A pregnant pause

Our crazy life is about to get more hectic! My wife and I are expecting our first child early next year, so that is adding some urgency for me to get back to Europe while I can and quickly round up some more producers!

Who knows when I or we will be able to travel next year, so I'm off in mid-September for a quick tour of France. Actually I'll start at the VDP auction in Trier when the best rieslings of the 2010 vintage will be shown and sold, and sneak in a few quick visits to my German producers, including new star AJ Adam.

Then I'll whizz through Champagne, Alsace, Jura, the Ardeche, Beaujolais, Burgundy, Chablis, Sancerre and Anjou.

I've got quite a few people to track down and try to get on board, and the tail end of this year was already going to be frantic trying to get everything into the country.

There's a shipment of wine from France on the way (Riffault and Thomas-Labaille from Sancerre, Oudin from Chablis, Croix, Camille Giroud and Arnaud Tessier from Burgundy, Burgaud Beaujolais, Vouette et Sorbee & Thevenin Champagne, Espiers and Cuvee des Copains from the southern Rhone), to be followed by a container of 2009s and 2010s from Germany. That will include wine from Willi Schaefer, Zilliken, AJ Adam, Rebholz, Knipser, Schmitges, Emrich-Schonleber, Fritz Haag and Schloss Lieser. If there's room I'll sneak some more Maximin Grunhaus in.

The big challenge will be getting the third in the queue underway, with an expensive mountain of champagne to move: David Leclapart, Georges Laval, Benoit Lahaye, Lancelot-Pienne, Pierre Gerbais, Cedric Bouchard, Ulysse Collin, Rene Geoffroy, Chartogne-Taillet, Hubert Paulet ... it's gotta be done for summer!

I'm also keen to get more Beaujolais here from our team: Jean-Marc Burgaud, Roland Pignard, Paul-Henri Thillardon (who won an international gamay competition with his first vintage) and Alain Coudert. There are some others I'd like to track down. If only they had email addresses!

There's more Chablis too, from Moreau-Naudet and Alain Gautheron, plus new vintages out of Burgundy: Benoit Ente, Jean-Philippe Fichet, David Clark and Pierre Guillemot from Savigny les Beaune. We could also offer some Anne Gros wines from Burgundy and Minervois.

Of course I've also got quite a lot of wine lined up from Spain and Italy. As you can see, it's just as well we are picking up new buyers all the time, and this needs to continue. So long as that dollar holds strong!

For now, I'm chained to the desk working on taxes and other paperwork so I don't feel so guilty when I head north. And I'll try to do a better job of keeping you posted from Europe, with photos and a few videos too.

Cheers,
Neville