Arriving in Bordeaux yesterday was something of a shock to the system. In the last week East Lothian seems to have progressed very rapidly from winter to spring. To illustrate my point, only one week ago I was beginning to consider the possibility that my flight to Bordeaux might be delayed or otherwise affected by the ice, snow and sleet under which much of the UK has been labouring recently. Then, suddenly, sometime on Wednesday I think, the sky began to change colour, displaying patches of blue between the cloud. I honestly don’t think I have seen blue sky in Scotland since last year. By Thursday, the sky was entirely blue, and it remained so through to my flight on Saturday. The snow all disappeared, and crocuses and daffodils seemed to advance their growth, perhaps worried that they had missed out on spring. I boarded my flight thinking summer had arrived; it was even warm!

Then I alighted in Bordeaux, under grey skies, misty fog, and it was colder than it had been in Scotland. If it wasn’t for the call of the wine I might have turned around and boarded the next plane back.

Fortunately I managed to get at the front of a long queue to collect my hire car. Ten minutes later I was outside, telephoning Bill Blatch to check he was still on for our tasting. Another ten or fifteen minutes later I was looking for a parking space outside his house. Two more minutes and I was confronted by a line up of 31 Sauternes. Hurrah! Also there were three greats of the UK wine scene, starting with Derek Smedley MW, who – having first come out to the Bordeaux primeurs on a buying trip in 1961 – has now seen out more than fifty vintages. Alongside him were Tim Atkin MW and Charles Metcalfe, both well known figures and – in my opinion – both voices that are certainly worth listening too. The cynic will ask what on earth this minion was doing there, in such exalted company. Well, I was there by the gracious invitation of Bill, facilitated by Charles. Thanks Bill and Charles.

It was a great introduction to the vintage; unfortunately I started an hour behind everybody else I think, as my arrival time was dictated by my flight time, so by the end of the tasting I was ensconced in the corner while everybody else around me was tucking into barbecued sausages, chicken and unbelievably good steak (I did get some later, when I had finished my work!). It would be premature to make any comments on any one individual wine, as I have simply not finished with Sauternes yet; I will be visiting the region on Monday 8th, and I will be retasting the wines of the UGC members later in the week. Nevertheless, it is clear that this has been a difficult vintage, and although I don’t deny that there are some good wines, perhaps unfairly overshadowed by Yquem and a few others pulling out of the vintage, the range of quality within the tasting gave me a big message. But I will be more certain of this, and have reports on individual wines for Winedoctor subscribers, once my tastings are finished.

After the Sauternes came the barbecue. Poor Bill barbecued outside, while his guests sat inside in the warmth. Later our host regaled us with tales of his adventures uncovering wines for auction at Christie’s, his new role having given up his ownership of the Vintex négociant company last year. It was just one of a legion of stories that took in Latour’s performance in the 1980s, how he won his first allocation of Léoville-Barton, the ‘Jack Daniels’ factor in the 1989 vintage, opinions on the garagiste movement of the 1990s, and much more. Bill’s life in Bordeaux – he started work here in 1974, if I recall correctly – would make for an amazing set of memoirs. I would be first in the queue to buy it.

Sorry, I have no pictures of the tasting, as I was squeezed into a corner for much of the evening, so couldn’t escape to get my camera. I will try harder today. My timetable for Sunday includes the Vintex tasting first, and then hopefully the Ulysse Cazabonne (another négociant) tasting, assuming it is on. I never checked (a minor slip in my organisation). I guess I will just turn up and see.

Filed under: Bordeaux
Posted by Chris Kissack on April 7, 2013 at 8:03 am
2 Comments »

Well, I’m not homeward bound actually, that’s just the particular Simon & Garfunkel tune swimming around in my head at the moment. I’m not sure what it is doing there; I haven’t listened to any of their work for a long time, apart from those numbers that crop up on the radio from time to time. Nevertheless, it seems somewhat appropriate. I’m sitting in an airport waiting for my flight to be called, destination Bordeaux. And the region does feel like something of a second home; I’ve been out this way a lot in recent years, and barely a few months seems to have passed since I was last heading out this way. In truth it is almost exactly six months since I was in Bordeaux, but let’s not allow facts to get in the way of a half-decent story, shall we?

The trip promises to be an interesting one. For the first time, contemporaneous with Winedoctor’s conversion to a pay-to-view site, I have made all my own arrangements for this primeurs trip, and I will be meeting almost all my own expenses. Previous trips have been a bit of half-and-half. I thought it important that I do this if my notes are to be taken more seriously. The only help I have accepted is a few nights in a Médoc château in order to be nearer the left bank appellations, otherwise I will be staying in a little quayside hotel in Libourne. Although some like to paint the primeurs as nothing more than a giant knees-up for buyers and bloggers, oiling the wheels of sales and publicity, I see it as an excellent (albeit inevitably flawed) opportunity to get to grips with the latest vintage, and that will be my focus for the next week. So sorry, I won’t be able to report on fireworks and parties at first growth châteaux, there will be no write-ups of lengthy tasting dinners, no signs of schmoozing with the Bordelais. This will disappoint critics who see fit to criticise the attendance and behaviour of other critics at the primeurs, but that’s the way it is.

I have also drawn up my own timetable for the primeurs, outside of that arranged by the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux. I see little appeal in being shipped around by mini-bus from one tasting to the next, a sort of conveyor belt of good opinion. I want to make my own timetable, making visits in a certain order to best make sense of the vintage, and allowing me time at those châteaux where the peri-tasting chat is the most informative. So I am certainly ‘going it alone’ this week. Few other journalists do this, as far as I know, although one that does is Neal Martin. Although as Neal heads out for two weeks not one, I suspect he gets quite a few more visits in than I will.

So, that’s my flight called. Bordeaux here I come, via Gate 20. First up is a tasting this evening with Bill Blatch, provided my flight arrives on time. Here’s hoping.

Filed under: Bordeaux
Posted by Chris Kissack on April 6, 2013 at 2:27 pm
Comments Off

Thoughts of Bordeaux 2012 are now filtering through to my frontal cortex. It’s only a few days before I leave for my assessment of the vintage; this year I have allocated eight days to the tastings, more than I have in any previous primeurs visit. And chatter about the vintage is building on blogs and Twitter; although the official tastings are next week, some very influential critics like to go out a week or two in advance, and this year thanks to a clash between the primeurs tastings week and judging for the International Wine Challenge, both next week, the judges – dozens of well-known British names and no doubt many from overseas as well – have chosen to go out to Bordeaux this week instead (or perhaps not to go at all, in a few cases).

I think the region with the largest question mark hanging over it at present is Sauternes. Partly this stems from my knowledge of the weather as harvest approached, as I was in Bordeaux during the run up to the picking in early October. It also comes from news that has filtered out of the region since then, and in that case I think it can be difficult to tease out those decisions based on qualitative concerns, and those that are more to do with marketing and pricing.

From a qualitative view the growing season was hampered by relative drought through July and August (something of a surprise after a miserably wet and cool spring). The dry weather meant no botrytis, and this was still the case until the end of September, when the first smatterings of botrytis rot appeared. It spread over Barsac better than Sauternes I am told, but it was not the great sweep of noble rot many would have hoped for. In addition, there was little time for concentration of the mould-affected fruit before the rains came in October. Obviously I will provide more detail in my subscribers’ report when I return, but for the moment this is my understanding of the vintage.

For this reason we might expect some châteaux not to declare a vintage, either skipping it all together, or declassifying into a second wine. Nevertheless, there was plenty of skepticism when Pierre Lurton of Yquem announced that there would be no 2012, about which I wrote here: Yquem 2012: Time for a Second Wine? Many expressed the opinion that this was purely a commercial decision, based on a need to bolster desire for the 2011, a better wine which should achieve a better price, and which was not released en primeur by Lurton because of the perceived character of the vintage, which I imagine would perhaps hamper sales. It wasn’t long before Charles Chevalier took the same decision on behalf of the Rothschilds, at Rieussec (pictured above). Neither estate would produce a 2012. Rieussec would produce only a second wine.

“So what?” you might ask. The problem is that if these are purely commercial decisions, they do unwarranted harm to the reputation of the vintage and therefore downstream sales of wines from other estates, where perhaps the books are even more delicately balanced than they are at Yquem or Rieussec, and where perhaps the wines are good, and worth buying.

This week, however, I learnt from Jean-Pierre Meslier of Château Raymond-Lafon that he too would not be producing a 2012 grand vin. Instead, like Rieussec, he would produce only a second wine. Jean-Pierre explained to me “We had tons of botrytis but the weather was often too wet at harvest time so we will not produce the very best in 2012.” He pointed out that this was not the first time this had happened (the same is true at Yquem – see linked post above) as he “produced no Château Raymond-Lafon in 1974” and “[v]ery little in 1982,1992,1993,1994,2000.”

“This“, he concluded, “is the price to pay for excellence.”

This situation is clearly not cut-and-dried. It has been a difficult harvest, and Jean-Pierre has decided – on qualitative grounds – not to bottle a 2012 grand vin. As for the others, Yquem and Rieussec, I remain to be persuaded one way or the other.

I think what is important for me personally (and perhaps others too, although I do not dare presume to be in a position to tell other critics what they should or should not do) is to maintain a very open mind, and gather as much information as possible when in Bordeaux. I arrive Saturday and go straight from Mérignac airport to a tasting with Bill Blatch in Bordeaux. I have visits lined up to meet Jean-Pierre Meslier of Château Raymond-Lafon again, and also to taste through the barrels with Bérénice Lurton at Château Climens, which should give me a good guide to the real ups and downs of the vintage. I should also meet the wines at the négoce tastings on the Sunday, and at the UGC Sauternes tasting later in the week. So there should be plenty of opportunities to see what’s what. Then I can decide for myself, and for Winedoctor readers, whether these are likely to have been qualitative or commercial decisions. And, of course, whether or not we should be buying the wines.

More details on Sauternes to come!

Filed under: Bordeaux
Posted by Chris Kissack on April 3, 2013 at 2:34 pm
1 Comment »

Behind every great man you find a great woman, so the saying goes. The meaning is obvious; behind every success story there are unsung heroes, back-room girls (and back-room boys of course) who have contributed much to every victory achieved. Bordeaux is not short of unsung heroes, but their true identity is not well understood. In recent years, esteemed commentators on Bordeaux have obsessed over many different aspects of the region. For some it is the grapes and the soils that make Bordeaux what it is. Some have chosen to focus on the technology that lies behind the Bordeaux of the 21st century, everything from optical sorting to mobile reverse osmosis machines. The majority, however, more readily point a finger at the men and women of Bordeaux, from the saisonnier manning the sorting table, up to the consultants, the likes of Stéphane Derenoncourt and Michel Rolland, as if they weren’t famous enough already, as well as lesser-known names such as Gilles Pauquet and Barry Chuckle.

All, however, are shooting wide of the mark. To truly understand Bordeaux, to grasp which wines are great, which are mediocre, and exactly why, it is to the Médoc’s drains that we must look.

I am pleased to reveal today the publication of my latest book, entitled The Médoc: People, Power & Drains that tells all about this true unsung hero of Bordeaux. In a fact-fest suitable for everybody from the casual reader to the MW student, I begin in the 17th century, with the drainage of the swampy marshland by Dutch engineers, that which we know today as the Médoc, and then chapter by chapter I reveal never before-told stories about these masterpieces of modern engineering.

Naturally I turn first to the defining drains of the great first growth châteaux; beginning with the channel that runs between Château Latour and Château Léoville-Las-Cases (pictured below). Vital to the health of these two vineyards, the drain in question is host to an annual summer fête, on the Feast Day of Saint Salambao, widely regarded as the patron saint of fishermen and drainage technicians. Suddenly, all along the length of the usually sedate drainage ditch, pictured below, food stalls spring up, music plays, and the locals – usually led by Frédéric Engerer of Latour, and Jean-Hubert Delon of Léoville-Las-Cases – dance late into the night. Such grand festivities are fuelled by wine, which cascades down the immaculately clean drain, the revellers able to dip their glass into the flowing liquid and imbibe. I can’t reveal the identity of the wine, for various reasons, but mainly for fear of receiving a lawsuit from one of the aforementioned managers/proprietors.

It is of course impossible to write a book on Bordeaux without mentioning Robert Parker at least 300 times, usually within the first seven pages, and I have naturally done my duty with this book. It was in 1983, during his spring visit to Bordeaux, that Parker uncovered one of Bordeaux’s long-lost drains. Long had there been rumours of a ‘missing drain’, from the very earliest days of Dutch drain construction, running down from Château Rauzan-Ségla through the vineyards of Château Margaux. Walking back to his car after a long lunch at Rauzan-Ségla Parker stumbled and fell down a 7-metre well-shaft, scraping his leg and tearing his trousers in the process. Having winched Parker out using a complicated system of pulleys and winches, the Bordelais realised the missing drain had been found. Its discovery was instrumental in augmenting the quality of the drainage and the wines coming out of the Château Margaux vineyard from the 1985 vintage onwards. Parker often claims responsibility for improving the quality of wines made in Bordeaux; here, for once, he is right.

Since those early days of drain rediscovery Parker has continued his involvement with great drainage projects of the Médoc. Working with drain enthusiast Jean-Guillaume Prats, the two mapped out the original drainage ditches and field drains of St Estèphe, work that led directly to an improvement in quality at Château Cos d’Estournel. Ever altruistic, and keen to cover up his good work, Parker persuaded Prats to say this improved quality was the result of the new cellars at Cos d’Estournel, the construction of which were in fact funded entirely by Parker himself. In my book I reveal the whole ‘cellars’ ruse for the farce it really is; having researched 21st-century milk-vat technology I have discovered there is in fact no such thing as laser-welded milk vat. Parker’s altruism left him in some considerable debt through, ultimately necessitating the sale of the Wine Advocate in late 2012, for the sum of $15 million. The majority of these monies has been used by Parker to pay off Antonio Galloni, who is rumoured to have built up an extensive dossier of Parker’s drain fetish. I can reveal, for the first time, that the rest is to be channelled into third-world projects, managed by his charity, the Parker Institute for Drain Development, Literacy & Education. Under the umbrella of P.I.D.D.L.E., Parker will be funding the installation of field drains in under-privileged vineyards, including Château Figeac, all of Beaujolais Côte de Py, Savennières and the viticultural wasteland that is the Côte d’Or, where without Parker’s gracious funding of field drain installation the vignerons have no choice but to go on producing horrible, mean, overly acidic wines.

This text is, according to Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson in their joint foreword, “a book unlike any other we have ever seen before, and hopefully unlike any we ever see again“, which I take very much as a compliment. With 890 pages, 28 colour plates, and 238 hand-drawn drainage maps (as shown above), the book is I hope set to wow the Bordeaux community, and should make an ideal gift for wine drinkers and drain enthusiasts everywhere.

My new book is available now from Amazon (UK) and Amazon (USA)

Filed under: Bordeaux
Posted by Chris Kissack on April 1, 2013 at 10:34 am
4 Comments »

Twelve years and ten months ago (to be honest the exact date is lost to memory – but it was one day in May, 2000) I added a few ‘Winedoctor’ pages to the internet for the first time. Little did I realise at that time, even though I had a deep love of wine and an urgent desire to explore and discover all its forms, just how big a part of my life this site would become.

Much has changed since then. Bordeaux prices have exploded, and the region is on the receiving end of equal measures of love and disdain, depending on who you’re talking to. Classifications have collapsed, been reborn, and some St Emilion châteaux elevated to a level we would never have predicted twenty years ago. Muscadet is also enjoying a rebirth, the increasingly well defined crus communaux one of the many reviving stimuli. Vouvray is more exciting than ever, while Montlouis has risen from the ashes in a style that can only be described as phoenix-like. We have ‘natural’ and ‘orange’ wines, both unheard of ten years ago, and we have a much greater understanding of grape varieties, including their genetic relationships to one another and their origins. I’ve tasted wines from Belgium, Slovenia, China and one or two other countries which I never even realised made wine. I think it’s safe to say that, since Winedoctor was born, the world of wine has changed greatly.

And on the internet things have moved along a little too. Since Winedoctor was first published online established wine writers, most notably and successfully Jancis Robinson (and team) and Robert Parker (and team), joined in the fray, setting up their websites, bringing their expertise previously only expressed in print, and on television in the case of Jancis, to the world wide web. In fact, Robert Parker was one of my earliest advertisers, as his web-team rented a little advertising space on Winedoctor to alert surfers to his new online presence, sometime back in 2001 I think.

Perhaps more relevant to this post though, over the last twelve years I have changed too. Winedoctor has grown, and I have become – recognising the need to match the expertise held by many Winedoctor readers, and meet the standards demanded by many of my visitors – more focused on two regions, Bordeaux and the Loire. It has been a journey without much of a plan, until recently at least. Recognising increasing pressures on my time, I realised that the only way Winedoctor could survive – by which I mean the only way I could continue to dedicate the huge amount of time to it that I have been doing over the last few years – was if I asked for payment from readers. I wrote about this change here, a couple of months ago, and here, a week ago. And today, March 30th, marks the day that the paywall went up.

For Winedoctor readers it’s a big change, and I really appreciate the positive words of encouragement I have received. I also acknowledge that some people weren’t happy with the development, disappointed at the change, hoping for a lower price. I hope I can publish enough articles in the coming months to persuade you that having access to the site is worth the fee (which is £45, equivalent to £3.75 per month, more details here). Naturally much of April will be – once I return from the primeurs week – taken up with Bordeaux 2012. Last year’s report stretched over 35 pages, and don’t expect anything less detailed this year! Other articles planned for the next few months, squeezed in before and after the primeurs report, include:

  A Bordeaux 2003 report, with more than 60 wines tasted at ten years of age, taking in all the firsts (reds only – no Yquem, sorry) including Petrus and Ausone.

  A vertical tasting of the wines of Richard Leroy, both Clos des Rouliers and Noëls de Montbenault, from the 2004 vintage through to 2009.

  A Bordeaux 2000 report. A little more brief and down-to-earth than my 2003 report, with more than twenty wines tasted, featuring value wines such as Fonbel, La Vieille Cure and more.

  A tasting of wines from Clos du Clocher, with a new profile of this estate.

  A new profile of François Chidaine, complete with vineyard maps and new opinion.

  A vertical tasting of wines from Philippe Foreau, of Domaine du Clos Naudin, taking in a selected range of his cuvées from 2009 back to 2002.

  An update on Gombaude-Guillot, Pomerol’s only biodynamic domaine.

  All my updates from the Loire Salon, with many new profiles too.

  And don’t forget the completion of my new, 35+ page Bordeaux guide, to be rolled out every (well, almost every) Sunday.

I hope this will keep Winedoctor subscribers entertained. I see, by the time I have finished writing this post, seven readers have signed up already. Thank you! For those yet to be convinced, my ‘Weekend Wine’ reports every Monday remain free to view, as will all my blog posts, restaurant reviews, book reviews and a selection of other pages.

For more on me, click here, and to sign up, click here.

Filed under: Wine Writing
Posted by Chris Kissack on March 30, 2013 at 2:54 pm
2 Comments »

Later on this year I will be exploring Madeira. Not vicariously, although that would perhaps be easier (and less expensive); I will in fact be planting my feet on the soil of this sub-tropical (sounds good!) Atlantic island for the first time in my life.

Naturally, a little Madeira-orientated experimentation and initiation is called for. I started off with two entry-level ten-year old wines from Henriques & Henriques, one a Sercial and the other a Malvasia. The Sercial is pictured below – if you think the picture looks unusually ‘stretched’, it isn’t. The wine comes in very slim, stoppered bottles.

Henriques & Henriques Madeira Ten Years Old Sercial: A golden hue in the glass, lightly toasted, with a faint green tinge to the rim of the wine. The aromatics are redolent of toasted nuts, with little peaty, wood-smoke tones, but more prominently a clean citrus tang. The palate is fleshy and rich, and although described as a dry wine, it is certainly not bone dry, as there is a generous feel to it all. Good grip underneath it though, and wonderfully freh and invigorating acidity which, with the very direct and well defined nutty flavours, combine to give this a real energy on the palate. I think would prefer a little less fat on the palate, perhaps a less plump feel to it, but otherwise this is certainly well composed and full of character. 15.5/20 (March 2013)

Henriques & Henriques Ten Year Old Malvasia: A rich, walnut-brown at its core, this wine fades out towards the rim to a rich, toasty golden hue. The nose does not suggest great sweetness, but does call to mind the scents of caramel, walnuts, dates and raisins. The sweetness certainly shows on the palate though, the start very textured and fleshy, and this sensation continues through the middle and finish. From within the wine there wells up a great spicy grip, with flavours of nuts and brulée, but also a keen, charged acidity, not especially fine or precise but certainly with enough energy to cut through the sweet midpalate and finish. There is a lot of vigour here, and it does well to carry along the sweet substance of the wine. 16.5/20 (March 2013)

Well, it’s not a bad start. Hopefully I will encounter one or two more bottles before I board the plane this summer.

Filed under: Portugal
Posted by Chris Kissack on March 28, 2013 at 2:01 pm
Comments Off

My recent mini-update on the 2011 vintage in the Loire Valley, featuring a handful of wines from Anjou and Touraine, prompted some discussion with Loire courtier Charles Sydney and I thought it was informative enough to bring out here, on the Winedr blog.

The selection of wines, which were encountered at Charles’s annual Loire Benchmark tasting, were very small in number, and certainly not large enough to produce any valid sweeping generalisations on the vintage. And so when I wrote of the red wines “[t]he closest match from recent history was almost certainly 2004, not a particularly desirable vintage” I was in fact referring not to my tasting assessment (although, to be straight, some of the wines weren’t showing at all well) but to a comparison of independently-produced data published by the Laboratoire de Touraine on the two vintages. I clearly didn’t explain that well enough, and so I thought it was worth clarifying that point.

Secondly, however, Charles added a nuanced point to my interpretation of the Laboratoire’s graphs which is worth noting. The original graph is here:

The two traces of importance in the above graph are on the right hand side, and are for 2011 (bold blue with circles) and 2004 (thin blue with diamonds). Each data point (circle or diamond) represents one analysis of sampled fruit from the vine, each sampling one week apart. Thus, as the plots snake leftwards and upwards, this represents increasing physiological (tannin) and sugar ripeness respectively as the weeks pass, and harvest approaches. As can clearly be seen, the two plots end on exactly the same point, leading to my comparison of the two vintages.

This seems indisputable, but Charles’s point, which I thought insightful and valuable, was this; the Laboratoire de Touraine’s assessments are made on fruit from middling vineyards; they are not vines in the possession of a leading grower, such as Jacky Blot or Philippe Vatan. There is therefore less desire to delay picking on these vineyards, a practice which is of course essential – especially in a less warm and benevolent vintage – in order to obtain maximum ripeness, flavour and quality. Thus, although the 2004 and 2011 plots on the graph above end when the fruit in these vineyards was harvested, other vineyards elsewhere, those in the possession of the more dedicated vignerons, may well have been picked much later, perhaps many weeks later. The plots therefore, although providing an excellent clue as to the character of the growing season, do not necessarily represent the potential quality that might come out of the vintage from the very best domaines.

This seems particularly true when comparing 2004 with 2011; 2004 is remembered in the Loire as a dreadful vintage, one where the growing season ended in a melange of weather-related misery, the harvest described by one vigneron as “les plus emmerdants depuis dix ans“, a comment which I don’t think needs any translation. Suffice to say the harvest wasn’t a particularly pleasant or rewarding one. The 2011 vintage, however, is remembered much more favourably; here, despite the unreassurring technical analyses represented on the above graph, there then came several weeks of beautiful sunshine, allowing for further movement along both ripeness scales. But only at those domaines where the team had the dedication to wait it out, naturally. I guess this is part of the reasoning behind the oft-heard statement that, in the Loire, the quality of the vintage is determined by the September and October weather.

The inevitable conclusion is that the graph is a guide, but can never describe a vintage’s true potential as the analyses cease long before the best vignerons harvest. Having said that, however, it is only correct to point out that 2011 remains, for me, a weaker vintage at present. I have uncovered quite a few less-than-ripe reds, and some leanness in some whites. The rot was not restricted to Muscadet either; I have smelt it and tasted it in Anjou and Touraine. Although, to be fair, I have also encountered some attractive sweet wiens from Anjou. As always, individual analysis of each domaine, and each cuvée is required. I’m therefore not saying avoid at all costs, just do your research before you buy. There’s plenty of relevant material recently added to Winedoctor, and more lined up for publication in coming months. After yesterday’s look at 2011 (and 2010 and 2009) from François Chidaine, tomorrow I present notes on recent releases from Frantz Saumon.

Filed under: Loire
Posted by Chris Kissack on March 27, 2013 at 10:24 am
Comments Off

It seems appropriate, as it is now nearly eight weeks since I first published details of my plans to convert Winedoctor to a pay-to-view site (in Important News for Winedoctor Readers), to update those readers who might be interested on how this plan is progressing. It seems only right to me that I make this change in an open and transparent manner, with plenty of warning, the real point of these posts. If you missed the first post, you might like to go back and read it; it explains my reasoning and the need to make this change to pay-to-view if Winedoctor is to survive.

The process of shifting an established free-to-access website to a pay-to-view model is not entirely straightforward. It reminds me of the tale of the holidaymakers who stop to ask for directions; the old yokel they have accosted fixes them with a beady-eye, his face expressing all that needs to be said on the folly of their quest, and replies “well, I wouldn’t start from here if I were you“. Like the hapless holidaymakers, I can’t choose where I start from, having uploaded my first Winedoctor pages to the internet more than twelve years ago now. This was an era when content management systems such as WordPress, which comes with dozens of easy plug-ins to manage subscriptions, paywalls, credit-card payments and so on, were nothing more than a twinkle in a programmer’s eye.

Nevertheless, somewhat to my surprise (I’m always surprised when things progress more easily than expected…..usually very surprised) the process of development and integration seems to have gone more smoothly than I had anticipated. The paywall software is in place, and I can see only one final glitch that needs ironing out. The credit card payment system is in place, and has been tested multiple times. I won’t bore you with any more gory details than that, but suffice to say that although I will continue to test the systems I have in place, the paywall is essentially ready to go. The time has come, therefore, to set a date.

I stated in my original post that I was aiming to institute the paywall in March. I am going to come good on that plan – just – as the paywall will go up over the weekend of March 30th and 31st. These things are always subject to change, but barring any personal catastrophe this is the plan. The timing really relates to when I can guarantee being available to sort out any teething problems that might occur, but setting myself this deadline also means I should have this done and dusted before I leave for the Bordeaux primeurs the following week. Preparations for this trip are almost complete (you can see some of my timetable below – I just wish I could raise a response from Ducru-Beaucaillou) and it is going to be the busiest yet, with seven solid days of tasting planned. I will thus have more writing-up to do on my return than ever, so really need to have the paywall integration done before I get bogged down with that. The 30th and 31st is also a good choice for me as website usage tends to be lighter than during the week. With typically 27,000 page views per day from Monday to Friday, that seems like a valid consideration!

And as for the price, as previously stated, the access fee will be a one-off payment of £45 per annum. This can be made using most Mastercard and Visa (debit and credit cards) through a reputable online payment gateway, Sagepay. Students and staff of the Wine and Spirit Education Trust, staff and students of The Institute of Masters of Wine and members of the Association of Wine Educators should ensure they contact their respective organisations in order to obtain relevant discount codes prior to payment. The first two should be set up and ready to go when the paywall goes up; I have certainly provided the WSET and IMW with all the information they need. As for the AWE, you may need to shake your committee along a bit, as I have certainly made the offer. Please note, all three organisations have the same offer, and only one code can be applied, so if you are eligible via the IMW or WSET code there is no need to look for an AWE offer to materialise.

Some people have asked for fuller details of what and will be behind the paywall. I’m not going to map out every page here, but in essence the wine guides, domaine profiles, domaine updates and detailed tasting reports including my Bordeaux primeur reports and mature Bordeaux and Loire vintage assessments will be pay-to-view. As for what remains free, this will include my basic wine education pages, wine book reviews, restaurant reviews as well as all my Monday ‘Weekend Wine’ reports and all my blog posts. This adds up to a serious chunk of the content on Winedoctor, and so there should still be plenty of content – old and new – for those who do not wish to subscribe.

As with my previous post, please feel free to post any questions below, and I will do my best to answer them as soon as possible.

Filed under: Bordeaux, Wine Writing
Posted by Chris Kissack on March 20, 2013 at 3:39 pm
Comments Off