Hennessey or Hennessy - LVMH isn’t sure
Wednesday 28 July
You’d think a company that’s made a €1.05 billion profit (+53%) in the past six months would be able to spell its own name correctly but then again, money doesn’t buy you intelligence.
So, when Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), spelled their Cognac arm ‘Hennessey’ on the first line of its first half results, I just had to pull them up about it.
The corridors of power at LVMH are long and winding and you’d expect the press release they sent out with their results would have been read and read again before the send button was pushed.
So, it’s the hall of shame for them this week. Not that they’ll care: they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
I may be poor but at least I can spell my name: Rebecca Elizabeth Gibb. See?!
Oh, and can anyone tell me why Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy is now being referred to as Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton despite still being referred to as LVMH? Surely, it should be MHLV?
Award-winning bargains
Wednesday 30 June
French wine sales are suffering at the hands of the Australians, Californians, Italians and South Africans in the UK. To add insult to injury, English wines are beating them at their own game: the International Wine Challenge (IWC) has just announced Camel Valley’s 2008 Pinot Noir Brut has taken the sparkling rose trophy ahead of the Champenois. This is another kick in the teeth for the Champagne region, after poor sales in 2009.
What I like most about the competition is the value awards. As a tight northerner, the price of decent wines can make my eyes water. Finding a great wine under a tenner certainly improves my mood. And my dad, a Liverpudlian (an even more notoriously tight lot), will be making a special trip to the supermarket to fill up on bargains when he sees the results (although not to Waitrose, as they haven’t made it as far north as my hometown yet)
So, what are the stars I’ll be sending my dad out to buy:-
Oloroso Trophy winner: Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Oloroso 12 year old for a mere £6.49
La Différence Carignan 2009, France, £5.81, France, Tesco.
Moon Bridge Riesling 2009, Australia, £5.49, Marks & Spencer
Domaine Villargeau Sauvignon Blanc 2009, France, £9.99, Majestic Wine Warehouse
Falanghina Campania 2009, Italy £9.99, Laytons, Oddbins
Champagne: What have they got to hide?
Monday 21 June
What is it with Champagne houses being so secretive?
I was recently researching ferment temperatures and yeast selection (God, my life’s exciting) and asked a couple of Champagne houses if they could tell me. I added that the information would be purely for my MW studies and go no further then me, myself and I.
I managed to get the information on ferment temperatures from Veuve Clicquot’s winemaker but when asked his annual production, he said they ‘preferred to talk about quality not quantity’. What a cop out. It’s all about protecting the exclusivity of the product, I guess. Let’s face it, there’s an awful lot of Champagne made, yet they like to create an aura that there’s not enough to go around.
Similarly I put the request in to Laurent Perrier and was flatly refused. “Usually the wine making is not something our cellar master discusses preferring to focus on the end result,” the said.
What a load of cobblers. What do they think is going to happen? Someone’s going to steal their recipe? Hardly.
I had a moan to Ben Portet, winemaker at his father’s winery, Dominique Portet, in the Yarra Valley. Portet has done several vintages in Champagne and makes his own sparkling wines. He had had a similar experience but was more than willing to share his winemaking methods with me from the yeasts he uses (E118 Prise de Mousse, for all you geeks) to adding red wine at 400g/l of residual sugar in the liqueur de dosage at bottling for his sparkling rosé. If only the Champenois were so relaxed about revealing their methods. That’s big business for you. And it sucks.
Study Facts or Fiction?
Wednesday 2 June
Master of Wine students will be sitting their exams this week. Thank God I’ve decided not to sit this year as I’ve got a stinking cold – I can’t taste or smell a thing. For those who are taking the four-day nightmare that is the MW exam, good luck to you and, I hope you haven’t got the lurgy. Speaking to a few fellow students, I know they just want it all to be over so they can get their lives back.
On twitter there’s now a hashtag for all the MW students called #MWStudyFacts. If you have a geeky fact, it’s the place to post it.
Following the recent Veuve Clicquot tasting I attended, a Study Fact I learned many moons ago has been upended.
My trusty old Wine and Spirit Eductation Trust Advanced book tells me that non-vintage Champagne must spend 15 months maturing on lees (dead yeast cells) after the second fermentation, giving the distinct biscuitty/yeasty note to the wine. Wikipedia (not exactly the most reliable source) also says 15 months on lees is required.
But Veuve Clicquot’s winemaker, Francois Hautekeur, says this is incorrect. “The laws say it is 15 months between bottling and selling, including a minimum of 12 months on lees and three months for the sugar from the dosage to integrate.” So, for the past five years, have I been misled? Seems so.
Of course, most Champagne houses worth their weight would leave the wine on lees for longer eg 24 months for non-vintage at Veuve but there are surely others who are less scrupulous.
World Cup dreams for Veuve Clicquot winemaker
Monday 31 May
Rugby-loving winemakers are looking for an excuse to be in New Zealand for the 2011 World Cup. Francois Hautekeur, winemaker at Veuve Clicquot, is a French rugby nut and would love to be at the France vs. All Blacks match in September. So, if anyone at LVMH is reading, I think a reconnaissance mission to Clicquot’s New Zealand stablemate Cloudy Bay is in order.
Hautekeur was in Auckland last night running an ‘Art of Blending’ masterclass but he was a year too early for rugby’s flagship tournament.
Why the Art of Blending? At Veuve Cliquot, there are 850 tanks filled with potential wines that make up the final blend of its non-vintage yellow label. That’s a lot of tanks. We tried six samples and, quite frankly, that was enough to have you reaching for the Rennies thanks to the eyewatering acids.
This was the first time its base wines were available to taste in New Zealand. “It is rare that the base wines leave the winery,” admitted Hautekeur.
The idea of tasting base wines is to understand what a still Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier taste like before they are blended together and go through the secondary fermentation in bottle which creates the bubbles. The fermentation in bottle also adds an extra 1% alcohol, apparently. I hadn’t heard this one before but every day’s a school day.
So, what do they all bring? The Pinot Noir gives flesh and volume to a Champagne. The ‘09 example from Verzy was closed at the moment but had pear, citrus and stoney notes. But it’s all about the weight and texture it gives to the final blend, which is usually around 50-57% in the Yellow Label NV.
Chardonnay provides “backbone”. What does this mean? It’s not as fleshy as Pinot Noir and gives a cleansing citrus note on the tongue. We tried the 09 Chardonnay from the village of Cramant and it smelled of chalk, lemons and white flowers. It was feminine with a lovely long finish. An older Chardonnay base wine from 2000 was lean and minerally with white stoned fruit and butterscotch.
The Pinot Meunier is “hyper aromatic”, full of fruit from pineapple and pear drops to red cherry and stoned fruit. It lacks length, however and is usually a minor part of the blend.
More on Champagne in my next blog.