blasting through thick layers of rock and digging up earth to create the ideal soil depth, vineyard director Olivier Richaud said.
To counter the summer rain, leaves on each vine – most of them cabernet sauvignon, but six different varietals in all – are thinned to give the grapes more sunlight, and weeds have been planted between each row to absorb more water.
“Everything is completely different from what the company is used to in all the vineyards we have,” Richaud said, standing amid rows of terraces overlooking green hills and a lake.
“Until the end we won’t really know what quality we should get.”
LVMH settled on Yunnan after a three-year search for elements such as good summer months, natural soil drainage and access to water.
The area resembles Bordeaux but at a higher altitude, Prats said, but it could be a decade before the firm makes something it is happy with, he added.
“I am absolutely incapable of telling you when this wine will eventually be released and what it will be called and how many will be produced,” he said.
Chinese vineyards have only recently begun to gain respect for quality, with a Ningxia vintage even winning the title of best Bordeaux-style wine at the 2011 Decanter World Wine Awards in London.
But so far Chinese consumers have largely given wine as a gift, so tend to buy expensive foreign labels for show.
They themselves drink cheap local brands and only recently has a niche but expanding group begun drinking for taste, said Jim Boyce, a Beijing-based wine expert who runs the blog Grape Wall of China.
As a result, local vintners have generally obliged to make low-cost wine, he added.
“Instead of growing a nice amount of high-quality grapes, they just grow quantity, and don’t care much about them and pick them too early.”
Greek winemaker Mihalis Boutaris found that out the hard way, producing a locally branded good-quality bottle in the western province of Gansu that sold poorly.
He turned to importing Greek bottles instead and sidelined his 20-hectare Chinese vineyard.
“It made me realize there’s really no demand for premium local wine, or there is very little of it,” he said.
Hong Kong-based wine expert Jeannie Cho Lee said foreign firms could not only benefit themselves but also lift the quality of wine made and enjoyed in China – if they can deliver.
Read More HERE.
THROW ME A BONE HERE,PEOPLE!
What are ya thinkin’?
French Country Travel Life Ralph Lauren
The French Country Travel Life Ralph Lauren can only be “the” Ralph Lauren. N’est ce pas? He of the Polo shirt fame. And one of the World’s most gignormusly successful designers. Plus being the 162nd richest guy on the planet. (if we are to believe statistics.)
So, what does Ralph Lauren have to do with France? Other than selling massive quantities of his wearables here? Well, it’s like this: Mr. Lauren has a long standing love affair with France. So, ONE thing in common with DA BG.
In spite of his great success, Mr. Lauren regrets never having gone to Art School. (We do not have that in common.) Ergo, putting these two elements together, it’s easy to grok why Mr.L. is footing the bill to restore the Amphithéâtre d’honneur at the heart of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
The New York Times’ Suzy Menkes has the lowdown:
“The amphitheater has always been central to the heartbeat of this institution, and all the great artists and thinkers came together to discuss ideas,” David Lauren said. “Our goal is to figure out how this is going to be part of the 2000s. By wiring this place, you will be able to share these ideas globally, whether you are in China or the United States, wherever you are in the world, you will be able to hear great ideas about the arts and culture.”
Nicolas Bourriaud, director of the school, oversees both its complex artistic program and its buildings. That includes the entrance courtyard, where students on their lunch break sit beneath classical statues.
Mr. Bourriaud described the school’s buildings themselves as a kind of encyclopedia, referring to the artists’ names, from Dürer and Van Dyck to Holbein and Rembrandt, carved in red stone in the glass-roofed central court.
The amphitheater’s frieze, known as the Hémicycle, carries the same message of heritage, but with the artists shown grouped around the creators of the Parthenon, who are wrapped in white robes. The work was painted in a period when the classics were part of a general education.
Mr. Lauren famously started his career not in art school, but by selling neckties, with his personal dreams dashed by his boss telling him that “the world is not ready for Ralph Lauren.”
And it is his enthusiasm for Paris — which he expressed in an early visit by kissing the Arc de Triomphe — that has encouraged the current Beaux-Arts project. The initiative follows in 2010 the restoration of a 19th-century hôtel particulier on the Boulevard Saint-Germain that became the brand’s Paris store. Mr. Lauren received the Legion d’honneur the same year from then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
After that building had revealed its cellar of historical artifacts and bones, it became the brand’s European flagship store.”
Read More HERE.
THROW ME A BONE HERE,PEOPLE!
What are ya thinkin’?
French Country Travel Life Wine Whine
Our French Country Travel Life Wine Whine today comes from…..none other than the Government of this here fine place.
Every sensitive to DA BG’s previous post, (with guest scribbler Olivier Mangy) that detailed the current “wine is dangerous and no fun” stance of those wine “experts at the elysée palace……bureaucracy has been shaken from it’s slumber.
Decanter’s Chris Mercer decants their “it ain’t so” rant:
Speaking to decanter.com following the launch of a campaign by wine trade lobby group Vin & Societe, a spokesperson for France’s health ministry said ‘there is no truth’ to claims that a raft of new regulations are planned for the sector.
Several wine industry bodies have publicly supported Vin & Societe, which last month detailed five measures that the government is considering, including together health warnings on labels, higher tax and stronger restrictions on publicity, particularly on the internet.
‘We are not going to raise taxes,’ the health ministry spokesperson said. She said she is aware of the campaign website and added, ‘we are not going to do anything of this kind’.
Her comments follow those of French agriculture minister Stephane Le Foll, who has said at two public meetings in the past fortnight that there will be no extra tax on wine.
However, there is concern in the wine trade at the power of the France’s ‘anti-alcohol’ lobby, and also that tougher government measures could come further down the line.
Vin & Societe’s MD, Audrey Bourolleau, told decanter.com that she understands tougher health warnings on labels, as well as the Evin Law that governs alcohol publicity, are still set to be discussed as part of the government’s new cancer plan and a new national health bill.
For that reason, Vin & Societe wants the government to install an interdepartmental body to oversee alcohol policy, which would recognise wine’s contribution to French culture and the country’s economy.
‘We are keeping our mobilisation campaign,’ Bourolleau said. ‘The national health [bill] will be discussed from December until March and the Evin Law will be a major point of discussion.’
Vin & Societe’s campaign website, cequivavraimentsaoulerlesfrançais.fr, has received 250,000 unique visitors in its first two weeks.
Read More HERE.
THROW ME A BONE HERE, PEOPLE!
What are ya thinkin’?
