Happy Days in Paris

A few weeks ago, while off on a ski break with the kids we had a more or less sleepless night and not because of the altitude.  As every year on the last Sunday in February, France’s most prestigious wine competition, the grand Concours d’Agriculture, names the wines that their panel judges best in class.  It’s a totally blind tasted contest with juries made up of sommeliers, wine professionals and interestingly also some regular wine lovers to add the consumer perspective to the mix (which we think is a really good thing).

We’d been silently hoping that our samples may do well this year, given that the wines are of a really good standard and we’d already had very positive feedback from all over the place.  The timing of the Grand Concours makes it particularly important to us Rosé professionals as it happens so early in the year and therefore has a real effect on sales and we’re able to tell retail and restaurant buyers about it before they’ve made their final choices.

When we tried to log in on Sunday night, the server had actually crashed under the weight of the wine world trying to get into the site of the Grand Concours to try and find out whether or not they had won a “Macaron” (medal).  We gave up after a while, but someone had sent us a text to say we had actually won two, but they were unable to tell us the colour.  Which made for a few hours of shallow REM sleep, before at 3am Stephen looked at his phone and we found out that the medals were in fact two precious Golds, one for Etoile and one for Pure.  And that was the end of the night, pretty much, with both of us planning press releases and ways to publish the good news on our social media.

All in all a great start to a busy season and we’re delighted that the wines were recognised against thousands of other pinks submitted from our region, which is known to produce the best Rosé around.  Now all we have to hope is that you like it just as much and we are always grateful for any feedback from your tasting experiences!