March 20, 2010
Raising a toast to a more competitive wine market
9 winters and still fascinated by the different forms snow and ice can take. Across the road from our office at Grevgatan 62 is a life threatening ice spike (istappar) that is over 1.5 m long hanging down from the top of the building. It has been there for several days and since it is next to a kindergarten and nothing has been done about it is pretty irresponsible of the building owners.
Cross the road to the odd numbered side if coming to visit us!
Cheers
Mark
Fans of Roald Dahl will recall this story of the mistreated little boy who escapes his wicked aunties inside a giant peach. The description of James watching the peach grow and grow and grow is memorable to those of us enthralled by giant fruit and vegetables.
This week we moved into the newly renovated wine advisory centre in Östermalm, Stockholm. The renovations have enabled us to double the wine advisory team to provide even higher levels of service to our growing numbers of customers. Buying new desks and computers as well as assisting Maria to recruit more highly skilled wine advisors continually reminds me of James watching the peach grow.
Sweet and fuzzy as a peach is the feeling of steering our business and providing a large number of people with high quality wine and a service never before available in this snowy land.
While we offer no peach wine, we have some new releases this week which I am excited about. Our favourite Tasmanian producer, Devils Corner, has returned with new vintages and these cool climate elegant wines are on its way to my cellar for drinking this spring. Let the devil take the better of you this spring http://www.australianwineclub.se/ciab_details.php?ciab_id=2176
James (the wine buyer, not the Dahl character) can hardly restrain his excitement with the arrival of the Italian super star producer Elena Walch. When we tasted through their range a few months ago it was the first time we had a near clean sweep ordering their entire range of wines. Finding a complete range of Italian wines both red and white from one producer is as rare as a talking caterpillar! http://www.finewinesociety.se/ciab_details.php?ciab_id=2294
We have a flood of new wines arriving over the next month, so make space in the cellar!
Cheers
Mark
For two years now we have diligently worked to make our growing number of members happy and despite some efforts to get positive national media attention we have generally been under the radar screen of serious media when they look for comments about alcohol sales in Sweden. That changed today with a large article in SVD, the centre right national newspaper, about the annual research report on alcohol consumption.
http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/nathandeln-med-sprit-okar_4181805.svd
Australian Wine Club and our other clubs play an important social role in providing high quality bottled wine wine with recipes to consumers’ homes and this is now being recognised in the SORAD report. In most countries the amount of alcohol consumed (and where it is purchased) is never newsworthy. In Sweden it is a front page story on a slow news day. At least this time to our advantage.
The headline to the story does not give the best impression of our service but if you want quick and cheap you can go down to the local monopoly store and get a bag in box which still makes up 60% of all wine sold in this snowy land.
Viva Wine Freedom!
Mark
January 26. My brother-in-law emigrated to Australia from South Africa when he was a boy and little did he know that two things would make him a dinky-di Aussie. Firstly, his name was Joey (a baby Kangaroo) and he was born today, Australia Day.
While Australians Down Under spend today on the beach, at a music festival, watching sport or having a BBQ with friends, we at the Australian Wine Club worked hard and then ended the day with a meat pie and Champagne party!
Yes, we served white bread Vegemite sandwiches (amazingly most people liked it), the requisite sausage rolls and pasties and followed this gourmet fare with chips and chocolate.
It is not 40 degrees like it is back home and there was no public holiday but we brought some Aussie egalitarianism and fare to the Capital of Scandinavia!
Happy Birthday Joey and Happy Australia Day friends.
Cheers
Mark
Getting older is one of the best things I do. I try and do it with style, gracefully, without complaining or skullduggery and tricks. I don’t lie about my age, try to look older or younger than I am or make a big deal about it. Getting older and celebrating that day every year is by far the best of the two alternatives!
I think of my birthday each year like a new vintage. I take stock of the year, the weather, did I mature during the year or in certain areas am I going through a tunnel or perhaps reaching my optimum drinking period? How is the bottle, label and cork holding up, am I still a bit harsh around the edges, too tannic and not yet showing the true warm fruit?
Will Mark Vintage 2010 be better than 2009 (of course it will) but what do I need to do to make MPM Vintage ´10 a stellar one?
It is not just about navel gazing either. Every year when I do the performance reviews of the people in our company I ask them to write a wine review of Mark Vintage the current year. Not everyone does it (they submit it anonymously) but it gives a chance for our hard working crew to throw around some phrases like “Mark Vintage 09 still had lots of acidity but the finesse sometimes shows through!”
Mark 09 was a good vintage. We celebrated vintage Mark 10 with a small dinner at home with new and old friends, opened a wonderful Gralyn Estate 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon from Margaret River http://www.gralyn.com.au/pages.asp?code=5 that was rich, peppery (more like a Shiraz thought Ulf) and full of compact rich fruit. This cult Robert Parker wine is now finished in my cellar so either I have to be more like Gralyn to get a better review from the Antipodes people or buy some more wine for our members!
Also at the dinner which my wife and I cooked together was served the Autard 07 Ch. Neuf du Pape (huge even having decanted it at 10:00 in the morning) and the Dog Point Section 94 Sauvignon Blanc was a perfect match with the Jerusalem Artichoke soup.
Vintage 2010 has started well, my roots are deeper and stronger in the Swedish soil, my off shoots are growing nicely and the chief viticulturalist of the family made sure the vintage celebrations were a great success.
Thanks for all the vintage wishes,
cheers
Mark
Wine descriptions can be confusing even to professionals, made more so when the creator has English as a third language. Jimmy has the honour of writing descriptions of all the wines in Swedish on the websites. Conveying how a wine tastes in words is never easy (all wine is after all made of the same fruit) but his amusement is compounded when translating the winemaker’s notes from Fringlish or Spanglish or Australian into Swedish.
Intense pale – where do you go to with this description of a white wine?
Keep up the good work Jimmy!
Cheers
Mark
Skating to work this morning through Stockholm’s icy streets (thank goodness for my RM Williams boots) I came across this bike art ice sculpture.
ice sculpture on Skeppargatan, Stockholm today
Keep moving – my motto to survive this Siberian winter! Here is what happens if you don’t……
Keep warm!
Mark
How do you call this new year? Twenty ten or two o one o or twenty one o? This question was not on my mind as we welcomed the new year in in the tiny town of Santa Lucia on the island of Gozo in Malta. With our close friends we feasted on great wine (hint, ‘95 vintage, French, sweet and consumed with foie gras) and food and at midnight ran outside to see the fireworks and celebrate with the villagers. Now I know how the first man felt stepping on the moon – alone in the silent darkness!
If the rest of the year can continue this calm I will be very happy!
Malta and Gozo I can highly recommend for a family, historical or hiking vacation even in winter. We were swimming in the Med on New Years Eve and Day (it was darn cold but my daughter and I could not resist showing the Swedes how tough Aussies can be!). Walking around the world’s oldest man made structure excited our children more than we expected and the 7000 years of history has a lot more to offer than the local wine but we stocked up at a good wine store in Malta before sailing off for Gozo.
I promise this year to write more often and hope to hear from you more often too.
Cheers
Mark
Every snowflake has a dark lining. For our company this was a tremendously successful Christmas selling season. The champagne producers should be thankful we sprung up just as the American market collapsed! Bring Express faced a challenge getting all the boxes of wine home to our members all over Sweden before Christmas and the snow has surely not made it any easier.
While most of us were enjoying the light and thrill of the snow (our kids are out tabogganing down the snow hills), the hard working Bring delivery guys were tramping up hills and along snow covered paths on the most important last 10 meters to our members’ doors. So far so good we hear from the delivery guys but if there is any delays you know that Bring is doing their very best to get there, even if not exactly on time.
We were in Hamburg visiting the warehouse this week and planning for the 2010 logistics. We hope to offer members more wines, better and shorter delivery period and of course more of the same great service you have come to expect.
Now it is time to start drinking more of the wines and selling less during the festive season. A vacation is needed as much as it is deserved by our amazing team. Personally I will be drinking these great wines:
Unison Selection Gimblett Gravels Merlot 05 – my new favourite
Bests Sweet Muscat – think dark and cold days, think sweet Muscat
Stellankaya Cape Cross – Pinotage for non-pinotage drinkers
Kooyong Masale Pinot Noir – first growth at a price you can afford to drink every day
Banyuls sweet red wine – Lindt dark chocolate and a small glass of Banyuls – even Christmas eve TV is tolerable with this heavenly combination!
Zeni Vigne Alte 2006 Amarone – if you like sweet full amarone that tastes of dried grapes buy something else. An amarone for connoiseurs of quality wine with balance and food worthy.
Jean Paul Hebrart Champagne – proof that you can’t wait too long for something good. Jimmy’s excellent find, even satisfies me who is not so fond of acidity bubbly sweet champagne. This has finesse and a dryness that makes it match many foods as well as drink on its own.
Time to wish you all a prosperous, healthy and happy 2010. I know our members consume alcohol in moderation and never drink and drive so you don’t need reminding of the great Aussie advertising slogan: “Drink & Drive – you’re a bloody idiot!”.
Be safe, enjoy the family and friends and see you all in 2010.
Cheers & Thanks for a great year
Mark
I sincerely hope Santa’s little helpers up there in the North Pole do not have an alcohol problem (I hear that is prevalent up there) because they are extremely busy now picking and packing wine for all our members who ordered Christmas gifts via the wine clubs this year. We would not want any bottles to go missing down the throats of the little elves!
It has been a very busy and successful Christmas period for the wine clubs and it seems many will be adding wine to their Julbord (Christmas table) this year in addition to the snaps and Christmas beer. Amarone and Champagne must have featured high on the wish lists of members this year too.
Many will also be singing along to the Christmas music CDs included in the gift boxes. For those who are Charlotte Perelli fans you may like to know that as our members had a choice between a CD of hers and a traditional Christmas music CD from Naxos, 40% of customers chose Charlotte. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is hard to beat, even after all these years.
Next week is our annual Christmas dinners which we are busily preparing. Guests will be transported to Shanghai for a 1920s feast of Asian inspired fine dining (al a chef Johannes Videhult) expertly matched to our amazing wines selected by James and Jimmy. Musical entertainment will keep the guests entertained as the food and wine digests. Lina and Sarah have spent a bit too much time dieting to fit into their Chong Sam (Chinese women’s silk dress) but I am sure will produce an evening of elegance, style and sophistication!
Lots to look forward to.
Cheers
Mark
"Recently I’ve been thinking of how much mental space we could create if we collectively agreed to get rid of stereotypes. All of those small compartments we walk around with in our heads would suddenly be cleared away and we’d feel so much lighter. Just think of all of that space for real new perceptions..." READ »
