New Bauduc Website
June 17th 2008, by GQ
We are delighted to launch our brand new Château Bauduc website at www.bauduc.com this week, which can be opened by clicking the big red button at the top of this page. The site has been created mainly with our UK customers in mind, with a comprehensive online ordering system (Buy Wine) a key feature.
We have had an online system in place for the past five years on our old site, but we felt that we needed to offer something a little more sophisticated.
I’d really like to know your thoughts on the site – feel free to comment below or contact me.
The next time I hatch a cunning marketing plan, it might just be smarter not to try and design and write everything at the same time, at a time when there is so much to be done in the vineyard: new website, new blog, new Gazette newsletter, new Bauduc Bond offer, and so on. The brain’s gone slightly mushy.
Bauduc in The Observer: Buy Direct for Value
June 16th 2008, by GQ
Our thanks to Patrick Collinson of The Observer for his kind recommendation on how to save money by buying direct from a vineyard online, or rather Bauduc. Does anyone know of any other overseas vineyards
that sell direct to people at home in the UK? Of course, you could order wine from a foreign vineyard and have it sent over, at some cost, and pay duty and VAT as it comes through Customs (that’s the law, folks). But does anyone do that, and do you get caught for the duty?
A weekend wine tour of Bordeaux
June 10th 2008, by GQ
We’ve just spent a great weekend with some friends from Norfolk who rented our farmhouse. Dinner at the château on friday evening – local Agneau de Pauillac served with, er, Pauillac – was followed by two leisurely days on the Right and the Left Banks of Bordeaux.
On Saturday, Otto Rettenmaier showed us around his chai (winery) and his vineyard at Chåteau La Tour Figeac, right next door to Cheval Blanc in St-Emilion on the border with Pomerol. La Tour Figeac is one of the many up-and-coming estates in Saint Emilion making terrific wine at a fair price, and Otto is a very genial host. After a light lunch in the old town, and an opportunity in a restaurant to sniff what a ‘corked’ wine smells like, we drove around some top spots – Pavie, Ausone and so on – and then trod some of the hallowed ground around the plateau of Pomerol. The most eye-opening part is the 100-fold current price difference of wines from the 2005 vintage, between one vineyard and its next door neighbour – Pétrus and Gazin in Pomerol, with almost as much of a gap between Ausone 2005 and Belair 2005 on the hillside above St-Emilion.
Article from Bauduc Gazette in Guardian
June 9th 2008, by GQ
I was talking to a customer who works at the Guardian about an article I was writing for La Gazette – our printed newsletter that’s sent out via La Poste – and this article appeared in the paper before the Gazette had even landed on the doormats of our customers.
In the Gazette article I discuss how the high rate of UK Duty has an impact on cheap house wines in restaurants – the duty costs more than the wine itself. Have you ever wondered why UK restaurants charge at least £14 for a bottle of wine now? The full Gazette article – Darling goes over the top – is included in this blog.