New producers and online shopping

Very remiss of me not to update you more regularly. If I ever end up in hospital and have use of my arms (or preferably a remote location with power and internet access), I will spend some of the time catching up on months of tasting notes!

There are two main snippets of news to share right now:

I have secured the Australian distribution rights for Martinborough, NZ, boutique producer Benfield and Delamare. I've been allocated 25 cases of the delicious 2006 vintage of their top wine, a merlot-cabernet franc blend. It is an elegant, enticing wine, plummy and perfumed with what I would call fruits of the forest -- blackberries, blueberries, wild strawberries even.

And the website for my business -- www.eurocentricwine.com.au -- now has an online store so that the Australian public can browse and choose from the complete range. Retailers obviously pick and choose through the portfolio according to what they believe their customers will buy, and some great wines have until this point been overlooked. There are also some rare and very expensive German sweet wines that might find favour with a collector or parent wanting to tuck away birth-year gifts for well into the future.

Special introductory mixed dozens are yet to be listed, but you can mix and match single bottles of your own choosing to a minimum order of one dozen and enjoy at least 10% off the total price.

Payment is by means of direct bank transfer of cheque, although the latter must be cleared before goods will be shipped.

The website now also carries a downloadable PDF catalogue with notes on producers and many international independent reviews of the wines. The monthly newsletter will also soon be available as an archive.

I will be busy in Sydney for the next two weeks, with plans to show wines to interested retailers and restaurants on Thursday, August 6. I will be in New Zealand from August 14-31, primarily to catch up with the North Island producers and try their next releases.

I aim to make quick visits to Brisbane and Melbourne in September and then go to Europe by about the 23rd. The VDP German riesling auctions are a great way to taste the best the 2008 vintage has to offer, plus secure some very limited edition gems and catch up with the 11 winemakers I import from.

If I manage to go, I will stay for a month and see some new Champagne prospects, taste the 2008s in Burgundy, and meet my new Beaujolais producer, Roland Pignard.

There are plans for a shipment of wine out of France in September if the finances come together. That shipment would include Champagne, Burgundy, Chablis and Beaujolais.

Another shipment out of Germany would bring Maximin Grunhaus and Van Volxem wines here for the first time, plus the 2008s from Willi Schaefer, Schloss Lieser, Rebholz, Emrich-Schonleber, Schafer-Frohlich and perhaps the rest of the team there.

Champagne has been the hot ticket lately, with Rockpool Bar & Grill in Sydney lapping up the Rene Geoffroy Empreinte, while Aria, which won the Good Food Guide wine list of the year award in 2009, proved their good taste in opting to list the Geoffroy Rosé de Saignée by the glass and bottle.

Stocks are low of red Burgundies until the 2007s arrive, but there are some fantastic New Zealand reds available now, and ample riesling and white Burgundy to suit the white wine lovers.

And so this brief note turns into another epistle ... I'm off for now, but please check out the website. I'd not only appreciate your custom but your feedback.

Cheers!
Neville