Tag Archives: French Wines

Culture: Burgundy Wine Cellars Of Beaune, France

FRANCE 24 (July 6, 2023) – Beaune is the wine capital of France’s Burgundy region. Above ground, the old fortified city is already beautiful. But the real treasure is hidden below the surface, down in the cellars. They contain two million bottles of wine, in a total of five kilometres of galleries, all linked together.

 One of the oldest cellars in Beaune has been occupied for four generations by the Maison Drouhin. It contains traces of the city’s ancient past. Meanwhile, the cellars of Maison Champy were once frequented by Louis Pasteur and Gustave Eiffel. The much more modern Jadot winery has an unexpected skylight.

New Books On Wine: “Veuve Clicquot” By Sixtine Dubly (Assouline)

Veuve Clicquot by Sixtine Dubly ASsouline 2019When Madame Clicquot, who had become the veuve (widow) Clicquot Ponsardin, inherited the house in 1805, she followed the motto “Only one quality, the finest” and created the first vintage and the riddling rack, two major innovations for champagne production. Centuries later, the brand behind the characteristic yellow label continues to make history, going beyond champagne to represent a complete lifestyle. 

Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin has been pushing boundaries for the past 250 years. From inventing rosé champagne in 1775 to collaborating with innovators such as Andrée Putman and the Campana Brothers, with each passing century the legendary label goes above and beyond to challenge itself with new initiatives to energize and excite its enthusiasts.

To read more and purchase

French Wine Values: Red Burgundies Are Top Long-Term Values (Exceeding S&P 500 Over Last 15 Years)

From an Economist.com online article:

Collectors who have drunk most of their Pinot already may need another glass after seeing the results. By the end of 2018, red Burgundy had returned 497%, versus 279% for the s&p 500. (Our index does not extend to 2019, since many of the wines it contains have not been traded this year.)

Wine Price Index Economist August 2019

 

The index has also been less volatile than stocks are, though this may be an artefact of how it is calculated: no one knows what each wine would have sold for in the crash of 2008-09. Bordeaux and Champagne rose by 214% in 2003-18; everywhere else did worse.

Predicted Wine Appreciation from Economist August 2019

 

Wine collectors like to proclaim that “all roads lead to Burgundy.” They often wince at the plonk they drank when starting their hobby. In America and Australia, a common entry point is local “fruit bombs”: heavy, alcoholic wines that taste of plum or blackberry; bear the vanilla or mocha imprint of oak barrels; and should be drunk within a few years of bottling.

To read more click on the following link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/08/24/burgundy-wine-investors-have-beaten-the-stockmarket?cid1=cust/dailypicks1/n/bl/n/20190828n/owned/n/n/dailypicks1/n/n/NA/299647/n