August 6, 2006

untitled 898

5 Comments

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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licen­sing terms here etc.]
Inte­res­ting post from Jason at Stormhoek, re. the utter mess that is Bor­deaux:

The Bor­deaux mar­ket has been in a severe (and wor­se­ning) depres­sion for at least four years. The situa­tion is due to a com­plex com­bi­na­tion of things: Redu­ced demand (mar­ket doesn’t like most of their pro­ducts and French con­sump­tion is dec­li­ning), over­va­lua­tion of assets (returns can­not ser­vice absurdly high real estate pri­ces), arbi­trary price con­trols (it is ille­gal to sell below cer­tain set pri­ces), sub­si­dies (have ero­ded com­pe­ti­ti­ve­ness) and over regu­la­tion (limi­ting the crea­ti­vity of the producers).Needless to say, the result is abso­lute turmoil.

I’ve been in the wine busi­ness for over a year now, and I’m begin­ning to think that pretty much most of it is in com­plete tur­moil, one way or another. But the­rein lies the oppor­tu­nity.
[Afterthought: Title for future blog post:] “Too many gra­pes, not enough alcoho­lics.”
[Bonus Link:] My favo­rite food blog: Nood­le­pie.

5 Responses to “untitled 898”

  1. Robert says:
    August 6, 2006 at 8:06 am

    Ziggy’s spi­ders.

  2. Sheamus says:
    August 6, 2006 at 12:29 pm

    Enjo­yed the post Hugh! I left a note for Jason regar­ding the LCBO here in Onta­rio as a poten­tial buyer for Stormhoek wines. I’m sure there are hun­dreds of thou­sands of geeks that would enjoy a glass, espe­cially with your labels on the bottle. Fair war­ning… The LCBO is a mons­ter orga­ni­za­tion and I don’t know if you can make a buck. Howe­ver, nothing ven­tu­red, nothing gained.

  3. pieman says:
    August 7, 2006 at 11:14 am

    Oh shucks, that’s sweet. Not sur eyou’ll feel the same way as of this month. Demain, we move to Toulouse.

  4. Hugh MacLeod says:
    August 7, 2006 at 11:42 am

    We’ll see, Pie­man… you know how I LOVE French food =) …espe­cially when coif­fed down with vin rose.

  5. pieman says:
    August 7, 2006 at 11:54 am

    Indeed — and Paris, loved your accor­dion video :) I think bore­dom might be my main pro­blem in France. But, I do like Tou­louse, cas­sou­let, vin et al, but will I blog the food in France??? I have a fee­ling it’ll be sum­mit else, we’ll see. Any­way 24 hours to go and not much sleep plan­ned in Sai­gon tonight and cer­tainly no blog rea­ding :) )