Editorial
A benchmark vintage?
It is rather pleasing to read here and there that 2024, despite the first gloomy opinions, should be (re)considered as a vintage that ushers in a new era. Indeed, as Chloé Conort, the dynamic oenologist interviewed in Industry Voices, very judiciously whispers, this vintage, marked (battered) by some harsh vagaries, turns out to be of remarkable freshness. In that, it clearly takes us back a few years, when pyrazine and more varietal Cabernets set the tone for Gironde cuvées without anyone finding anything to object to. In our Spotlight, Séverine Bonnie of Château Malartic-Lagravière speaks of a benchmark vintage capable of seducing more than one consumer, sometimes burnt by denaturing oak intake or heated extractions. We are therefore betting from today that this 2024 will need to be handled gently in the ageing, so as not to strip it of this much-prized freshness, while asking that the ageing smooth out its small rough edges.
On the chapter of the necessary reconquest, it is interesting to see how, still according to Séverine Bonnie, salvation must come through another understanding of culinary habits and a consideration of consumption habits. At the very least, no longer wrinkling one’s nose at the mere mention of vegetarian dishes or low- or no-alcohol drinks. Wine can and must accompany these new underlying trends without disappearing in any way. As you will have understood, we will be pleased to read here that solutions exist, that Bordeaux has a heart that beats singularly strongly and that the whole industry is inaugurating new times that we can hope will present us with solutions on particularly widened horizons, if of course we are willing to put away a few nasty received ideas or obsolete software.
Our partner Inno’vin will for its part ask whether generative AI is a revolution for wine marketing. Without presuming what will come out of this seminar, it should certainly stimulate our collective intelligence.
For its part, the house of Féret, at your side for several decades already, is now, very officially, getting down to putting back on the loom the 20th edition of Bordeaux et ses vins. The most beautiful and most complete promotional guide to the Gironde appellations and their know-how! A story that continues to be written more than two centuries later and about which we will tell you very soon right here. In the meantime, and because Christmas is approaching, we are offering the older editions of the Féret with a 15% discount using the code NOEL15 (online shop: https://librairie.feret.com/)
Finally, I take advantage of this megaphone to remind you, regarding our other major editorial project – La Liste, the women and men who make Bordeaux and the Gironde – that you can still recommend to us people who, in your view, deserve to appear in the guide to the personalities who make Bordeaux and the Gironde, link below: Personality recommendation(s) for La Liste Féret.
Faithfully yours
Henry Clemens, Publication Director
