Nov
30
Nope, not Google fruit but genuine champagne grape fruit! I was amazed by the amount of unpicked fruit on the vines during my October visit to the Champagne region. The reason was the restriction in yield at harvest due to the excess buildup of bottles as global demand slumped; permitted yield was down from 14,000kg/hectare …
Oct
05
To correct or not to correct – that is the question. More importantly, what is the answer? Sometimes we notice suspicious spelling on either a customer’s personalised champagne label or the gift card they have prepared. The dilemma is, should we double check this and see if our suspicions are correct? If so, should we …
Oct
01
Last month the secateurs were drawn, wielded, stripped down and re-holstered ready for the 2010 harvest. The 100,000 or so casual harvesters who descended from all over Europe have moved on to their next project and the Champagne region regains an air of normality. The focus is now on getting supplies prepared and shipped to …
Sep
17
So here it is – and you heard it first on Alastair’s champagne blog: 2009 looks to be an EXCEPTIONAL harvest. That means not just an ordinarily good harvest that could qualify as a vintage declaration; it means an EXCEPTIONAL harvest and that is not a word to use unadvisedly or lightly but rather reverently …
Sep
10
So my champagne blog update continues! This is really a very very interesting time of year for champagne wine and its production – with a manic burst of activity universal across all 30,000 hectares of vineyards that make up the appellation. Today it happened; from all over Europe teams of people descended on the vines …
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