Category Archives: Wine

Our wines and what can be done with them.

New EU/Australia wine trade agreement comes into force 1st September

Posted on Tuesday, 31 August 2010 | Leave a comment
The new agreement governing the wine trade between Australia and the European Union comes into force on 1 September 2010, replacing the previous one signed in 1994.

It full protection to the EU’s geographical indications and includes a clear Australian commitment to protect the EU traditional denominations.

The agreement provides for the immediate protection of some EU geographical indications for wines. For the use of other terms, phase-out periods have been agreed. In particular, Australian producers will not be able to continue the use of important geographical names, such as ‘champagne’, ‘port’, ‘sherry’, along with some traditional wine terms, such as, ‘Amontillado’, ‘Claret’ and ‘Auslese’ from 1 September 2011 onwards. In return there is EU recognition of an additional 16 Australian wine-making techniques and of the 16 Australian geographical zones

                                                   

The new agreement also lists optional particulars that may be used by Australian wines (i.e. an indication of vine varieties, an indication relating to an award, medal or competition, an indication relating to a specific colour, etc) and regulates the indication of vine varieties on wine labels. It outlines the conditions for Australian wine producers to continue to use a number of quality wine terms, such as ‘vintage’, ‘cream’ and ‘tawny’ to describe Australian wines exported to Europe and sold domestically.

In 2009, EU wine exports to Australia were worth about €68 million and Australian exports to the EU are 10 times as big at €643 million.

Our Personalised Australian Shiraz and Personalised Australian Chardonnay already meet the revised labelling rules.

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Posted in Champagne, Legal, Wine

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English winemakers on the up

Posted on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 | Leave a comment

Two English wines won gold medals in the International Wine Challenge this year, and there are now more acres of red wine vines in England than ever before in the modern age. International recognition has been accompanied by a surge in national demand – supermarkets are finding English wine much easier to sell, and Waitrose opened its own British vineyard in 2009.
English sparkling wines are particularly making a splash, and beating champagnes in blind tastings.


DAVID SANDISON

‘Everyone thought we were crazy’ to plant red grapes, says Christopher White, of Denbies wine estate in Wiltshire


Read more from the Independent

We have looked at adding English wines to our personalised wine range, we still find a price/perception barrier among our clientèle. English wine still seems to be a bit of a wine buff area at the moment.

E

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Posted in Champagne, Wine

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Weird bottle design – A two headed bottle!

Posted on Monday, 23 August 2010 | Leave a comment
A Romanian design company have come up with their own corporate wine gift. A two headed bottle!

Ampro Design  give this to all their new clients. This bottle has two necks and two integrated cups.


This how they describe it:

“The “Design Business Bottle” was made to capture the essence of our business in connection with the client’s business, and thats why we designed a bottle with 2 necks: one for us, and one for the client, after all don’t we all drink from this business?

And the story is like this: we thought: “Let’s make a gift for every contract we sign…let’s make a good wine bottle”, and we did: the bottle has 2 necks covered by 2 glasses: one written “Our Business” and the other: “Your Business” because, as a client, you put a little of your business in our business, and in the end you will enjoy the sweet wine inside.”

Silly gimmick, you can only open one end, and who wants to drink out of a vase?

For a  more sensible option look at our corporate wine gifts

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Posted in General drink, Wine

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South Africa want to water down their wine!

Posted on Wednesday, 18 August 2010 | 1 Comment
Yes they really do. According to decanter.com, the official proposal to do this, to legalise the adding of water to the grape must, has already been passed by the South Africa’s Wine and Spirit Board and it is now being under review by the Government. The plan is for the new law to be in place before the Spring 2012 harvest (southern hemisphere = spring harvest).

Apparently their reasoning is that they want to produce more lower alcohol wines, as these are growing in popularity.

What they haven’t taken into account is that EU wine law prohibits this, so none of the wine will be allowed into the EU. As this is a key market for South African wine exports, it seems that they are shooting themselves in the foot here.

What bothers me more than their economic suicide bid, is that surely the wines will suffer. You add water, you dilute the flavour. Is bland newly fashionable?

We do not offer any South African personalised wine at Euromarque. That is certainly unlikely to change now.

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Posted in Legal, Wine

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Plastic wine bottles – the future?

Posted on Wednesday, 25 February 2009 | 2 Comments

I can hear you shrieking in horror at the very suggestion.  Surely that’s just for the most basic plonk you cry. Well no, its proper wine this time. And it may well spread as part of the wine industry’s drive to become more environmentally friendly.

Artisan Wine Company of British Columbia have launched 2 new wines in their painted turtle range using the latest PET bottles. The semilion/chardonnay and the cabernet/shiraz are in two different shaped bottles.

Plastic wine bottles - the way ahead?

Plastic wine bottles - the way ahead?

These full sized screw cap bottles weigh only a tenth of normal bottles, and reduce packaging requirements by about 85%. It also enables a pallet to be loaded with 20% more bottles. All of which adds up to a reduction in carbon footprint of a third.

The clever bit is a new interior coating of silicon oxide, called SIG Plasmax. This creates a long life barrier that stops the wine and the plastic interacting. So no plastic taint on the wine and no rotting of the bottle. And as it doesn’t degrade, the wine can be matured in the bottle in the cellar for an extended period, rather than just bottle and drink.

These new bottles are fully recyclable in the normal way with other PET products.

You may well still be thinking it will never happen, that plastic will never be taken seriously. Just remember that 10 years ago that’s what people were saying about screwcaps! I think that this will become the standard for everyday wines within 10 years.

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Posted in environment, General drink, Wine

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UK Tops Wine Imports Tables

Posted on Saturday, 24 January 2009 | Leave a comment

The UK has topped the world wine imports tables according to the industry body Vinexpo, the French based international wine and spirits exhibition.

In their latest report imports topped 1.6bn bottles in 2007, overtaking the Germans, previously import leader by volume. The US still stands as the top wine importer by value. Both of which are major wine producers.
Wine from Australia proved to be most popular among British drinkers, ahead of imports from France and then the US.

British adults are likely to get through nearly 38 bottles a year on average, well short of the world’s most prolific wine drinkers – the French – who knock back 78 bottles each. Overall the UK still ranks only 13th in terms of world wine consumption.

Despite the increasing quantities of wine flowing into the UK, the economic downturn has had an effect.

Sales dropped by more than 3.5% in the first nine months of 2008, largely due to falling sales in pubs. And annual growth in the wine market is expected to halve to 6% by 2012, which is still a healthy figure.

Predictions are that consumption will rise slightly.
White wine will increase in popularity from an estimated 764 million bottles last year to 823 million by 2012 and rose sales are expected to rise by almost 50% to 220 million. We got through 720 million bottles of red in 2008 but this is expected to fall to 687 million by 2012.

World wine consumption is expected to rise as a whole to 33 billion bottles over the next three years.

Whisky sales down

Meanwhile our national spirit, Scotch, is continuing to lose out in the popularity stakes to the UK’s favourite spirit – vodka, the tipple of women and the young.

Vinexpo said sales of whisky dropped 11% between 2003 and 2007 and will continue falling.

In 2007, Britons bought 96 million bottles of vodka and that is predicted to rise by 20% in the next three years.

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Posted in General drink, Wine

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harvest in France

Posted on Saturday, 17 January 2009 | Leave a comment

The latest reports from France, reported by Décision Boissons, is that the 2008 French grape harvest in will be less than 43 million hectolitres.  If accurate, this would be the lowest harvest yield since since 1991.

The breakdown is likely to be: 21.4 million hectolitres of AOC wines:
12.2 million hectolitres of vins de pays; 2.3 million hectolitres of table wines; and 6.9 million hectolitres of wines for cognac and Armagnac production.

Its not just us that had a bad summer in 2008!

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Posted in General drink, Wine

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New year sale

Posted on Sunday, 4 January 2009 | 2 Comments

Thought we’d celebrate nearing the first anniversary of personalised wine labels by having a new year sale. So for the next 10 days only there is 20% off Merlot with a personalised label from the website.

Personalised Champagne Congratulations Label

Personalised Champagne Congratulations Label

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Posted in Offers, Wine

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