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At a recent lunch at the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, six Chinese businessmen ordered five bottles of wine. Malcolm Zacanaro,
the executive assistant manager for food and beverage at the hotel, initially thought nothing of it until he saw the bill, which came to more than RMB 120,000 (US$15,000) for the wines alone. Zacanaro says, The Chinese market is extremely price-sensitive. At the top end, hosts want to impress, so they order the most expensive bottles. And at the bottom end, people are less knowledgeable, so they order by price.'
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A new radio advertising campaign for Ctes du Rhne wines will break in October and run for two months. This campaign, in addition to the current six-month sponsorship deal with Smooth FM, will take the wine region's total radio investment to more than 320,000.
The radio spots will appear on Magic FM, Total LBC, Classic FM and Smooth FM, among others, and are expected to reach 4.5 million listeners.
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Wine lists, like wines, can be balanced but bland, the smack of tokenism as stinging as the mark-up. Balanced the wine list at The Vintners Rooms is not (at least not in any superficial way). But nor is it bland. Better by far to have a distinct identity, personality and quality - and these attributes the list, the wines, the food, the people and the place have in profusion.
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LONDON
CAPITAL GAINA
THE ART OF YOUTH
The Ledbury, 127 Ledbury Road, W11 2AQ
Make way for the gastronomic brat pack as 26-year-old Australian head chef Brett Graham helps to win The Restaurateur's Best New Restaurant of the Year 2005 for The Ledbury. Since opening earlier this year, Nigel Platts-Martin's latest venture (following success with The Square, Chez Bruce, The Glasshouse and La Trompette) appears to have gone from strength to strength. The menu is adventurous with real flashes of originality, such as a dessert of pineapple and passion fruit ravioli with lemongrass and lime. Sommelier Dawn Davis (featured in the Harpers interview, 16 September 2005) has also been receiving rave reviews from the vinous
point of view.
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What is your wine-buying strategy?
We have a very unusual business situation. Although we are completely independent, we lease the restaurant space from The Gleneagles Hotel and buy the majority of our wines through its main cellar. We are only charged for the wine as we sell it, so from a business perspective it's superb.
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Brown-Forman will be showing a range of Durbanville Hills wines at the Wines of South Africa Mega Tasting next month, the first since it became UK (and US) agents for Cape producer Distell.
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The wine collection of the late Alan Clark MP is to be sold at auction next month.
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Revitalised seventies brand, Blue Nun, is marking the 10th anniversary of its takeover by German winery, Langguth, with a major bottle refit and an ad campaign for the iPod generation'.
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The Sardinian sibling of Sassicaia has arrived. Called Barrua, it is made at the cellars of Agripunica, the new joint venture between Tenuta San Guido of Marchese Niccol Incisa, the maker of Sassicaia, and Cantina Sociale di Santadi, one of the island's most prestigious producers. The technical director is none other than the father of Sassicaia himself, Giacomo Tachis.
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A privately owned country pub and a fish restaurant have beaten off some of the UK's finest dining establishments
to win the Trophe Gosset Celebris for the best Champagne lists in the UK.
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After months of speculation, the Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Constellation brands have come to an agreement over the super-premium California winery Opus One, owned jointly by the two companies.
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Upmarket multiple Waitrose has teamed up with Alcohol in Moderation to produce an eight-page guide called Alcohol and You, which answers the most frequently asked questions derived from a five-year survey of consumer queries.
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Germany's Racke Group has taken over the distribution rights for Australia's [yellow tail] brand in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
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Andrew Dunne, James Hewitt and Thomas Sloan have been banned as directors for their part in a series of wine investment scams. In mid-July, London's High Court banned 46-year-old Dunne and 37-year-old Thomas Sloan for 10 years, while 26-year-old Hewitt was banned for until 2012.
The DTI said: Their companies, Liquid Acquisitions and James Hewitt Associates, were investment wine companies that promised clients a fantastic return on their investment. In reality, people ended up buying wine at up to three times its true value.'
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Leading Rhne merchant and grower Paul Jaboulet An -
one of the major vineyard owners in AOC Hermitage -
is close to agreeing a deal to sell the company to Swiss financier Jean-Jacques Frey for an undisclosed sum.
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Pernod Ricard has successfully negotiated with the SPI Group to gain the worldwide distribution rights for Stolichnaya vodka (previously held by merger partner Allied Domecq). It has also intimated that it may buy the brand in the future.
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The new director of Wines of Argentina, former perfume marketer Fernando Farr, has said that the UK will probably get a dedicated Wines of Argentina office before 2007'.
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Monthly MAT breakdowns of wine sales provide an essential guide to the marketplace, giving retailers and shippers an important snapshot of where the market is heading. But not all data is collected, or made available, on a month-by-month basis; and when the long view is required - producers work to an annual cycle, for example - series based on the calendar year can provide useful additional detail. And while sales data
are pre-eminent in the short run, volume data comes into its own when a longer perspective is required. In order to build
a multidimensional picture of the UK drinks industry, incorporating on- as well as off-sales, the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) brings together numerous sources of data, including official imports and clearance statistics,
as well as household expenditure and regional breakdowns, in one convenient document. The Drink Pocket Book is published every October in association with AC Nielsen.
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Cognac Frapin and Maxxium UK's malt whisky brand Highland Park have both made additions to the very top ends of their portfolios.
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Joanne Simon and Jo Burzynska are to rejoin Harpers as South Africa and New Zealand columnists respectively.
Joanne, who was born and raised in Johannesburg, joined Harpers in 2002 as a staff writer, after a stint in Cape Town as a political reporter.
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