One of the rising stars of the otherwise closely knit
community of Burgundy winemakers, François has turned a handicap
into an advantage.

No complex, ancient or elaborate names on an intricate
ancient label on the bottles, just a seemingly handwritten name,
his name, on a simple single colour background pasted on a
bottle of, well, rather pleasant wine.

Based in Meursault, Mikulski makes first growth wines as
well as a more general Bourgogne Aligoté white wine that
surprises because of its pure mineral taste with a hint of the
buttery flavour that characterises Meursault or Chablis.

That is no accident. Mikulski uses Aligoté vines that were
planted in 1929 and 1948, well before he was born. They have a
relative low yield in grapes that he lets mature well and then
keeps in big cool vats for freshness.

His father emigrated in 1939 from Poland to England. Later,
via Luxembourg, he settled in Dijon where François was born in
1963.

There were vintners in his mother’s family. François worked
with his uncle from 1984 to 1991 and when this uncle’s own sons
sought a different future, François and his wife Marie Pierre
Mikulski-Germain started to rent the maternal family vines as
well as an adjacent plot and created Domaine François Mikulski
in 1992.

The first eight years were very difficult. They needed a
bank loan to start and when they had hoped to sell their first
wines in 1992 to the wholesale buyers, the prices were so low
during a crisis that they decided to bottle the wines
themselves, which required even more money.

CALIFORNIA AND CHARDONNAY

François studied wine-making and after his military service
he went to California in 1983 to work in the vines there and
understand the differences between modern wine-making techniques
used in the United States and the traditional ways of Burgundy.

He started out with 4.5 hectares and works on nine
currently. The vines are in the village of Meursault and the
surrounding communes.

One quarter of the production is red. The white production
is focused on Meursault, a small but noble Burgundy wine
appreciated by connoisseurs.

François tries to underline the mineral element in the
wines, a freshness that goes well with seafood. Wines that are
pure, with some acidity. He uses a low percentage of new oak in
his barrels and for Meursault, the wines need to be kept for
five years in a bottle.

Mikulski wines are no supermarket wines but not unattainable
Burgundies either.

“We are mainly aiming for the international market and try
to cater for as many markets as possible, with one
representative in each country or state and modest volumes for
each market,” he told Reuters.

In Paris, for instance, there are just three shops that
stock Mikulski; the well-known Lavina, Augé cellars and Les
Caprices de l’Instant, while a dozen restaurants including
starred-chef Pierre Gagnaire and Hotel Bristol have his wine on
their list.

“The prices are, in my opinion, relative to the value of
pleasure that each appellation gives,” he said.

With a production in first growth (Premier Cru) of 15,000
bottles, he can send meaningful quantities to the main markets.

“Aligoté is relatively cheap, but the trick is to use old
vines and keep yields low for a superior wine,” he said.

Meursault is made with Chardonnay grapes. Mikulski also
makes a red Burgundy, Burgundy Passetoutgrains, Pommard, a
Meursault 1er cru Caillerets and a Volnay 1er cru
Santenots-du-milieu.

The Mikulskis strive to make top quality Burgundy wines that
are authentic, elegant and pure.

Authentic, because they use home-produced composts,
environmentally friendly products to address illnesses and
bacteria, ploughing, and a carefully preserved biological
balance of the soil.

Elegant due to healthy materials and yields of between 45hl
to 50hl for the whites and around 35hl for reds. Pneumatic
pressing followed by rigorous must-settling constitute the first
steps in the wine-making process. Natural yeasts are sufficient
for sugars to ferment for a period of three to four months in
cool cellars built in solid rock. Ageing takes place in oak
barrels on lees over a 12-month period.

The pureness comes from the efforts over a 30-month process.
With care for the most minute detail, and the use of
high-performance equipment such as a peristaltic pump, a
pneumatic press, oak barrels between one and five years old, and
estate bottling.

The Meursault sells for some 50 euros ($62.92) per bottle,
the Aligoté for some 12 euros, the Pommard for some 40 and the
Volnay as well. No record prices, but a price for a discerning
consumer and with some margin for the vintner.

After the difficult years, Mikulski now has better times.
But he knows that he and his wife have a privileged life.

“With the excessive prices of vineyards at the moment, it is
becoming a big problem to buy, or even to maintain a family
heritage, even if you were to win the lotto.”

($1 = 0.7947 euros)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Like other national treasures such as the Palace of Versailles and Notre Dame cathedral, the vines in the Ardour valley will be protected.

They contain the ancient DNA of local grape varieties. Some grapes are still being used with grapes from younger generation vines to make Saint-Mont wine.

“It is an exceptional plot,” said Olivier Bourdet-Pees, director of the Plaimont wine making firm. “The vines go back 200 years. They were planted in 1800 and 1810. There are 29 different grape varieties of which seven were unknown,” he said.

The vine disaster forced many vintners from regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy to seek grafts, or entire vines, from as far away as America.

The vines of Bordeaux were ravaged by the phylloxera outbreak from 1865, a decade after the famous classification of great wines in 1855, and had to be replanted with imported grafts on remaining stems.

In Burgundy, vintners pulled up their old French vines and replanted them with American pinot noir until they discovered that grafting was the best method.

SAFEGUARDING A NATIONAL HERITAGE

Scientists have been researching the plants and the grapes as part of a mission to safeguard the national heritage. On June 1, the local heritage and sites commission of the Midi Pyrenees region included the vines on the list of national historical monuments.

“This plot of 40 acres contains very old and non-grafted stocks and offers a remarkable example of biodiversity and of genetic heritage: 600 vines in 12 rows, some 20 different varieties of which seven have not previously been recorded,” the regional authorities said in a statement.

The plot also showed traces of ancient methods of agriculture, with double rows of vines planted in squares. Although the production is too small for a special wine, the vegetal material can be used to make younger vines.

For eight generations the plot has been in the hands of the family of vintner Jean-Pascal Pedebernade. About 20 years ago, scientists started to study the vines. It took them until 2008 to completely map the genetic make-up of the plants in a study that helped sway the commission in its decision.

The sandy soil plot lies near the village of Sarragchies near Saint-Mont in the Gers, in southwest France. The vines are planted wide apart, which may explain why it resisted the attacks by the phylloxera aphids that traveled to Europe from their original habitat in the United States.

Saint-Mont has its own AOC wine denomination. It is a sturdy wine like the Madiran, which is also produced by the vintners associated in the Plaimont cooperative group. Its headquarters is in the former Benedictine monastery whose monks planted vines around the year 1050 in the Middle Ages. The group also makes the sweet golden Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh and the Cotes de Gascogne wines.

The Saint-Mont AOC area has 46 villages and uses the Tanat, Pinenc, Cabernet France and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes for red and rose wines as well as Gros Manseng, Arrufiac and Petit Courbu for the whites.

While the cabernets are widely used elsewhere, the other grape varieties are typical for the region. Its producers are proud of the biodiversity of the area, which is helpful in the ultra competitive market for inexpensive wines.

Production is about 8 million bottles, half in red, 30 percent in whites and the rest in rosé. Two-thirds of the production is consumed in France with exports mainly to other European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and China. They sell in the range of seven to 14 euro per bottle ($8.77 to $17.54).

Other parcels of vines have also resisted phylloxera.

The Bollinger champagne firm has two walled pre-phylloxera vineyards, which it uses in its rare Vieilles Vignes Francaises. The 2000 vintage sold for 600 euro ($751.76) a bottle.

Other old plots include Romorantin in the centre of France, where Henry and Jean-Sebastien Marionnet claim to own a vineyard planted in 1850. The oldest vines they use for their La Pucelle de Romorantin are 160 years old, mixed with grapes from younger vines grown from the sprouts of the old vines from 2007.

The Stara Trta vines at Maribor in Slovenia are reputed to be more than 400 years old, while the oldest in France, in the city of Reims, are believed to be at least 344 years old.

(Editing by Patricia Reaney)

Limoux barely escaped historical relegation as a local specialty by a flood of Spanish fizz from the other side of the Pyrénées mountains and is now fighting its corner with an offer of quality sparkling wines at affordable prices for its sweet traditional Blanquette de Limoux Methode Ancestrale and dryer Blanquette de Limoux Brut.

“Twenty years ago the quality of Limoux wines in general was not very good,” said Richard Planas, the director of the AOC Limoux professional body. “A lot of work has been done and a lot has changed.”

Limoux lies to the south of the Medieval walled city of Carcassonne, not far from the Mediterranean and the eastern Pyrénées. The area has plenty of sun and rain while the winds from both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean soften the temperature extremes in both summer and winter.

The Roman historian Livy who died in 17 AD mentioned wines from Limoux, but the first mention of a sparkling wine from the area was found in 1531 records kept by the Benedictine monks of the abbey of Saint Hilaire, near the town.

“It is of course difficult to claim being the first, sparkling wine is a natural effect of yeast and it could have been discovered at several places around that time,” Planas said.

Other sparkling wines with a long pedigree are the Gaillac bubbly, also from the southwest, and the Clairette de Die from the northeast.

Legend has it that Dom Pérignon travelled during a pilgrimage to the Saint-Hilaire abbey – on the way to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain – and discovered the process of sparkling wines there.

On return to his abbey of Saint-Pierre d’Hautvillers near Reims, he started to experiment with the technique on local wines from the Champagne region with another monk, Dom Thiery Ruinart. Champagne quickly overshadowed its predecessors.

“Champagne is in another league altogether, both in volume terms as in price,” said Planas.

Blanquette means “white one” in southern French, a term also used for a cream sauce in such dishes as the ‘Blanquette de veau’ traditional veal stew.

In 1975, French vintner groups decided that bubbly wines from outside the Champagne are should be labeled “Crémant” (creamy) and the country now knows various varieties such as the Crémant de Bourgogne, Crémant de Loire, Crémant de Bordeaux, Crémant de Jura and also Crémant de Limoux. The term crémant may only be used on wine from France and Luxembourg.

These wines were widely consumed in France as a cheaper, and often regional, alternative to Champagne. But they themselves lost ground to Cava sparkling wine from Catalonia in Northern Spain, with Barcelona’s Freixenet as a big brand name, or the Asti Spumante or Prosecco from Italy.

ANT VS SHOVEL

“For us, the biggest competition is from the Cava,” said Planas. “It is a battle between an ant and a shovel; they make some 300 million bottles against our 10 million.”

Spanish Cava production makes it the second-biggest growing area of sparkling wine after Champagne. Since 1986 when Spain joined the European Economic Community, a forerunner of the EU, the cava found its way across the mountains and to other countries. Limoux only has limited means to resist.

There are 7,800 hectares of vines spread over 41 villages around Limoux, producing sparkling and ‘normal’ wines.

The Blanquette Brut predominantly uses a local grape variety, the Mauzac. Up to 10 percent of Chenin and Chardonnay are permitted.

The producers harvest and press grapes from various parcels and start making basis wines with the first fermentation. These are tasted to determine the blend for the final product.

The blend is put in bottles and a special mixture is added to provoke a second fermentation that creates the bubbles. This second fermentation takes nine months, during which the bottles are regularly turned to let the sediments settle in the neck.

The Crémant de Limoux is made with Chardonnay and Chenin and some addition of Mauzac and Pinot Noir. The Blanquette Methode Ancestrale uses only Mauzac, is trickier to make and needs to be bottled in March when the moon is at a certain point.

No mixtures are added to the bottles at the beginning of the second fermentation and some sediment remains in the bottle. These ‘pure’ traditional wines are sweeter due to the sugar in Mauzac that fuels the fermentation.

Cooperative

There are dozens of vintners in the area, producing wines under the various Limoux AOC and also the wider Languedoc label. The area is known to be good for Pinot Noir that is used by other red wine makers.

The largest grouping is the cooperative ‘Sieur d’Arques’ , named after a local squire who was known to enjoy the jugs of bubbly made by the St Hillaire monks, and which markets sparkling wines as “Premiere Bulle” (First Bubbly) in a standard, premium and rosé version.

The cooperative also provided Pinot Noir for the Red Bicycle wine of E & J Gallo in the United States. But several commercial staff members were convicted for having supplied a different grape variety.

“The affair has not really damaged Limoux, it was limited to some commercial staff at the cooperative and not related to the sparkling wine,” Planas said.

Next to the cooperative there are various firms catering to specific clients and tastes, such as Bruno Delmaz of Domaine Delmaz who has taken the route of “bio” ecology friendly wines.

Planas said that while the number of producers has declined over the decades in a trend from smaller plots to bigger vineyards, there remains a lively community.

“There are two young vintners who are having their first year of production this year, there still is new blood.”

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

“We were four at the start. Only one of us was already a wine-maker, I was in agriculture. We just could not understand why Ariege was the only area in France without vines while it had been an important producer in the past,” said Philippe Babin, one of the pioneers and a former vegetable seed grower.

He said the fledgling movement had little support at the start but that older local people would tell them how vines used to run everywhere in the region. Abandoned wine presses and barrels for making wine can still be found on many local farms.

“We encountered a lot of skepticism but in the end, wine is the noblest product of a region and we felt that Ariege merited wine,” Babin said.

On the other side of the Pyrenees, the sunny side in Spain, there are the wines from Navarra and Rioja. To the east lie the French vineyards of Corbieres and the cotes de Malepere, while Irouleguy in the Basque country and Madiran lie to the west.

Here in the Ariege region, the vines had been uprooted to make place for grain farms for bread in Toulouse and to feed the cattle in the gentle plains along the river Hers, which meanders past the Mediaeval town of Mirepoix, best-known for its carved wooden arcades along the central square.

The Ariege’s Mediterranean climate provides good conditions for growing vines with its warm days, while the cool mountain air helps to concentrate flavor in the grapes.

“The nearby mountains provide cold nights and it is that daily difference in temperatures that makes the grapes retract at night, putting a concentration of taste and color in the skins,” Babin said.

There had been vineyards here since Roman times and in the Middle Ages monks of the abbey of Saint-Antonin-de-Frédélas (Pamiers) made wines that were transported over the Ariege and Garonne rivers to Bordeaux and even made the sea crossing to England. In 1876, the director of a local model state farm replanted vines and there was a new boom.

EXODUS

The phylloxera ‘wine pest’ at the end of the 19th century and an exodus of people from this rural area to work in manufacturing up north during the age of industrialization, sounded the death knell for vines and by 1960 there was only a little production left for family use.

That was the state of play until Babin and the other Ariege “pioneers” re-planted vines and obtained a local IGP (Indication Geographique Protegee) wine classification from the agriculture authorities in 1998. The first harvest was in 2000.

The area is small and production limited. There are some six producers who work on 60 hectares of vineyards on chalky clay ground. The Mediterranean climate provides dry winters and warm summers. In 2009, they made 1,800 hectolitres, of which 75 percent was red wine, 15 percent rose and 10 percent white.

By contrast, the Bordeaux vineyards stretch for 59,000 hectares.

“It was only in 2008 that the revenues of the year were sufficient to cover the costs of that year, all the other years we had to add money,” said Babin.

His Coteaux d’Engravies domain now makes some 20 to 25,000 bottles per year and he hopes to arrive at 30-35,000 in 2013 as younger vines come on stream.

Meanwhile the wines have won awards and positive mentions in wine guides such as Hachette or Hugh Johnston. American importer Jeffrey Alpert distributed some Ariege wine to New York restaurants and there were exports to Japan, Austria and Denmark.

“All the producers here have about the same volumes as I do and that is not sufficient for real exports. Alpert took some boxes and the next year he asked for 20,000 bottles, that is almost all the production,” Babin said.

Most of the wines go to restaurants and some are sold in the Super-U supermarket in Mirepoix. They sell at around 10 euros ($13.22) per bottle.

VARIETY OF GRAPES

Despite the small production, there is a rich variety of grapes.

The whites can use 15 different grapes which include the well-known Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay Gris, Semillon, Chenin and Viognier. There are also the more ancient grapes such as Arrufiac, Camaralet de Lasseube, Courbu, petit and gross Manseng, Mauzac or Ondenc. These come from the nearby Bearn region and can trace their roots back to the 17th century.

In the reds there are the superstars Pinot Noir, Merlot, Syrah, Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon as well as Cot, petit Verdot and the lesser-known locals Fer, Tannat, and Tempranillo from Spain.

Babin is now experimenting with old Ariege grapes that are not yet allowed to be used in the wines. It will take a few more years before he could present them for acceptance by the authorities.

“We have that gap in our local memory of wine-making, we have to rediscover how the grapes develop in this particular climate,” Babin said.

The wines are assembled and the vintner can compose the taste of the wine by using various percentages of the grape varieties. The reds are fresh, pleasant in the mouth with fruity tastes. The whites reveal the minerals of the soil.

“The wines are very similar to Malepere or Corbieres, but due to the mountains we have a bit more concentration in taste, a bit more color and some more acidity and also sugar, a better balance” Babin said.

($1 = 0.7566 euros)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

Delon, once called “the male Brigitte Bardot” for his good looks, is one of France’s best-selling film actors with Jean-Paul Belmondo and comic Louis de Funes. While he never made a big splash in Hollywood, he has fans in Europe and Asia.

The sale raised more than 250,000 euros ($333,800), compared to an auctioneer’s estimate of 100,000 euros, with Chinese media businessman Dong Guo pushing up the prices for the main parts of the sale. He acquired 70 lots and fell short of his goal of acquiring the entire collection due to other bidders in the room at Fouquet’s hotel and restaurant on the Champs Elysees.

Buyers from China, Russia, United States and South America were active via Internet and phone lines and competed with the some 200 people in the stately room in the hotel, decorated with gold-colored curtains, dark wood paneling and black-and-white pictures of film stars and scenes.

Auction house Cornette de Saint Cyr, which sold wines of the cave of the Tour d’Argent restaurant in 2009, said Guo was president of the Yubang media group in Shenzhen and aimed to invite Delon to come to his city.

Delon was not present at the sale. Guo, with heavy-rimmed glasses, was sitting relaxed on a front-row seat, constantly lifting his hand with finger-signs to indicate his price increases.

Other buyers, like Paris-based wine trader Guerda Brahim, said some prices were ‘crazy’. “I came here to find some bargains to put in my cellar and sell them on to my clients,” he said.

The bottles had a Delon cellar-sign which made them not just interesting for wine collectors but also for people eager to own objects that had belonged to a film star like him. This was particularly evident as ‘Alain Delon’ labeled champagne or cognac reached prices at sometimes five times their estimate.

There were many bottles from 1935, Delon’s birth year.

A ‘star’ lot of six bottles Cheval Blanc 1947 sold for 20,000 euros and 12-bottles of Petrus 1972 sold for 12,500 euro. There were also bottles of cognac Bisquit Dubouché 1840 and a 9-liter ‘Salmanazar’ of Champagne Besserat de Bellefon 1979.

WOMEN AND WORRIES

Actress Mireille Darc started putting the collection together with Delon during their 15-year relationship until 1985. Before that, Delon had already been engaged to actress Romy Schneider, his co-star in the love triangle movie “The Swimming Pool,” and married to Nathalie Barthelemy.

Actor in about a hundred moves and stage plays, his biggest roles were perhaps in “Borsalino,” “The Leopard,” “The Samurai” or “Rocco and his brothers.”

Born November 8, 1935 in Sceaux in the Paris region, he now lives in Geneva, with his two youngest children from a Dutch model he separated from in 2002.

At 76, he has survived the deaths of several contemporaries and television images showed him very distressed at a last dinner of friends with actress Anne Giradot and at her funeral service in March 2011, where he was accompanied by Darc.

A spokeswoman declined to comment why Delon was selling.

“He manages his wine collection like a share portfolio. He is selling to be able to make new acquisitions,” she said. Delon also collects art and sold 40 modern works for 8 million euros in 2007.

Delon’s parents divorced when he was four and he had a difficult youth and was a butcher’s apprentice until he joined the French marines as part of his military service during the war in the French colonies of Indochina that resulted in independence for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. On his return he held odd jobs in the Les Halles area of Paris – where the big food markets were – and was spotted by a talent scout for his looks. His first film was in 1957.

His daughter Anouschka (1990) is an actress while his youngest son Alain-Fabien (1994) is in Swiss private school Le Rosey. Both Delon and the mother have spoken publicly about the boy’s addiction problems. He was involved in a shooting accident in July 2011 during a boozy party at Delon’s villa while the father was away. Delon won guardianship of his youngest children after a bitter legal battle.

The total value of the sale, at 5.8 million euros ($7.8 mln), broke the 2009 record of 5.5 million on face value and was more than the 5.1 million euros of 2010.

There were, however, more lots for sale and average prices were down on last year by 6.2 percent for reds and 12.9 percent for the whites as the financial crisis and economic worries hurt even the steadiest asset values in the global wine trade.

The main item, the special President’s lot of 460 liters of red Corton Clos du Roi, Cuvee Baronne du Bay, was auctioned by actor Christian Clavier and fashion model and designer Ines de la Fressange. It raised 110,000 euro for two charities and the buyer was Stephen Williams of the Antique Wine Company.

“This year’s auction takes place in a difficult financial and economic context,” said Alain Suguenot, chairman of the hospices and mayor of Beaune.

The second-highest buy was a 228-liter barrel of white Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru Cuvee Dames de Flandres at 56,710 euros by an anonymous ‘Asian amateur’ according to auctioneers Christie’s.

Prospective buyers were given tastings and dinners by top wine merchants such as Albert Bichot while three-star Michelin chef Michel Troisgros of Roanne made some signature dishes.

The sale was of the most recent vintage, that of 2011, and the wines need to be ‘tended’ for up to 24 months in Beaune and then stored for several more years before they can be drunk. After a freak climate in 2011, the harvest started early on August 29 and lasted 10 days.

“This vintage is the best of the century,” said Claude Chevallier, president of the Burgundy vintners association.

Roland Masse, the head wine-maker for the Hospices, said that while the seasons had been ‘disruptive’ in 2011, the harvest took place in clement weather, despite occasional rain, and pronounced this year’s vintage “sunny and luminous.”

PALACE FOR THE POOR

The Hospices de Beaune was founded as a hospital for the poor and needy in the 15th century as France was emerging from the 100 year’s War with England.

Although the medieval building with its multi-colored roof tiles still stands. There is now a modern hospital in Beaune.

The original hospital was financed by charitable contributions from wealthy Burgundians and over the centuries landowners have transferred vineyards to the hospital as a source of revenue.

The first such transfer was in 1457, by Guilemette Leverrier. Recent transfers were in April 2010 by Boston wine importer William D. Friedberg and in 1979 by the married couple Raymond Cyrot and Suzanne Chaudron who owned vineyards in Pommard and Beaune.

Built as a “Palace for the Poor” the hospital was constructed by local master artisans, Jean Rateau and Guillaume La Rathe and included a panel painting by Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden.

It was in 1850 that Joseph Petasse, the bursar of the hospital, started the sale of wines that would become the biggest charity auction in the world. The bidding is for lots of 228 liters of wine in barrels that can be transformed into 288 standard bottles.

The wines are among the best and most expensive of Burgundy, France’s second-biggest wine-making area after Bordeaux.

Albert Bichot has been the biggest buyer at the Hospices for the past 15 years, acquiring barrels on behalf of clients such as the Plaza Hotel in New York or the Intercontinental in Berlin. The Bichot firm has roots going back to 1831 and family member Francois Bichot donated his wine estates in the early 19th century.

The French Alzheimer research fund and a children’s cardiac surgery association will share the revenues from the President’s Lot, the rest goes to the Beaune hospital which plans a major restructuring and enlargement works starting in 2012, as well as maintenance for the old Hotel Dieu hospital.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

The sale of the so-called President’s Lot is a highlight of the annual “Hospices de Beaune” auction, at which rich wine enthusiasts bid for fine Burgundy wines in a yearly sale whose proceeds are donated entirely to charity.

But economic worries crimped enthusiasm at Sunday’s sale. Most auctioned bottles drew less than their expected bids, while the President’s Lot — a 460-liter barrel — raised 110,000 euros, a steep drop from the 400,000 euros it raised last year.

“This year’s auction takes place in a difficult financial and economic context,” said Alain Suguenot, chairman of the hospices and mayor of Beaune, home to a striking medieval-era hospice in the midst of wine-growing country.

The auction is a meeting place for jet-setting millionaires and wine trades set on obtaining quality wines and funding charitable organizations.

Fashion figure Ines de la Fressange and comic film actor Christian Clavier presided over the sale of the special lot according to the traditional candle-flame method — where bidding continues until the flame dies.

The revenue goes to the French Alzheimer’s disease research association and a charity that funds cardiac surgery in France for children from poor countries.

The wines are from the 2011 harvest and will need to mature for a few years before they are ready for drinking.

“This vintage is the best of the century,” said Claude Chevallier, president of the Burgundy vintners association. “That makes it the 11th in a row,” he added.

Louis-Fabrice Latour, head of Burgundy’s wine merchant group, said he expected the Burgundy prices in 2012 to be stable to slightly lower due to the financial crisis.

ALOXE-CORTON

This year the President’s Lot was a Corton Clos du Roi Cuvee Baronne du Bay, named after the daughter of Jean-Louis Peste, a doctor at the hospice for 30 years in the 19th century.

In 1924, when she was alive, she donated vineyards to the hospital on the Aloxe-Corton hillsides. Over 45 percent of this Grand Cru terroir is planted with 37-year-old Pinot vines.

Clavier, born in 1952, is best known for his role in “The Visitors,” a French film in which a group of medieval people are lost in modern times.

Aristocrat Fressange is a former top model and is well-known in France’s fashion scene. She consults for fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier and still works occasionally as a model, gracing the catwalk at Chanel’s 2011 spring-summer show at the age of 53.

Aside from the President’s Lot, the general hospices bidding is for lots of 228 litres of wine in barrels that can be transformed into 288 standard bottles. The wine is from the 2011 harvest and has to stay in barrels for at least two years.

The wines are among the best and most expensive of Burgundy, France’s second-biggest wine-making area after Bordeaux.

The auction, by Christie’s, still takes place in the medieval building but telephone lines and Internet connections allow bidders to participate from all over the world.

Proud of a 60-year tradition that has been propelled to global renown by a sleek retailing campaign, Beaujolais seeks to burnish its image as a wine to celebrate the new vintage and dampen criticism that its popularity lies more in the marketing than in the quality of the wine.

“At the start of my career, the arrival of the new Beaujolais was a pretext to share and have friendly parties,” said Emmanuel Delmas, a consultant-sommelier wine-expert.

“Today, the event is out of fashion. Consumers no longer accept bad wine and are looking for drinking pleasure, even if this means paying a bit more,” he added.

At an average 4 euros ($5.41) a bottle for a wine made in less than 10 weeks, Beaujolais Nouveau remains a profitable operation for many producers.

Beaujolais Nouveau is made from the Gamay grape. The 2011 vintage, a year characterized by unusual weather leading to relatively early harvests, appears to have provided higher quality wine from fewer grapes. The 2011 Beaujolais Nouveau was harvested early and could mature a bit longer until the traditional third Thursday of November.

Christophe Pacalet is based in Ville-Morgon, part of the Beaujolais area, and produces several kinds of wine as well as some Beaujolais Nouveau. He is respectful of nature on the vineyards he acquired in 1999 with his uncle.

At a tasting on Thursday the wine had the typical Gamay smell with a whiff of banana. The first impression was of red fruit that lingers in the mouth turning toward a riper dark fruit with a hint of liquorice. A balanced wine with no acidity. Pacalet’s wine sells for eight euros a bottle.

LYON PARTY

A decree in 1951 allowed the sale of wines from the same year. At first the starting date was in December and Beaujolais growers managed to get that pushed back to mid-November.

In the beginning, the new Beaujolais was mainly a festive event in the wine bars of the city of Lyon, just 30 km south of the growing area and still the epicenter of the increasingly global Beaujolais bash with a midnight party that sees 400 liters of the wine being served in just half an hour.

In 1966, the 250 stores of the wine retail chain Nicolas in Paris started a special Beaujolais Nouveau operation and later firms such as Georges Duboeuf took the wine to export markets.

Duboeuf, born in 1933, earned the monickers “King of Beaujolais” and “Pope of Beaujolais” for his efforts in promoting the wine that makes up one third of the production of the Beaujolais area – the rest is sold at a more mature age.

Duboeuf still runs the firm with his son Franck and will be present at a Beaujolais party in the United States, a key market.

In 2010, 35 million bottles of the wine were put on the market. Some 7.5 million were sold in French supermarkets and 15.5 million were exported, the rest went to bars, off-license stores and restaurants.

The biggest consuming region in France is Paris with 1.3 million bottles.

Japan was the biggest export market with seven million, followed by the United States with 2.4 million and Germany with 1.2 million.

There are many other “new” wines in France or Italy, but the phrase ‘Le Beaujolais Nouveau est Arrivé” remains the clarion call in France for the first taste of the vintage year.

($1 = 0.739 Euros)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

In the quest for quality, Bordeaux vintners such as Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Latour and many other famous names have become more selective in order to obtain a signature taste and avoid vast differences between various vintages.

Bordeaux wines are blended wines and a vintner composes a vintage by using various grape varieties in changing proportions and increasingly keeps the juice from specific parcels apart up to the mixing stage. There is also a difference in age of the barrels used for ageing. New oak leaves a different imprint on the wine than older wood.

That means that a large part of the “unfinished” wine production does not end up in the main label bottles. Rather than selling all this in bulk to the wine trade, the best of the leftovers is bottled on the grounds with a different label.

Often these so-called second wines mature less well than the first wine and need to be drunk at a younger age. They can also use grapes from younger vines than those destined for the main wine as a result of regular replanting in the vineyard.

Sometimes, the estate may also decide a vintage does not make the cut for a first wine and presents it as a second wine.

Chateau Rauzan-Ségla did not sell a first wine in 1987 and the best juices went to its second wine Ségla. Rauzan-Ségla, a Margaux Grand Cru, celebrates its 350th anniversary this year and marked this with a label designed by Karl Lagerfeld for the 2009 vintage which was bottled this year.

Among the first Chateaux to present a second wine were Château Léoville-Las Cases with Clos du Marquis in 1904 and Château Margaux with Pavillion Rouge in 1908.

Baron Philippe de Rothschild decided a less-than-excellent 1930 production would not be sold under the Chateau Mouton Rothschild flagship name and in 1932 he bottled the wine as Mouton Cadet. Philippe was the youngest brother, called cadet in French.

Demand for Mouton Cadet was so great, however, that in following years the château had to mix with wines from other estates and the label went on to become one of the biggest commercial success stories of Bordeaux. Since 1994 the ‘real’ second wine is called Le Petit Mouton de Mouton-Rothschild, made from younger vines and with a limited production.

A FRACTION CAN STILL BE A LOT

Of the 60 Grand Cru wines of the 1855 classification, excluding the Sauternes wines, only Chateau Saint-Pierre has no second wine.

This Saint-Julien wine estate is part of Domaines Henri Martin with Chateau Gloria, Chateau Haut-Beychevelle Gloria and Chateau Bel-Air. Henri Martin, a former barrel-maker, bought Saint-Pierre in 1982 when he was 78. He died in 1991.

“We do not make a second wine because of the small size of our vineyard and because the development of Saint-Pierre was a long-term project and we focused entirely on the brand and the main wine, the rest of the harvest we sell in bulk as Saint-Julien,” said current owner Jean-Louis Triaud, Henri Martin’s son-in-law.

The second wines of the top five Grand Crus have taken flight of their own accord because some investors prefer these assets over other names in Bordeaux.

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild has as a second wine the Carruades de Lafite-Rothschild named after a hillock on the grounds. The 2003 vintage of the Chateau, with a top-rating by Robert Parker, sells for some 2,100 euro per bottle. The Carruades of that year fetches a modest 575 euros by comparison.

Chateau Latour 2003 sells for just under 1,500 euro and a bottle of Les Forts de Latour of that year is for sale at about 250 euro.

Chateau Beychevelle is a so-called Fourth Growth – out of the five – among the Grand Crus. Now the property of Japanese brewer Suntory and French drinks group Castel, the estate has three wines. Next to the main label there are Amiral de Beychevelle as a second wine, while the Brulières de Beychevelle are made from parcels belonging to the estate but not within the Saint-Julien appellation area.

According to the estate’s published history, Beychevelle traces its roots back to Jean-Louis Nogaret de la Valette (1554-1642), Duc D’Epernon and Great Admiral of France. Hence the name ‘Amiral’ and the sailing ship on the label.

A Chateau Beychevelle of 2003 sells for 165 euro and the Amiral costs 25 euro.

Managing director Philippe Blanc said the second wine is “less emblematic” than the first but the estate puts a lot of effort and care into Amiral in order to serve loyal customers.

“In 1982, four percent of the harvest went into the second wine, now it is 40-45 percent,” he said.

(Edited by Paul Casciato)

A dry spring, a wet start to summer, which has eased into more clement seasonal conditions and warm temperatures has persuaded some vintners to start harvesting in late August, while others have bided their time, measuring grape maturity with modern science and old-fashioned chewing and tasting.

Traditionally, the associations of vintners in a wine region set an official start to the harvest with “la levée du ban des vendanges” or the end to the harvest ban, which has its traces in the Middle Ages.

The ban allowed individual wine growers to benefit from the combined wisdom of a region in setting the harvest date, usually 100 days after the first flowering in the vineyards.

For the last few years however, this ban has no longer been universally compulsory but is still upheld in several areas for AOC wines and is a popular way of attracting wine tourists after the summer rush, such as in Saint-Emilion.

The Jurade de Saint-Emilion run a Medieval-style pageant with members of the Jurade in long red robes and square hats who attend Mass in the church, walk the cobbled streets and clamber to the top of Tour du Roi (King’s Tower) and then release balloons symbolizing grapes to mark the harvest.

The ban des vendanges in Saint-Emilion is on September 18 this year. The same weekend as in 2010, but a week later than 2009.

BEAUJOLAIS NOUVEAU

But not everyone has waited for an official start.

In general, white grapes are harvested earlier than reds, and dates also vary from region to region.

The harvest of the sturdy red Madiran wines, in the southwest toward the Basque region, will start on September 18.

The Beaujolais harvest started on August 24, the earliest date since a heatwave in 2003, when the harvest started on August 8.

The operation lasted three weeks with some 50,000 people mobilized to cut and carry the grapes by hand. The Inter Beaujolais association said 2011 looked a good year and vintners were optimistic about quality.

The “new” Beaujolais will be delivered to the trade from Oct 10 and the official Beaujolais Nouveau day is November 17, the third Thursday in November.

“The small berries boast an excellent juice to skin ratio. This is great news as the compounds that give the red wine its wealth of color and tannin structure are mainly to be found in the skin,” said Melina Condy of Inter Beaujolais.

The Nantes area also started on August 24 and the Champagne harvest started on Aug 19. In the Cote d’Or of Burgundy and the Buzet area in the southwest, the harvest started on August 23 while the ‘ban’ for Cotes de Rhone was declared on September 3.

STRESS AND SUGAR

Wine critic Michel Bettane, who was in Champagne toward the end of the harvest, said on the Bon Vivant blog that the harvest there started too early, certainly for Chardonnay, where the grapes did not start to taste good until after September 1.

His opinion is shared by Daniel-Etienne Defaix, a vintner in the Chablis region, where there is no longer a ‘ban’ and growers can decide themselves when to start the harvest.

Defaix said that in Chablis, people usually credit the mineral content of the ground and the weather for the wine rather than the Chardonnay grape and the grower’s skill.

“This year we could see that with time, there appears to be two different 2011 vintages with a different imprint by man,” Defaix said.

“There were those who started with fanfare on Tuesday Aug 30, and there were those who waited quietly and started on Sept 5.”

He said earlier harvesters preferred to risk a weak maturity with more acidity than natural sugar content, while those who waited — including Defaix — spent sleepless nights praying a change in the weather would not bring heavy rains and storms.

Waiting has had its benefits with a rising sugar content the results of temperate weather and warm winds.

“No need to wait any longer, the grapes are at perfect maturity,” Defaix said.

Although it may be a bit early to talk about taste. Defaix said the earlier harvested wines could be dry, slightly acid and good for drinks with friends, while the later harvested wines will be more rounded and geared toward accompanying food.

“What is re-assuring is that the consumers are as varied as the vintners and each wine will have its market and its clients,” he said.

“As my father and my grandfather used to say – at Chablis the ground makes the wine and the last three weeks determine the vintage!”

(Edited by Paul Casciato)