Portfolio Tasting

October 15th, 2011 by Lance

Every moment is busy at CF Wines at the moment. We havejust welcomed Sally Ann,  the fifth member of our team, (more to follow) bought new computers and spread into the next door office to give us all a bit more room to breathe.  We’re also struggling with the new IT systems recently introduced in the bonded warehouse we use, and there is a fair amount of cursing going on in our accounts department at the moment. Please bear with us!

Most of the sales-related activities of our business seem to involve putting on or attending tastings, visits to customers and also taking customers to meet our suppliers. We’ve just waved goodbye to Mike Eaton from TerraVin NZ and Mac Forbes from the Yarra Valley Australia  both of whom were here for a couple of weeks to justify the distances involved. At various events they both met a large number of our (and their) customers.

Our Portfolio Tasting was the focal point of their visit, and they were joined by another half dozen of our suppliers from Austria, France and Portugal. It came hard on the heels of the inaugural Dirty Dozen, which, for many who came seems to have been the best tasting of the last 12 months. But for us the  Portfolio Tasting is the big event in our calendar where we show well over a hundred wines, and feature a selection from everyone we’re buying from. The day we picked was one of those crazy hot days, where London was hotter than Athens and most other parts of Southern Europe, and so tasting conditions were quite challenging, and we spent a lot of money on ice! But we had a successful event, and a very positive write up from Anthony Rose in the Independent on Saturday (15/10/2011)

Now next week we have Jose Lievens in London. Jose is winemaker and owner, with his wife and sister in law, of Champagne Jacques Picard. He is coming over to visit some clients with us, but also to present his wines at a Champagne tasting at Fortnum and Mason where his wines, last month, were featured as Champagne of the Month. We are thrilled and very proud to have made so much progress with Jose’s wines in less than a year. The Non Vintage is poured by the glass  at Chez Bruce, Texture and 28-50, and the Rose is poured at The Ledbury. The Art de Vigne vintage is poured (from magnum of course) at Helene Darroze at The Connaught and from bottle at Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley. If I count correctly , that’s 7 stars! And if you’re prepared to buy it by the bottle there are plenty of other places we can recommend. Please ask.

After all this, it’s heads down, run for Christmas and hope the world doesn’t collapse!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2011 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.