James Bercovici - The Big Red Wine Company

With inflation at 4.4% but a stated desire to reduce the £150 billion deficit as quickly as possible, will duty on wine be increased today?

Rather late in the day, we decided to join in with the wine trade's efforts to do its bit for Comic Relief. An impromptu tasting was arranged for Friday evening and any local who looked like he or she had at least a fiver to spare was press-ganged into coming along. In the end, around 40 people turned up (it was a two hour tasting in our living room at home so there was a very friendly atmosphere) and tasted from 18 bottles I had opened. I also put together a quiz which I thought was fairly easy and a blind tasting competition which was less so. In the end, no-one scored more than 11/20 in total so I guess my questions were trickier than I had thought (it was all multiple choice and wine-related although that did include a question about the wine the character Miles in Sideways drinks out of a paper bag - answer, Cheval Blanc). The highlights, wine-wise, for me at least were the Baglio del Campo di Cristobello "CDC" from Sicily, a white based on Chardonnay and the ind...

Someone just emailed me to tell me I have been quoted by The Drinks Business, a very glossy UK trade publication which has been sent to me from time to time.  The full page on Live: Budget Watch can be seen here but since these are apparently my words, I can't see a problem with quoting them here. At precisely 12.20pm, a full forty minutes before George Osborne stood up, this was posted: A rise in VAT is widely expected in today's budget as is yet another increase in duty. What will this actually mean? James Bercovici, of Big Red Wine, writes : "Given that VAT is a percentage and duty a flat rate, this is actually quite simple to work out. VAT is expected to rise to 20% so it is only duty that is uncertain at the moment. But it is reasonable to assume that any [duty] rise will be a percentage increase on the current £20.25 per dozen (still wines). A 5% increase will mean a 2.593% increase in the price of any bottle; a 7% increase will amount to 2.7792%. In mon...

I am involved in another business with a couple of colleagues. Imaginatively, we have called it Fusion Wines (well, it doesn't really matter what it's called and I couldn't be bothered to consider any number of suggestions, most of which would have been far worse) and its raison d'etre is to sell into the restaurant trade (so come and see me in the poor house soon!). We had our first tasting on Monday 28th February 2011 and, apart from the low turnout (considering we had invited just about every restaurant in London), it was a great success. Probably the highlight of the tasting was the newly arrived, BRW-sourced, Tenuta Serradenari Barolo 2007 , a deliciously oppulent and forward Barolo from ungrafted vines in La Morra, the highest planted anywhere in the denomination. I decided against showing its older sibling, the 2006, as far too reserved (ie. a tannic brute) to be of interest at a trade tasting. Both are astonishingly cheap, though, for Barolo (don't you j...

The Society's chairman, Colin Wagstaff, asked me to present a selection of Southern Rhone wines last night which, of course, I was pleased to do. The venue is the upstairs room of a pub in Dulwich Village with around 35 or so members present. They like to take a break half-way through for cheese etc and, having recently returned from the Rhone, I decided this provided a good opportunity to slip in a few "en primeur" wines. Starting with a couple of whites, Domaine des Anges' regular bottling from 2009 was well received because of its tasty fruit but, perhaps even more, behind the fruit lay a good structure which, now Ciaran is moving towards organics, is more apparent. This was followed by Xavier Vignon's white "Debut" (or, simply, "Xavier") which is atypical, having a Chardonnay base (actually, it's not really a Rhone wine; rather a vin de table, originating from both the Rhone and the Languedoc. Impressive though but some of us felt it...

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Christophe has had a meteoric decade, from newcomer fresh out of college to president of his local syndicate (Signargues - and he was one of the reasons why this village was promoted in the first place), father of two and winemaker extraordinaire. Whilst his Cotes du Rhone remains one of our very best sellers (it is, perhaps, the most versatile wine on the list - we have enjoyed it with seafood, curry and everything in between) and his new Chateauneuf is heading for the top table, the wines in between can get overlooked. A foolish thing to do. Tonight, I am opening the 2007 CDR Villages "Cayenne" which could easily pass for an oaked Gigondas at around twice the price. That said, it has much more black raspberry character than many I tasted on my recent visit to the Caveau des Vignerons in Gigondas. It's bursting with fruit and has a nice layer of oak lurking in the background. This will become even more integrated in time but I doubt...

Got into a bit of a scrap with someone over restaurant mark ups. First, as a supplier to a small number of restaurants, I have some insight to how and why they price wines as high as they do (much of it comes down to our unwillingness to set foot in an establishment that would charge us £40 for a steak) and, partly because of this, would rarely go for the house wine. I do like the idea of restaurants that impose a maximum mark-up per bottle so that the more you pay, the better value (ie. a £10 bottle for £25 or a £30 bottle for £45). The debate highlighted the fact that most people calculate gross profit in different ways. For me it is this: assume the restaurant wants 70% (not unknown) and pays £10 for the wine. In that case the bottle will be listed for £40 (£40 less 20% VAT then take off 70% of this brings you back to £10). So, it is taken from the top price and not, as some think, a 70% mark up of the original price which would be a mere £20.40 including VAT - that way, the GP at...