The Beaujolais Nouveau arrives the third Thursday in November each year. This has been the rules of the game since 1985 and the roots of regulation can be traced back to 1951. But what is Beaujolais Nouveau and what makes it so special? In short, Beaujolais Nouveau is wine from this years harvest of grapes from the Beaujolais region. This means you can drink the 2013 in 2013! This is (albeit small) a cause for celebration.
Map of Beaujolais
Beaujolais is the southern part of Burgundy and Gamay is the only grape variety used for red wine. Red dominates over small productions of Beaujolais Blanc on Chardonnay. A special technique called Maceration Carbonique is used to make the Nouveau wines, where the grapes are fermented in a CO2 rich environment prior to crushing and pressing. This is the cause of the distinct fruity flavour the Nouveau wines have. They taste extremely fruity, sometimes with hints of bubblegum and banana, on a strawberry and raspberry background with a fresh acidity. The best (well only the very very very very best) even sport a hint of flinty minerality.
Tasting note for a typical Beajoulais Nouveau
This isn’t a typical tasting note and it may not seem particularly pleasant. It is however quite nice, particularly if you manage to stay clear of the biggest and most widespread commercial wineries.
When tasting Beaujolais Nouveau out in the dark November night in Copenhagen, please disregard everything you have ever learned about wine tastings. Beaujolais Nouveau should be drunk, and glasses repeatedly refilled. The wine biz has understood this, and going out for Beaujolais Nouveau is the perfect way to get drunk in a cheap yet upscale fashion.
Freshly fermented grape juice <3
This year it will be on Thursday 21st November, and a classic place to go Gråbrødretorv where Bøf & Ost traditionally serves 1001 glasses of Beaujolais Nouveau.
Newly opened wine bar Den Vandrette will host a bojo-party that probably will change history as we know it.
Sebastopol serves roasted chestnuts with their Beaujolais Nouveau
The list is not exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive so sure to find the best Beaujolais Nouveau party in your neighborhood, and don’t forget to stop by you local wine shop, they will probably have some kind of event.
Personally, I won’t drink any Beaujolais Nouveau on the 21st this year due to a 24 hour case exam. However I do plan to indulge in massive amounts of Beaujolais Nouveau in the days following the 21st. And, as a final note, don’t forget to try out some of the more serious Beaujolais out there. The variety and quality from this region has never been higher, and many experiences await the openminded wine drinker.
At least four new wine bars have sprung up in Copenhagen just this past year. Each one unique in their atmosphere, interior decoration and wine selection. I don’t get paid to hawk any of these, but among the new and old I do like the inexpensive Vinhanen, the upscale and avant-garde Ved Stranden 10, the veteran Italian-focused Il Senso and the cave-like bio bar Terroiristen. I’m meeting a girl at the most recently opened one, Den Vandrette (‘The Horizontal’), tonight to see if it matches the so-far positive trend of 2013.
The people behind the most recent openings have reclaimed the often misused word ‘authentic’ and serve fun and challenging wine.
In a salute to the courage of these individuals who take financial risks to open niche venues, Asbjørn and I have put together 7 fundamental pieces of the puzzle (and one optional) that we believe make up the foundation of any brilliant wine bar. No wine bar scores 10 out of 10 on all parameters, but all the places we love perform well over average on all of these.
1. Show Us You Care
Even if you serve Michel Gros’ Clos de Réas at €8 per glass, we won’t stop by if your waiters behave like jerks. Treat every customer at the very least with respect, even the clueless, the cheapskates and the know-it-alls.
2. A Somm for All Seasons
Ved Stranden 10 don’t mind getting weird – Bon Appetit (C)
Service each customer at eye level. If a guest asks for ‘something really fruity and sweet like a nebbiolo’, resist the urge to correct her. Instead, your job is to find her something she likes however confused she is about wine and help her save face. On the other hand, if we (the know-it-alls) come with an outlandish (read: idiotic) request for a 1997 Swiss chasselas, a good host will do his best to either provide that or the best substitute he can offer.
Real somms like Bo Bratlann make both these challenges look effortless.
Accommodate the clueless guests as helpfully as you would with the wine nerds who know exactly what they want. Don’t make clueless guests feel inadequate because they’re not attuned to the relative merits of jacquère or altesse from Savoie. Be nice, educational and respectful.
3. Let’s Get Weird
A Guide to Copenhagen (C)
This one is easy to get wrong. But to make us regulars at your wine joint, you must take risks by rotating weird wines into your glass list and not play the safe cards over and over again.
Restaurateurs hate waste. That’s why instinctively it seems smart to open bottles of only recognizable, ‘comfort zone’ wines. Things like grenache-based Rhône and AOC Bourgogne. This is a huge mistake in the long run.
You must amuse us, seduce us. Win our trust and open our eyes to try new regions and grapes. Take our hand and lead us out of our comfort zone to Savagnin-Chardonnay blends from Côtes du Jura, biodynamic Slovakian cabernet sauvignon and mencia-based Ribeira Sacra.
In short, serve Côtes du Rhône and you’ll be indistinguishable from any other wine bar. Be the first person to convince me to try Dominio do Bibei, and you’ll have a friend forever.
4. Lighten Up the Room
The last element in the Maslowian bottom of the pyramid is physical surroundings. This is a big one-off expense when you open plus a bit of maintenance, so make your investment count in terms of comfort and ambience.
Whatever decoration theme you choose, understand the scientifically supported fact that wine tastes better under comfortable, classy circumstances. Let this be your guiding light when selecting lamps that give off a natural light and quality chairs for your guests, as well as ensuring good acoustics and background music.
5. A Razor-Sharp Cellar
If the glass list shows your adventurousness, the wine cellar shows your core strength and focus. You can either have a broad, middle-of-the-road selection that tries to cover every single wine region, or you can be a T-shaped wine bar with specialization and depth within a few select regions. Go the second route if you have any sense.
6. Quality Stemware
If you’re new to wine – just trust us – glasses do matter. We don’t expect €25 Zalto glasses necessarily (although if you already have them…), but we want clean, light glasses that augment whichever wine we’re being served.
So for everybody’s sake, stay a few steps above the clunky stemware you find in the kitchen cabinets of Copenhagen student housing.
7. Make It Unique and Make It Yours
Think along the lines of Blue Ocean Strategy. Integrate an offering in your wine bar that is not just best on the existing playing field, but one that sets you apart qualitatively. Vinhanen most famously did this with a gas pump wine dispenser, their branded glass bottles and unbeatable prices.
You can achieve the same goal by other means. Malbeck has cornered the Argentinean wine bar market, Nimb Vinotek has the integrated experience of wine bar, hotel, fine dining and Tivoli, and Tire-Bouchon is the one and only for oysters-and-wine combos.
Be the best at just one thing. Don’t end up as a jack of all trades, master of none.
8. The Food (optional)
Smitten Kitchen (C)
In Danish wine culture, food is often secondary to wine. Few wine producing countries have wine bars as stand-alone locations while Northern Europe has really taken to the idea of bars that exclusively serve wine. To our knowledge, even Barcelona has fewer real wine bars than Copenhagen.
If your wine bar chooses to serve food, our advice is to keep it simple, affordable and wine friendly. Simple and affordable because your place is unlikely to have the intimacy of a restaurant (and neither should it try to attain that level of intimacy). Wine friendly because a bowl of olives and cornichons kills most wines, even the high quality ones.
Cabernet Franc is Harvey Keitel. This will make sense farther down.
Cabernet franc is a thinking man’s cabernet sauvignon.
Cabernet franc has captivated me since enologist Bertrand Sourdais introduced me to the wines of his family estate Domaine de Pallus during a visit at Dominio de Atauta in 2009. Atauta is a Ribera del Duero estate he brought to life and managed for some years before returning to France. Domaine de Pallus makes phenomenal bio cabernet francs in Chinon. Trythem – you can thank me later.
This post is about the personality of the grape. You learn about the nature of human beings by observing their actions, body language, temper etcetera. With a stretch of your imagination, you can do the same with grapes. The personality of grapes is defined by their physiological response to the climate they’re put in, their versatility, their boundaries of quality and proneness to disease. This is just as true for cabernet franc as for sangiovese, pinot noir and riesling.
For now, let’s dive into the mind of Franc.
Introducing Franc
The best cab franc is found in the east of Anjou-Saumur and in the west of Touraine.
You don’t meet Franc all over the world as you do with other prominent French grapes.
Left Bank Bordeaux
In Médoc and Graves, Cabernet Franc is the socially awkward big brother to Cabernet Sauvignon who occasionally gets invited along to parties. Franc is the guy who people mention most often when saying “So that’s all the invitations, right? Oh wait, we forgot about Franc.”
The aristocratic, status-driven climate of Bordeaux rubs him the wrong way. But rather than put up a fight against Sauvignon and Merlot, he resigns to third place in the viniferous hierarchy.
Standing next to his brother Sauvignon, Franc appears quirky and is kind of a wallflower. Sauvignon is the alpha male. He dominates the conversation with stories about him and his friend Robert from Maryland, which gets him all the American and Asian exchange student pussy. Franc is more down to earth and smells like tart cherries, graphite and pencil shavings, making the cute girls associate him with homework, not sex.
On his best day southwest of the Gironde, Franc is never more than the timid brother who Sauvignon calls over when the conversation gets stale and needs intellectual stimulation.
Here, Franc is like Anthony Michael Hall in the Breakfast Club. Smart as a tack but the only guy in detention that doesn’t hook up with a girl.
… And the right bank.
When Franc hangs out across the Gironde in Saint-Émilion, he instantly becomes more self-confident. Find him at Chateau Angelus or Cheval Blanc and you’ll spot him try to schmooze his way through cocktail parties, getting along well with the waiters and occasionally bang a homely-looking socialite. They’ve given him the nickname ‘Bouchet’ over there. He likes that.
In Saint-Émilion, Franc is not just an accidentally invited party guest, he’s part of the social fabric of the community – often a conversation starter. Still, he relies on his wingman, the jolly fat guy known as Merlot, to keep the conversation from getting too dry. Franc does well on the right bank yet could never call this place home.
Here, Franc is like Nick Nolte in 48 Hours. He’s essential to the plot and pushes the story forward, but Eddie Murphy steals the show as always.
Meanwhile, in Loire
In the Loire Valley, Franc manages to be himself in an atmosphere of like-minded eccentrics. Gamay, Pinot and Côt are friends – they get him, they really get him. There’s no situation in Loire where Franc can’t let his dry, acidic wit flow naturally and feel welcomed for who he is.
Loire invokes an entrepreneurial spirit in him – he relies entirely on himself though is not reluctant to collaborate with his local peers in exciting and refreshing blends.
In essence, Franc has found a social climate of positive reinforcement in Loire. This climate allows him to reach his own personal peak to the benefit of us all. Franc expresses his true self 100% in places like Chinon, Bourgueil, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Anjou, Saumur and Saumur-Champigny.
Here, Franc is a young Harvey Keitel. A tad quirky and stubborn, but can carry a whole movie like nobody’s business (I told you the top photo would make sense!)
PS: The industrious Jancis Robinson has talked every grape variety to death. Read her brilliant article on cab franc for reference.
Case in Point: l’Enchentoir 2009
Tightly wound and complex cab franc.
Manoir de la Tete Rouge “l’Enchentoir” 2009 is pure Franc and pinpoints the grape’s appeal as well as its problem in a commercial sense.
First, its appeal should be obvious to any experienced wine drinker. Smooth, cool red current alongside blackberries, refreshing herbaceousness and a flinty, limestoney mineral punch. A touch of tertiary notes like forest floor and tobacco, though this is on the delicate side. Expressive and delightful on the nose yet serious and challenging. The palate immediately shows concentration and complexity. Medium plus acidity and a tannic bite is balanced by vibrant fruit with purity and liveliness. Certainly has ageing potential as evidenced by is evolution over an hour or so after pouring as well as overall structure.
Second, it’s not a wine that will immediately win everybody over, that’s plain to taste. Having sold my share of wine over the years, I know that most anyone likes to be challenged, but usually within the framework of their experience. The lighter body of cabernet franc may favor the trend towards lower alcohol levels as Thomas explained recently. However, its acidity and tannic structure alongside graphite notes and light, tart cherries sends a lot of people running. Alas, more for the rest of us.
So in essence, there is a reason why it’s so sparsely planted outside Loire, Bordeaux and Fruili. It’s the wine version of Donnie Darko – you could understand equally well why some love it and others criticize it. Both positions make sense to me.
Speaking of movies, try pairing a Saumur-Champigny like Clos Rougeard with Mean Streets. A blissful match.
Two premier cru Chablis slopes face southwest. Montée de Tonnerre is one of them. Its perfect exposure is one of the reasons it’s viewed as the best of the 17 premier crus of Chablis. I’m not one to put the cart before the horse and say that Montée is by nature the finest of the lot. This premier cru is home to bunch of masterly producers, who have extracted as much potential from Montée as can be extracted and raised its esteem over the otherwise equivalent premier crus of Montmains, Fourchaume and Vaillons.
The 17 premier crus are only matched and exceeded in quality by the seven grand crus of Chablis, Les Clos often seen as the greatest of them all.
My motivation for telling you is a just-poured Domaine Servin Montée de Tonnerre 2010.
The Chablis region.
THE WINE
The 2010 Montée de Tonnerre is straw yellow with a green tint, a tad darker than one would have suspected.
Mirabelle plums, peach stones and unripe pineapple open up the wine on the first whiff. No punches pulled with this vintage – the nose is forward although not aggressive and offers itself freely. The fruit is backed by flower garden aromas and light parsley. The wine shows style and character at this early stage and hints at more to come in two years’ time or so.
The palate is dry and repeats the wine’s aromatic concentration in liquid form. The combination of the firm acidity, green herbaceousness and light stone fruit bitterness makes for an appetizing Chablis that shows the full strength of the Montée de Tonnerre premier cru.
In conclusion, the quality of this wine is not in question. The concentration, depth and variety of flavors, its longevity and ageing potential is beyond question. However, I find myself being overwhelmed by the combination of power, tartness and acidity. I have zero problem with either of these elements in and off themselves. Hell, in terms of beer, the more bitter and hoppy the better.
So here’s the conflict. I’d recommend anyone to buy this – it’s a great buy and terrific value. Personally though, I’d go for a lighter, more feminine Chablis the next time.
Fine wine investments are on average unprofitable. But try telling that to a novice who’s just learnt about an undervalued 2009 St. Estèphe wine that reliable sources are telling him is “certain to appreciate over the next 10 years”. Stimulated by happy-go-lucky alternative investment articles in the Life & Style section of financial newspapers and the new documentary Red Obsession, people increasingly view fine wine as a fail-safe asset class that will let them retire comfortably at 45.
That’s hardly the case.
Let’s start from the top. The greater fool theory proposes that since wine produces no income, any dollar to be made on wine investments is pure speculation on the future desires of others – hype, essentially. These investments require that another person, the greater fool, will come by and value your asset at a higher price than you paid for it. Add to this the costly reality of buying and storing wine, and you’ve got a losing business case in front of you.
What this article wants to hammer in is that for 99.9% of us, wine investments are as unfeasible as having platonic feelings for Véronique Dausse. In the interest of balance, I’ll give you the two best reasons for depositing your savings in fine wine when you have read your way to the end.
Blind Spots and Wishful Thinking
The most common pitfalls about wine investing are cognitive biases and ignoring underlying costs. Those omissions would never be allowed in any other investment setting, but for some reason wine has become a sanctuary for shallow bookkeeping.
The cost of acquiring, storing and selling fine wine, along with the unseen risks involved, such as consumer trends, generally surpasses the pay-off. I say “generally” because, sure, wine investment is not a certain loss. Some research suggests that wine fund investments may reduce your portfolio risk, and some wine funds have indeed shown substantial growth in the past.* Instead, what this editorial wants to drive a stake in the heart of is your ability to foresee the future price development of wine and invest in a way that produces above-market returns.
Let’s work through a realistic example. You might purchase 10 cases of Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou through wine futures, keep them in your cellar for five years and then run into a wealthy guy at a party who’s more than willing to take them off your hands at 50% above your price. That’d be a neat sum for very little work, right? Well, let’s break it down.
A 50% profit of selling a wine 5 years after its purchase equals an annual return of 8.45%. 8.45% does not merit an investment in the case of a risky asset like wine with little intrinsic value and a price that depends on its hedonistic attractiveness to others. It’s evident that we run in to the greater fool problem, since you’re betting on the chance that the exact region, wine estate and vintage you’ve chosen will appreciate considerably. Secondly, even without added the transaction costs discussed in the following, you’re still looking at a meager payoff in many instances.
The Practical Reality of Investing in Wine
Purchase: You don’t have access to the floor prices of fine wine – brokers and middlemen do. Even if you lay down money for wine from the first tranche of an en primeur campaign, you’re still writing big paychecks for others before your own gains can begin. You’re basically the dumb money at the poker table whom established wholesalers and retailers hope will keep playing.
Storage: If you’ve got room for your wine investment in your own temperature-stable cellar, fine. If you need to rent storage, deduct from your return the cost of transport and storage fees.
Inflation: This should be a given, but in every single conversation about investments, I’ve been the only one to bring up this topic which is simple and central to any investment. They money you put in won’t be worth as much when you unload your stock of wine – how does this not enter your investment decision making?
Sales process: Pay an auctioneer a commission or sell on your own. The market is illiquid compared to common stock and you have sizeable transaction costs to deal with. Investing in common assets like bonds and shares through online trading platforms is low-cost, easy and liquid. Whether you sell your wine privately, through online auctions, physical auctions or other ways, the costs, potential taxes and time spent must be deducted from your return.
Quantity: The larger your lot of wine, the more narrow the market and the more time and energy you are forced to spend finding a half-decent deal among very savvy wine wholesalers.
Barriers on a Higher Level
If you’ve weighed the practical issues with your investment and think they don’t present a hurdle to you for whatever reason, consider the faulty methodologies of calculating wine investment returns that nobody speaks of. For instance, many in-depth analyses of wine prices use auctions as their source of data. This skews the results towards regions, vintages and producers that after the fact have turned out to perform better than the average fine wine. It may not be willful omission in all cases, but just know that there are misleading estimates out there about wine investment returns.
Furthermore, hindsight and confirmation bias is found in largely all non-academic articles on wine returns. Yes, we’ve all heard the story of the infamous 1982 Bordeaux vintage, whose wines have appreciated to exorbitant prices after wine critic Robert Parker, amongst his dismissive colleagues, found extraordinary value in the vintage. An enological Warren Buffett, if you will. These stories are statistical anomalies, not waypoints for assembling your own portfolio of prestigious bottles.
And finally, a common saying among amateur wine investors is that “if the investment doesn’t appreciate, we can just toast to our losses”. You can indeed drink whatever you’ve invested in. But by that logic there is no downside to any wine investment. So why not invest every penny you have if drinking to your loss is always an option. In what other asset class would this be an acceptable investment strategy? If your commodity investments don’t pan out, do you suddenly make finger rings out of your gold and cook bulgur from your wheat?**
In summation: Wine investments are most likely not something for you.
The Bottom Line
A few pieces of advice if you’ve got money to burn and just want to invest for the fun of it:
Buy as early as possible of whatever wines and vintages you’re going for. Be an independent importer or you’ll have to pay retail en primeur prices like every other blue-eyed wine investor. Have cheap storage available in a secure location that requires no extra insurance and as little hassle as possible. Be well connected with one-percenters who you can unload your stockpiles of wine on. All this will minimize how royally you screw yourself and will leave you with at least the semblance of a good deal.
Now, as promised, the two real reasons for buying fine wine:
You will have lots of perfectly aged, quality wine to drink with your loved ones.
It’s a lot more fun to talk about your 20 original wooden cases of Haut-Bailly 1990 than your shares in a Polish index fund.
* I’ll ignore the numerous failed wine investment companies who have cost investors hundreds of millions of dollars over the past years. I want you to disregard historical returns on wine, so it’s only fair that I ignore historical losses as well. Neither can be used as a reliable predictor of future gains.
** I know, you don’t physically hold gold and wheat when you invest in these, but I like the analogy.
CBS Wine 