Back to the office

Tuesday was a busy day : catching up with mail from the past 15 days including all sorts of requests, signatures, checks to be signed for my company and Vignobles Fayat, prices for Christian… well, I had plenty of little things to take care making my day too short; especially as I also had the visit of a Brazilian at L’Essentiel (he will eventually import our wines in his country), as well as Adi Werner and some of his Austrian guests, great lovers and professionals of Bordeaux. We drank 2 glasses of Champaign and a bit of Valandraud 98 and Clos Badon 2001 to celebrate the first job of a pretty young lady with her friends. Following, we went to Saint-Emilion’s bookstore where Isabelle and François invited Jacques Dupont to sign his book “Choses bues” (things drank) which I already read and commented on my blog last September 29. I wrote:
“The 3rd book from Dupont helped understand better (probably voluntarily) this great critic from the magazine Le Point. It is now understandable why he likes so much women winemaker, why he likes “little crus”, I realized that he will never like Valandraud (the wood) and that our success is a bit of a handicap for him, for us…?
It doesn’t matter, he’s coherent, competent, and his book, which I still didn’t finish, reads like a novel.”
Since then I finished it and Jacques Dupont, who received from one of his friends the (complete?) comments from my blog, remembered this point “I believe that he will never like Valandraud” and seemed surprised. Perhaps, he didn’t read the entire comment, I wrote about Valandraud and not Virginie de Valandraud which is more to his “taste”, as it is concerning his taste. I rarely criticized good, or not so good, notes from critics, always thinking that it was not my place to discuss their opinion as I chose to present my wine.
It’s like the Saint Emilion classification: once you accept to participate, one has to accept the judgment. Otherwise, it is simpler not to participate.
In any case, lots of people attended this signing event, which showed, if it was needed, the importance of Jacques Dupont and a good bookstore. When will a similar signing event take place for the next books of Bettane or Parker?

At the same moment, in the Crillon Hotel in Paris, L’amateur de Bordeaux and the Bottin Gourmand were organizing their annual grand tasting event, and the internet was full of articles regarding the French position on advertising wine on the internet: even the former minister Evin, with the current minister Roselyne Bachelot, understand that evolution doesn’t mean laxity, even if some leaders are for the others scary “father strictness” camp recalling the worst hours of the American prohibition.

Thursday 30, will be a black screen day for many internet medias, including me. It’s not much but symbolic.

And to conclude on a light note, a picture taken during the harvest where Karl, my grand son, seems to take things in his own hands, and another picture of Murielle, taken by a very good local photographer who was visiting with German journalists.