Please contact me for private tasting parties on (646)322-3658 or email Karl@charlemagnefinewines.com

Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Hidden Facts of Fronsac

April 25 2014 posted by Karl Curran
I will let you in on some secrets: the hidden facts of Fronsac. Two-thirds through the bottle shared between two or three people something should start to happen. Whatever the conversation is about, it should be slightly thwarted by the wine. I kept a bottle recently for two days on the mantle of my hotel bedroom at room temperature, Chateau Aney from Cussac in the Medoc. Outstanding, a 2009 which is starting to drink very well now. I can only imagine what it will give in another couple of years. In order to find value you have to get off the beaten path, you have to find an edge. The edge comes in many guises, but once you get the slightest scent of the guise, you jump on it. I heard about Fronsac, and I decided to schlep it over the bridge on a Saturday morning. Fronsac is a...

Bordeaux Market Shifts

April 12 2014 posted by Karl Curran
Bordeaux is like no other in the wine market. Every year around the last days of March and first few days of April, the wine press and buyers emerge excited to taste the new vintage. The custom has been to buy the wines en primeur (straight out of the barrel) for over three hundred years now. The wines are then delivered to buyers roughly three years after payment. The 64 million dollar question is how does the buyer know what he’s getting? That’s where tasters like Robert Parker come in. Parker has become a household name. There are others too such as Jancis Robinson and James Suckling. These tasters hold strong opinions, and it’s very true in the wine business that the pen is mightier than the sword. As a producer, if you’ve been given a medium score, it can result in huge financial losses. The grading system is...