Nyetimber's Tillington Vineyard produces arguably the greatest wine in England; we have been supporters, and fans, of the wine since the first vintage was cautiously released nearly a decade ago. With the release of the 2014 vintage imminent, Brad Greatrix (who makes the wines alongside his wife Cherie Spriggs) came to Farr Vintners for the first vertical tasting outside the property of the first four vintages of this wine: 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2014.
Jean-Marie Guffens needs little introduction to our customers. The maverick Belgian vigneron has produced outstanding, great value wines for decades through his Domaine Guffens-Heynen and négociant Maison Verget. These wines are now almost exclusively from the Maconnais, from old vines and great sites overlooked by those with tunnel vision for the Côte d’Or. Please see our in-depth profile on Jean-Marie from the definitive vertical of his wines, hosted by Farr Vintners.
Jean-Marie Guffens left Flanders in 1976 with his wife Maine and headed to Burgundy. Following studies in viticulture and winemaking, they bought a few plots in the Maconnais to make a wine of their own. These vines from Pierreclos are the foundation of Domaine Guffens-Heynen, with Jean-Marie slowly purchasing further plots across the region that champion less lauded vineyards that lie south of the Cote de Beaune.
Stephen Browett first visited Kumeu River Winery - and met winemaker Michael Brajkovich - in January 1990 on a visit to Auckland. He’d been tipped off about a new Chardonnay producer (first vintage 1985) by Barry Phillips who had bought the 1987 for the wine list of the legendary White Horse Inn at Chilgrove. After tasting the 1989 vintage from barrel he placed an order - Farr Vintners has shipped every vintage since then.
Farr Vintners was the first UK merchant to establish a sales office in Hong Hong – over 20 years ago – which has been run ever since by Jo Purcell along with an excellent team of tri-lingual English/Cantonese/Mandarin speakers. When Jo arrived in what was, at the time, a British colony, the import tax on wine was 90% and sales were small. However, we always had customers here who were fanatical wine lovers and a massive breakthrough came when duty was completely scrapped in 2008. This resulted, not surprisingly, in an extraordinary boom in demand for wine which has continued to this day. Hong Kong is now very much the wine hub of Asia and arguably the world’s capital city of fine wine. Wine lovers enjoy wine at lower prices here than anywhere else in the world as there is no sales tax (VAT/GST) as well as zero duty. There is a vibrant restaurant culture with wonderful food and a great passion for the world’s finest wines.
As Crystal Palace Football Team flew into HK for the Asia Premier League games, so did Stephen our Chairman – such a coincidence! In between football fever we arranged a staff dinner on Friday night at a Shanghainese Restaurant – Lao Xue Yuan (Old Snow Garden). A recently opened cozy restaurant which is located near to our Hong Kong office in Causeway Bay.
It’s not often that you sit down ahead of a night focused on drinking old white Burgundy excited, rather than apprehensive, about opening the wines. It’s even rarer that you come away with a broad smile on your face, with the wines having exceeded all expectation in quality and consistency. Premox – premature oxidation – still plagues white Burgundy to the extent that opening 10 wines from almost any producer from the early 1990s through to the mid-2000s would result in a number of bottles best for making sauces or pouring down the drain. However, on this night, all 10 were in perfect condition without a hint of this fault across the board. What’s more, these wines are some of the best-value offerings in Burgundy, with the prices of many wines from the region now out of reach or overpriced for many buyers.
Nestled in the heart of Pauillac on Bordeaux’s left bank, Chateau Pontet Canet, the overachieving Fifth Growth, has been striving to make wines of the highest quality, reflected in consumer and critical acclaim, since the turn of the century. Last month Melanie Tesseron, General Director of the Chateau, came to visit Farr Vintners and lead a masterclass through 10 vintages of Pontet Canet and explain how the team are moving the wine forward to new heights both in the vineyard and the winery.
Ever since I first visited Jean-Marie Guffens and Jean Rijckaert, over 20 years ago, I have been a huge fans of Verget’s wines. Farr Vintners has imported every vintage that they have made since 1992 and we are now one of the world’s biggest buyers of these great value, high quality White Burgundies. From their base in the rolling hills of Macon, Verget sources grapes from small independent growers from all over the Burgundy region which are harvested by their own team of pickers at optimum ripeness and then vinified in their state of the art winery in Sologny. Here they have a range of stainless steel tanks, concrete vats, foudres and oak barrels of varying sizes and ages. Jean-Marie Guffens and Julien Desplans make wine like a great chef prepares food, using the winery to full effect as they tweak the “elevage” to suit the character of each individual wine. No two wines are made to exactly the same recipe but all share in common the Verget house style of ripeness, acidity and minerality in perfect balance. Verget’s wines are always bright and vibrant with subtle use of oak and their richness is always balanced by structure and acidity.
As most Farr Vintners customers will know, we have been importing and championing the White Burgundies of Jean-Marie Guffens and his negociant house Verget for many years. In fact, it was over 20 years ago now that I first visited his winery in the sleepy village of Sologny and met this eccentric, slightly bonkers - but undoubtedly genius - winemaker. His wines had been brought to our attention initially by some rave views for the amazing 1992 vintage and they really were outstanding (and still are - if you can find them). We bought all that we could from this year and have shipped every vintage produced ever since.
