Word: teau
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...setting as Alfred Tesseron finishes his tour of the Château Pontet-Canet, which is perched on a hill above the legendary Bordeaux wine village of Pauillac. He has talked proudly about how his father bought the château 30 years ago. He has driven his electric cart along the neat rows of vines and pointed out some of his big recent investments: the state-of-the-art water recycling[an error occurred while processing this directive] system, the new storage and bottling barn and the twin rows of conical fermentation vats. Now comes the moment of truth...
...Marie Courselle knows all too well what he means. Château Thieuley, which her grandfather bought in the 1950s, used to sell about 30% of its output to big French retailers. Then, two years ago, it received a blunt message: Cut your prices, or we'll cut back on purchases. The Courselles refused, and their hypermarket sales dropped by half. They are now busy trying to build up a direct commercial network of their own. That means relying on a handful of merchants to sell into major markets, and doing the rest themselves. When they are not harvesting...
...bottle of his latest creation, aimed at the British market. It is the classic Bordeaux shape, but two elements stand out. The first is a screw top, rather than a traditional cork. The second is the label. The front has a huge drawing of a pretty château and announces the name: Bordeaux Classique. On the back, in English, is the lure: "Steeped in heritage," it reads, "the winemaker's philosophy was to take classic Bordeaux but deliver it in a very modern way." "There's no reason why we can't make industrial wines just as well...
...preparing for the grand opening of VIN, a high-end wine shop featuring the finest offerings from Bordeaux. On the second floor of the shop, against the wall in a big glass display case, sit 40 of the great wines from the region, including a 1985 Château Margaux[an error occurred while processing this directive] that's on sale for a mere $1,487.50. Asked if wine is now certifiably hot in China, Mirey, the former sommelier at Petrus, a splashy French restaurant in Hong Kong's Island Shangri-La hotel, grins and says, "Oh yeah." Well, maybe...
...alone isn't enough. "I'm in a privileged situation, but it's not a given," he says. "I must continue aspiring to be the best." That means more investment as well as a lot of savvy marketing. This year, for the first time, Tesseron threw open his château doors to visitors, by appointment only, and hired three people to receive them. One of the three speaks Chinese. "Yes, there are new clients, but the real business still comes from our old ones," he says. "I'm sure in the next 20 to 30 years, people will be interested...