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Pawnshops for prosperous accept wine as collateral

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:22:36 GMT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. pawnbrokers are taking liquid assets - literally. Along with family jewels and fine art they will accept wines as collateral for loans to help ease cash shortages of businesses and people on all rungs of the economic ladder. "You'd be amazed by how many wealthy individuals have terrible credit ratings," said Jordan Tabach-Bank, head of Beverly Loan Co. in Beverly Hills, California.

"And besides, if you go to a bank, it can take weeks or months to get a loan. When we make a loan, it's usually the same day,"The pawnshop for the prosperous lends to hedge-fund managers, bankers, lawyers, doctors and even Oscar winners.

"Most people have a vision of pawn shops as sad sites. But that's not the case here," Tabach-Bank said. "I have a lot of people who come in who have a business opportunity and they need an infusion of cash for business purposes."

USGoldBuyers.com, an online pawnbroker with an office in New York, will also accept fine wines, said spokesman Jose Caba, adding that the rich do not always have liquid assets to keep up with their expensive toys.

"That's where we come in," he said. "We don't really want to sell the wine, or any asset that we take in whether it be gold or fine art." He estimates that about 90 percent of the loans made have been repaid.

But interest rates and length of the loans vary widely. British-based pawnbroker, borro.com, recently lent $120,000 in exchange for 128 bottles of Chateau d'Yquem, which had an estimated worth of $250,000.

Within the last three weeks, borro.com had taken a case of 1989 Chateau Petrus, valued at about $38,000, for a loan of $24,000, said its Chief Executive Paul Aitken. Loans were also secured on various vintages of the five First Growths Bordeaux: Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Haut-Brion, Chateau Margaux and Chateau Mouton Rothschild -- top wines regularly sold at auctions where cases fetch tens of thousands of dollars.

Aitken's clientele, whose net worth ranges from $1 million to $10 million, are mostly small business owners with cash flow problems. Financial advisers and wealth managers recommend many of their clients to him.

Britain's Prime Asset Loans, based in Durham, has a specific list of wines it will loan against including the First Growth Bordeaux, Burgundy's Domaine de la Romanee-Conti and, depending on the vintage, Australia's renowned Penfolds Grange.

"We lend up to 70 percent of the value of the wines and the term is usually seven months," said Richard Mews, a partner at Prime Asset Loans. "Investors are using this type of loan more as it is quick, easy and there are no fees."

Credit Municipal de Paris, which has been offering loans against fine wines, champagnes and aged spirits since 2008, can keep more than 90,000 bottles in its 18th century wine cellar.

"Just deposit your bottles against a loan that is immediately awarded," said spokeswoman Florence Marambat, adding that Bordeaux were the wines most frequently offered as collateral.

Sweet Sales For Wine And Chocolate Weekend

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:54:11 GMT

YAKIMA, Wash -- The annual Red Wine and Chocolate lived up to the hype for wineries. Some business owners say they saw their best sales in years. KIMA learned wineries went into the weekend with a lot of uncertainty.

For some, nothing is sweeter than red wine and chocolate. "We really like it,” said Brett Carr. “We've been here since Friday. We're having a good time."For Carr, a teacher, and his wife, who works for a non-profit, life certainly got a little sweeter after the New Year.

"She's guaranteed her job at least through the end of the year so we're kind of breathing a little better right now," said Carr. The Carrs like most people have been spending less and saving more over the past few years. Wineries have felt it. In 2010, sales were down and it got worse in 2011. Wineries didn't know what to expect this year. Poor sales last year made them worried, but some are now calling this year the best year ever.

"People that are coming out are freer with their money than they were a couple years ago," said Paul Vandenberg, owner of Paradisos. Vandenberg has been restocking wine all weekend. He says he made more money this weekend than any other Red Wine and Chocolate event.

Some wineries saw more people, while others saw less. But, all the wineries we contacted agree those who are buying are spending more. At about $20-$40 dollars a person, sales are more than double last year.

"I know we're a little more confident now so we kind of got over the hump and so now were out doing this weekend and buying wine," said Carr. This weekend could be the first sign of sweeter days to come. Weather also factors into the wine event's success. Wineries say sales would have actually been stronger except that snow on the passes kept some people from making the drive.

Wine-testing lab first of its kind in NZ

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:16:21 GMT

A Christchurch testing laboratory has partnered with an American firm to provide hi-tech wine testing services in a bid to snare the Kiwi wine industry.

Hill Laboratories started as a two-person operation in Hamilton in 1984 and now employs 300 people nationwide with four labs in the North Island city and another in Christchurch. The laboratories service the agriculture and food industries and also provide results testing for environmental monitoring.

Managing director and co-founder Roger Hill, of Cambridge, met the owner of California-based ETS Laboratories, which does a lot of analysis for the Napa Valley wine industry, at a conference and was encouraged to look into the sector.

In partnership with ETS, Hill Laboratories moved into wine industry analysis in New Zealand, spending about $1 million setting up a new department at its six-year-old Christchurch branch. Hill Laboratories leased the adjoining space in its existing Hornby building and employed three more lab technicians, a technologist and former Lincoln University oenology lecturer Kirsten Creasy as the resident wine expert.

The Wine Lab service was announced at the wine industry's Romeo Bragato conference in August. It officially launched two weeks ago with a roadshow to the country's wine regions.

The lab is the first to offer complete analysis for wine companies from the vine to the finished wine, South Island branch manager Sue Davison said. The lab could test the soil, the water, the leaves, fruit and wine to ensure companies had the information to manage their growing and winemaking operations, she said.

Creasy said the rapid DNA analysis – which ETS shared with Wine Lab – takes 48 hours compared with the two-week delay of plate culture tests and was more accurate. "It's so powerful, this tool. When you show winemakers this they get really excited because they can see everything that's in their wine.

"New Zealand winemakers are really keen on using research and innovation in winemaking, more so than any other country I've worked in."Most response had come from Marlborough, which produces the lion's share of Kiwi wine, as well as Hawke's Bay and Waipara, she said.

Hill Laboratories expects the wine lab to become a "one- stop shop" for Kiwi wine companies and will employ another four people in the next three years. The Ministry of Science and Innovation gave Hill Laboratories a $1.5m research and development grant in August.

China: wine fans start to go for white

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:28:22 GMT

Within three years, greater China will spend more money on still wines than the UK, and become the world’s second biggest wine consumer by value, after the US.

And along the way, the traditional preference for red in China will be accompanied by a growing taste for white wine.

So says Vinexpo, the global wine and spirits exhibition group, which on Thursday in Shanghai spelt out its views of the fast-developing Chinese wine market.

According to research commissioned by Vinexpo from International Wine and Spirit Research last year China overtook Britain as the fifth largest market by volume (still and sparkling), behind the US, Italy, France and Germany. Consumption of wine on the mainland and Hong Kong rose by a full 21.5 per cent.

It’s no secret the Chinese like their wine. What’s striking is how fast their consumption is growing. Vinexpo expects China to down over a billion more bottles annually between now and 2015 – a further 54 per cent increase. Over the same period, Europeans will drink just a smidgeon more wine, with a rise of less than half of one percent.

With 1.3bn people, many of them increasingly hitting the income levels where people around the world traditionally start to drink wine, it is hardly surprising that the Chinese middle class is starting to mix European wines with its baijiu (traditional Chinese firewater).

But what is more surprising is that it is no longer a slam dunk that it will be red wine nudging out the Chinese spirits.

China has a well-earned reputation for preferring Chateau Lafite to Chablis, and red wines still weigh in at 91 per cent of total consumption. But white wine drinking rose 19 per cent last year alone, with 70 per cent further growth expected by 2015. Good news for white wine producers, not least New Zealand.

Dominique Heriard Dubreuil, chairman of Vinexpo and chairman of the board of Remy Cointreau, says change this presents an educational challenge to vintners worldwide: “In general, Chinese people don’t like to drink something cold, but white wine is not at its best when warm.”

Education is the answer: Vinexpo will be presenting diplomas to graduates of its wine-tasting courses at its next exhibition in Hong Kong in May.

China, which has long loved its cognac, is on track to become the world’s biggest cognac market by 2016 or 2017, Vinexpo says, forecasting 47 per cent growth between 2011-2015 (after a 68 per cent leap from 2006-2010).

China is already cognac’s second largest market, after France. But recently Chinese buyers have complained of trouble getting their hands on the extra-premium spirits that they prefer.

“In China, people want very old cognacs, but global inventories of very old cognac are not very extensive,” says Heriard Dubreuil. Cognac is not the kind of thing that responds instantly to a rise in demand, she points out – it does not get old before its time.

But with China forecast to be drinking 3.3m cases of cognac by 2015, and global production only at 12m cases, it seems the Chinese will be complaining about shortages for quite some time to come. Cognac producers will be rubbing their hands with glee.

Wine Turns Mortgage Title Mogul Into Entrepreneur of Viticulture

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:25:31 GMT

On a crisp winter’s day in 2010, Bill Foley was exploring a troubled winery for sale in Sonoma County, California, when he was taken aback by the sight of an enclosed horse-riding ring the size of an airplane hangar.

Foley, who made a fortune selling mortgage title insurance during the housing boom, also recalls seeing a California mission-style chapel and a regulation-sized football field and baseball diamond at the Chalk Hill Estate. These extravagant structures had nothing to do with making wine and helped saddle an estate valued at more than $100 million with excessive debt, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its
March issue.

“My wife said, ‘There’s no way you can buy this,’” Foley recalls with a mischievous grin. Foley, 66, did buy Chalk Hill in June 2010 for an undisclosed price well below its peak valuation. Now, it’s the flagship of his burgeoning viticultural business, which produces more than 1 million cases of wine a year and stretches from California to Washington state to New Zealand. Foley is hunting for more distressed wineries along Napa Valley’s fabled Route 29 and in the pinot noir-laden vineyards of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

“I’m not even close to being big enough,” says Foley in a mellow voice that bears the twang of his childhood home in the Texas Panhandle. The wealthy have long come to California’s wine country to indulge in the pleasures of the grape. While many are content to lord over one luxury estate, Foley is gambling he can become a commercial force in a wine industry that is struggling with stagnant sales.

Empire-Builder
After jumping 37 percent from 2002 to 2007, sales of California-made wine have been flat at about $18 billion for four straight years as consumers drink less expensive brands in economic hard times, according to the Wine Institute, a San Francisco-based trade group.

Debt-laden producers have sold their operations at deep discounts. In April, Southbank, Australia-based Foster’s Group Ltd. (FGL) spun off its wine division at a $2.5 billion valuation after spending $7 billion building it into a global player with Napa-based Beringer Vineyards and other brands.
In exploiting the shake-up, Foley has emerged as the most ambitious individual empire builder in the wine trade since the late Jess Jackson developed chardonnay powerhouse Kendall-Jackson Estate Wine Ltd. in the early 1980s, says Mario Zepponi, a principal at Zepponi & Co., a Santa Rosa, California-based mergers and acquisitions advisory firm.

Making Deals
Foley’s fortune tops $153 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Since 2007, he has spent more than $200 million of his own money and credit on 12 wineries with more than 20 labels.
“Nobody really knew who this guy was, and then all of a sudden, he was making deals,” Zepponi says. “He’s been one or two steps ahead of everyone else.”

Foley’s properties range from Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery, a Sonoma-based producer of $25 reds and whites, to Merus, a Napa cult winery that sells its silky cabernet sauvignon for $135 a bottle. His holding company, Foley Family Wines, recorded $15 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization on about $100 million of sales in 2011.

More buyers are now joining the hunt for undervalued wineries. In March 2011, Chilean producer Vina Concha & Toro SA paid $238 million, double Foley’s bid, for Sonoma County-based Fetzer Vineyards, which makes 2.2 million cases annually.

Fragmented Market
And French entrepreneur Jean-Charles Boisset has spent almost $40 million in the past three years to build his own California wine domain with the acquisitions of Raymond Vineyards in Napa and Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma. In 2010 and 2011, two dozen wineries changed hands in California in a record spate of acquisitions, Zepponi says.

In storming the wine business, Foley says his private- equity-style deal-making will tame an inefficient industry. From 1984 to 2007, he transformed a Phoenix storefront operation called Fidelity National Title Inc. (FNF) into the No. 1 U.S. mortgage title insurer by acquiring more than 50 firms and absorbing their market share and customers.

Now, he wants to do the same in wine, a fragmented market teeming with more than 7,600 producers in the U.S. alone. In every winery deal, Foley has shunned short-term debt in favor of using 25- or 30-year loans and then capped his leverage at 30 percent of his invested capital.

Kicking Himself
He favors aggressive lowball bids. In 2010, he pursued a prestigious New Zealand pinot noir producer called Te Kairanga with a book value of $20 million. Foley got it for $8 million. “I’m not doing anything I haven’t already done,” Foley says with a shrug. “You buy companies, collapse the back office, keep the front office and enhance the marketing and sales programs.”Foley is betting that a combination of greater wine volume and improved branding will elevate his labels in a market flooded with them. After every acquisition, Foley pumps his new wines into his existing distribution channels to stores and restaurants.

He says he must add cases to get more clout with distributors, who choose which wines to showcase for retailers and which to shunt off to the back of the warehouse. So he’s hunting for farms in California’s Central Valley to produce more wine for his many labels and for brands already popular with consumers.
Foley is still kicking himself for letting a Central California producer called Four Vines Winery get snapped up by another suitor in 2010 for an undisclosed bid. Priced below $20 a bottle, the winery’s Naked Chardonnay and zesty zinfandels are a smash with budget-conscious buyers, and the winery produces about 100,000 cases annually.

Blackberry Finish
“That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for, something that’s got some pull to it and distributor relationships,” Foley says. “I’ve got to find one like that.”Foley became smitten with the vineyard life in the mid- 1990s after moving to Santa Barbara and discovering the nearby Santa Ynez Valley, a savannah of oaks and ranchland nestled between coastal hills that’s ideal for growing the finicky pinot noir grape. In 1996, Foley bought a 30-acre (12-hectare) winery there and dubbed it Lincourt after his daughters, Lindsay and Courtney.

After every harvest, Foley visits with the vintners on many of his properties as they blend different batches of juice into a wine ready for aging. Camille Benitah, the Bordeaux-born winemaker at Merus, says Foley relishes being in the barrel room and exploring how to balance earthiness, acidity and fruit into an elegant cabernet sauvignon.

A Grand Improvisation
“He is very humble about it,” says Benitah, sampling a 2007 Merus with a nose of pipe tobacco and a long blackberry finish. “He lets us work, and he sees we are creating something special, something we won’t compromise, and he loves to see it happen.”

As a venture that blends agriculture and selling luxury goods, making wine has broken the hearts and bank accounts of many would-be vintners. Foley’s moves appear to be a grand improvisation rather than a carefully plotted campaign, says Vic Motto, chairman of Global Wine Partners LLC, a St. Helena, California-based investment bank.

Foley not only wants to be both a mass-market producer and the proprietor of fine wine boutiques; he even muses about opening a luxury hotel in the Napa Valley. Motto says Foley’s rapid accumulation of properties is unorthodox in a business where vintners favor building a wine group organically over many years.

‘No Master Plan’
“We’ve never seen anyone using his own capital to buy distressed assets and then try and put them together into a working unit,” says Motto, a 30-year Napa veteran. “He will have to do a lot of work to accomplish that.”

Seated at a round table in his Chalk Hill office and tapping a stack of business cards from wine industry contacts with his finger, Foley seems more amused than stressed by the challenges before him. Dressed in blue jeans and wearing his snowy hair long, he’s a cheerful man who pokes fun at himself.
When told that vintners in Napa wonder what his strategic objective is, he guffaws. “They give me too much credit!” he says with a high-pitched giggle. “There is no master plan.”

Underneath his avuncular exterior lies a steeliness borne of years of deals in the mortgage industry, says Thomas Hagerty, his friend and a managing director at Boston-based buyout firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP. He says Foley is skilled at finding troubled companies, stripping out valuable assets and integrating them into his own group.

Rare Skills
In 2010, Foley was eager to improve sales at Firestone Vineyard, a Santa Ynez producer of $20 reds and whites he bought three years earlier for $50 million. The problem was, its tasting room was located in Paso Robles, a viticultural area an hour’s drive north of Santa Ynez. So Foley bought a Paso Robles-based producer called Eos Estate Winery out of bankruptcy and converted the Firestone tasting room into an Eos showcase, appealing to visitors who prefer locally produced wines. Sales at the tasting room quickly doubled, he says.

“Bill has a deep understanding of financial risk and operational risk, and it’s rare to see those two skills in one guy,” Hagerty says. “He does love wine, but he’s not a hobbyist. He’s in this to build a first-class business.”

Foley graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, in 1967 with an engineering degree and then switched from the Army to the Air Force, serving four years and earning the rank of captain. He went on to receive a Master of Business Administration at Seattle University and a law degree from the University of Washington.

Market Leader
After moving to Phoenix and working as a real-estate lawyer, he took control of Fidelity National Title in 1984 through a leveraged buyout. The company, which protects mortgage lenders from losses in the event a home seller lacks clear title to a property, had $6 million in annual sales and was then the No. 92 title insurer in the U.S.

By March 2000, Foley had renamed the company Fidelity National Financial Inc. and had made it the No. 1 mortgage title insurer after acquiring archrival Chicago Title Corp. for $1.1 billion. The following year, Foley launched a subsidiary called Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) that sold data- management software to mortgage companies. He catapulted the venture into a market leader in 2003 with the $1 billion purchase of the financial services arm of Alltel Corp., which serviced almost half of the home loans in the U.S.

Housing Crash
In 2006, he spun it off in an offering that created $7.6 billion in market capitalization. The total value of Foley’s stakes in both his companies soared to $454 million in 2007. As subprime mortgages started defaulting en masse, Foley stepped down as chief executive officer of Fidelity National Financial in May 2007. He gave up day-to-day management just as the firm’s fortunes were undermined by the housing crash: Net income at the company slid to $130 million in 2007 from a peak of $964 million in 2005, and in 2008 the company lost $179 million. Foley, who remains chairman, says that after 23 years in title insurance, he wanted to spend more time playing golf and tending to his vineyards.

Rather than ease into semiretirement, Foley had to overcome distribution problems at his fledgling wine business. Two years after setting up Lincourt in 1996, Foley bought a 460-acre Thoroughbred ranch nearby and planted it with pinot noir and chardonnay grapes. He dubbed it Foley Estates. He says both wineries, in which he’d invested $18 million, were headed for disaster as unsold inventory piled up.

Elegant and Complex
“I wanted to learn how you make wine, and I’d sunk all this money into it,” Foley says. “And I’m like, ‘God, I have to do something. I’ve got 20,000 cases of wine from last year, and this year I’m going to have another 25,000, and I’m selling 2,000?’ It was hilarious.”

Determined to make inroads with distributors, Foley bought Firestone Vineyard, which produced 140,000 cases a year in Santa Ynez Valley. The next year, he acquired Sebastiani, a 109-year- old winery that epitomizes California’s Italian winemaking roots and cranks out 250,000 cases a year. In early 2010, Foley cast his eye on Chalk Hill. Cobbled together from 13 parcels over 38 years by San Francisco plaintiff lawyer Fred Furth, it emerged as a premier label that delivered elegant and complex wines for about $50 and up.

By the time Foley arrived, its high-alcohol reds and whites had lost suppleness and cachet and were no longer selling like those of Frog’s Leap, Cakebread Cellars and other peers, says Kerrin Laz, wine director at Dean & DeLuca Inc., a chain of gourmet grocery emporiums based in New York.

Grey Fungus
“All those wines still maintained relevance,” she says. “Chalk Hill did not.”During harvest in early fall, Foley saw how difficult his new career could be when unseasonal rains drenched Sonoma just as the grapes were reaching peak ripeness. The moisture caused a countywide outbreak of botrytis, a gray fungus that spoils grapes, and Chalk Hill lost about half of its chardonnay crop. The development raises concerns about the 2011 vintage’s volume. “If you run out of product and lose shelf space, somebody else will get that slot,” says Mark Lingenfelder, Chalk Hill’s vineyard manager.

Foley takes the news in stride as he visits with guests of the estate on an October afternoon. He says the Chalk Hill brand possesses prestige to build on, and thanks to his deals, he’s finally getting his labels onto the shelves of mass-market retailers such as BevMo Inc., a 114-store chain in California and Arizona.

Apples and Nectarines
A glass of Chalk Hill’s 2009 chardonnay is placed in front of Foley. The scent of apples and nectarines wafts from the wine. One of his guests compliments the estate’s Olympic-sized equestrian ring and asks whether Foley rides horses. He shakes his head and says he’s a cyclist. “I was thinking of going this afternoon,” Foley says, swirling his wine. “But now I’m going to drink this chardonnay.”

When vintage wine goes bad

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:18:56 GMT

Even if kept in temperature- and humidity-controlled conditions in a million-dollar cellar: they can go bad, oxidise or simply not taste very good after years of ageing. As someone who has occasion to sample a lot of older wines, I have ceased being shocked that even a great vintage, kept under ideal conditions, can be a complete dud. Indeed, the older I get and the older those wines get, the more convinced I am that keeping wines for decades is a very risky business.

In some cases even the greatest wines can begin to evaporate in the bottle, causing an air space at the neck, called ullage, which is why some collectors have their old bottles opened at intervals and topped off under the supervision of the estate owners.

There is also the possibility of the wine being corked, with some estimates suggesting that up to 15 per cent of all bottles may be so damaged. For this reason none of the most illustrious auction houses like Christie's International, Sotheby's and Hart Davis Hart will guarantee the soundness of wines offered.

China Effect
Of course, many who buy rare old wines at auction are not connoisseurs at all and have no intention of ever opening the bottles. Instead, they wait to re-sell the wines at higher prices, a multiplier effect that has largely been driven for the last few years by the Chinese auction market. Restaurateurs get equally antsy about selling very old, very expensive wines on their list, which are sometimes there more for show than anything else. While policies differ from restaurant to restaurant, many will absorb the cost of a verifiable bad bottle on their list bought by a guest.

“We can't put warning labels on our wines,” says Charles Masson, owner of La Grenouille in New York, where the customers tend to be very affluent and very faithful. “There is always a risk in storing old wines. But if a bottle is truly bad, we will not make our guest pay for it.”

And if a guest spurns a bottle because he simply doesn't care for the taste or erroneously insists it's gone bad? “It's an awkward situation,” says Masson. “But then we do charge for the wine if we know it's sound.”

Attraction of Youth
As La Grenouille replenishes its list, Masson is stocking fewer older vintages. “The prices are now so high and there is a diminished demand from our clientele,” he says. “We actually encourage them to try a younger, less expensive wine more conducive to the meal rather than go for the 1998 Haut-Brion on our list that costs $US2,250.”

The tradition of drinking very old wines is more British than French, especially among those Brits who have been involved in the French wine trade for centuries. Now, technology and contemporary preference have made the idea of drinking younger, fresher, dependable wines more reasonable than taking a risk on an old one whose best days may be behind it.

“An average vintage will age and pass its peak faster,” says Corinne Mentzelopoulos, owner of the first growth Chateau Margaux in Bordeaux. “But great vintages, such as 1953, 1959, and 1961 are today the best and the most moving experiences one can have and when kept by the wine experts who know those wines, might still get better with further ageing.”

Harvest timing
Mentzelopoulos says modern viticulture allows her more leeway in how she makes her wines: “We can wait and pick the grapes when we believe them to have achieved maturity, which I find is one of the major changes at Margaux and in Bordeaux.”

In the past, growers had to bring the grapes in before the rot set, she said. Now, in vintage years Bordeaux winegrowers can harvest at the optimum time, when the tannins are ripe and therefore softer, making the wines more pleasant to drink from the beginning. “So, yes, they can be drunk earlier, although there are some vintages which remain very harsh when young,” Mentzelopoulos said. “In good-to-great vintages it is still better to wait.”

She says only a few estates in Bordeaux and Burgundy make wines that improve as they age. Wines of other regions and lesser vintages should be drunk earlier “because they will pass their peak faster.”
In other words, few wines, or those who drink them, will age gracefully - something to keep in mind when ordering a bottle older than yourself.

Sparkling wines entice the senses

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:34:01 GMT

Leave it to the French to speak of wine and love in the same sentence. The Gallic love for wine gives inspiration for a variety of sensual indulgences.

It is hard to rival the experience Champagne delivers to the senses. (All Champagne is sparkling wine but not all sparkling wine is Champagne.) These legendary wines come from the northernmost wine-growing region in France. The primary grapes used are chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier.

Duval-Leroy (NV) Brut is a great example of Champagne. Brut means it’s dry, NV means it’s nonvintage — only exceptional years are declared vintage years. Duval-Leroy Brut is complex, elegant and intense; just the sort of sparkling wine that made a 17th century French monk named Dom Perignon exclaim, “I am tasting the stars!” Those little explosions of flavor are what it’s all about.

French sparkling wine produced outside the Champagne region are called cremants and often can be very good values. Pierre Sparr Cremant Rose Brut from the Alsace region of France is made from pinot noir grapes. Dry, in the traditional rose style, Pierre Sparr strikes a balance between sweet strawberry and tart cherry flavors. A wonderful food wine — try it with baked Brie topped with fig jam.

The Italians have their own ideas about sparkling wines and they tend to be playful and regional with sparklers such as prosecco and spumante. Rosa Regale, made by Banfi, is a seductively sweet bubbly from the Piedmont region produced from brachetto grapes. Low in alcohol, but long on flavor, fresh raspberry and strawberry erupt from the glass.

If there were doubts wonderful things come in small packages, an intimate half-bottle of Chateau Villefranche Sauternes quickly will dispel them. One of Bordeaux’s most prized wines, Sauternes are produced from semillon, sauvignon blanc and muscadelle grapes that have been affected by a fungus that produces a condition called “noble rot.” These wines are lush, highly concentrated, sweet and rich. Though generally considered dessert wines, this wine can be served before or after dinner.

Avoid $2,000 Bottles of Aging Vintages, Go With Younger Wine: John Mariani

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:28:41 GMT

Pianist Arthur Rubinstein was fond of telling the story of the wine connoisseur who once invited the composer Johannes Brahms to dinner: “This is the Brahms of my cellar,” said the collector to his guests, filling the master’s glass from a dusty bottle. Brahms looked at the color of the wine, smelled it and finally took a taste. “Hmmm,” he said after putting down the glass. “Better bring your Beethoven.”

That’s the trouble with old wines. Even if kept in temperature- and humidity-controlled conditions in a million- dollar cellar: they can go bad, oxidize or simply not taste very good after years of aging.
As someone who has occasion to sample a lot of older wines, I have ceased being shocked that even a great vintage, kept under ideal conditions, can be a complete dud. Indeed, the older I get and the older those wines get, the more convinced I am that keeping wines for decades is a very risky business.
In some cases even the greatest wines can begin to evaporate in the bottle, causing an air space at the neck, called ullage, which is why some collectors have their old bottles opened at intervals and topped off under the supervision of the estate owners.

There is also the possibility of the wine being corked, with some estimates suggesting that up to 15 percent of all bottles may be so damaged. For this reason none of the most illustrious auction houses like Christie’s International (CHRS), Sotheby’s (BID) and Hart Davis Hart will guarantee the soundness of wines offered.

China Effect
Of course, many who buy rare old wines at auction are not connoisseurs at all and have no intention of ever opening the bottles. Instead, they wait to re-sell the wines at higher prices, a multiplier effect that has largely been driven for the last few years by the Chinese auction market. Restaurateurs get equally antsy about selling very old, very expensive wines on their list, which are sometimes there more for show than anything else. While policies differ from restaurant to restaurant, many will absorb the cost of a verifiable bad bottle on their list bought by a guest.

“We can’t put warning labels on our wines,” says Charles Masson, owner of La Grenouille in New York, where the customers tend to be very affluent and very faithful. “There is always a risk in storing old wines. But if a bottle is truly bad, we will not make our guest pay for it.”And if a guest spurns a bottle because he simply doesn’t care for the taste or erroneously insists it’s gone bad? “It’s an awkward situation,” says Masson. “But then we do charge for the wine if we know it’s sound.”

Attraction of Youth
As La Grenouille replenishes its list, Masson is stocking fewer older vintages. “The prices are now so high and there is a diminished demand from our clientele,” he says. “We actually encourage them to try a younger, less expensive wine more conducive to the meal rather than go for the 1998 Haut-Brion on our list that costs $2,250.”

The tradition of drinking very old wines is more British than French, especially among those Brits who have been involved in the French wine trade for centuries. Now, technology and contemporary preference have made the idea of drinking younger, fresher, dependable wines more reasonable than taking a risk on an old one whose best days may be behind it.

“An average vintage will age and pass its peak faster,” says Corinne Mentzelopoulos, owner of the first growth Chateau Margaux in Bordeaux. “But great vintages, such as 1953, 1959, and 1961 are today the best and the most moving experiences one can have and when kept by the wine experts who know those wines, might still get better with further aging.”

Harvest Timing
Mentzelopoulos says modern viticulture allows her more leeway in how she makes her wines: “We can wait and pick the grapes when we believe them to have achieved maturity, which I find is one of the major changes at Margaux and in Bordeaux.”In the past, growers had to bring the grapes in before the rot set, she said. Now, in vintage years Bordeaux winegrowers can harvest at the optimum time, when the tannins are ripe and therefore softer, making the wines more pleasant to drink from the beginning.

“So, yes, they can be drunk earlier, although there are some vintages which remain very harsh when young,” Mentzelopoulos said. “In good-to-great vintages it is still better to wait.”She says only a few estates in Bordeaux and Burgundy make wines that improve as they age. Wines of other regions and lesser vintages should be drunk earlier “because they will pass their peak faster.”In other words, few wines, or those who drink them, will age gracefully -- something to keep in mind when ordering a bottle older than yourself.

Wine & chocolate: A perfect pairing for Valentine's Day

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:14:45 GMT

DENVER - If you like chocolate and if you like wine, it may seem like a no brainer to share this duo with your sweetie this Valentine's Day. 9NEWS Your Money Reporter Heidi McGuire found the right person to help you make the right purchase when pairing these popular indulgences.

Doug Caskey is the executive director of the Colorado Wine Industry and he brought in five bottles of local wines to pair with chocolates from local Boulder-based chocolatier Jenny Thamer of Lioni Chocolates. Thamer starter her business one year ago and currently sells her hand-crafted truffles online at www.lionichocolate.com, at Cured in Boulder, and at The Perfect Petal in Denver.

Caskey says the most important thing to keeping mind when choosing a wine to pair with chocolate is to buy what you like. If you force it, then chances are you're not going to like either. And keep it simple. Wine can be complex on its own, so try to keep your chocolate pairings to the basics like dark, milk, and white chocolate.

Two glasses of wine a night triples risk of mouth cancer, Government warns

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:34:16 GMT

Television adverts which start running on Sunday evening will say that drinking "just a little bit more" than recommended daily limits for alcohol increases the risk of serious health problems. Government advice states that men should drink no more than four units a day and women should have no more than three.

A large 250ml glass of wine is classed as three units, as is a pint of continental lager. The adverts will say that those who regularly drink six units in a day double their chance of high blood pressure and triple the risk of developing mouth cancer. Mouth cancer is diagnosed in more than 5,000 people a year, leading to about 1,800 deaths, while about 12 million people have high blood pressure, increasing their chances of strokes and heart attacks.

The adverts, run under the Change4Life banner, will encourage drinkers to cut down by having alcohol-free days, not drinking at home before going out, swapping to low or alcohol-free drinks and using smaller glasses.

Mouth cancer, also known as oral cancer, is uncommon, but cases have risen by 20 per cent in the past three decades. It affects twice as many men as women. High blood pressure is far more common, with about 12 million sufferers in the UK, about 7 million of whom are diagnosed. Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said the campaign was being launched "to alert people that it is not just binge drinkers who damage their health".

David Cameron has recently indicated that he might back a minimum alcohol price in England to deter excess consumption, overruling the advice of Mr Lansley, who believes the move would have little impact.
In 2009, Prof Sir Liam Donaldson, the then chief medical officer, called for a 50p-a-unit minimum price. However, this idea was quickly quashed by Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, who said he did not want to "punish the sensible majority".

Health officials are now understood to be examining schemes which could prevent the sale of alcohol at under 40p or 50p a unit in shops and supermarkets. Scotland is currently proposing a minimum alcohol price of about 45p a unit. This which would mean a bottle of own-brand gin with about 37.5 per cent alcohol content would go up from £6.95 to £11.85, and a bottle of cheap wine would rise from about £3.75 to £4.20.