Costco to sell fine wine in the UK

Costco’s director of wine buying Annette Alvarez-Peters may have caused controversy earlier this year when she slammed wine as “just a beverage” and “no different than toilet paper,” but the company – the world's largest wine retailer – is on a fine wine offensive in the UK. News has emerged this week, as reported on db.com, that Costco is branching out into the UK market, having launched a UK website, Costco.co.uk, selling high-end wines and spirits.

Open to both Costco members and non-members, the site, which went live last week, features a 131-strong wine and spirits range, including Champagne big guns Cristal, Krug and Dom Pérignon, and classed growth Bordeaux from the acclaimed 2009 vintage. Topping the offering is a bottle of Taylor’s Scion Tawny Port dating back to 1855 housed in a bespoke crystal decanter, which is on sale for £1,599.99.

 

Meanwhile, a single bottle of Château L’Eglise Clinet Pomerol 2009 is priced at £339.99, while the same vintage of “flying fifth” Château Pontet-Canet is going for under a third of the price at £99.99. At the value end, a bottle of Saint-Julien estate Gruaud Larose’s second wine, Sarget de Gruaud Larose 2009, is priced at £18.49, while Haut Médoc estate Château Senejac 2009 costs just £15.49.

Among the sprits on sale are Patrón Tequila, Ciroc Vodka, Johnnnie Walker Blue Label, Courvioiser Cognac and English Vodka brand Chase. Delivery is free, and Costo’s online customers will be treated to exclusive offers. It will be interesting to track how Costco.co.uk performs. The UK wine market is a crowded place, and in order to thrive, a merchant’s offering has to be both compelling and unique.

New York-based online merchant Lot18 is a recent casualty, closing its UK operation in July after just four months, blaming the supermarkets’ stranglehold on the UK market and a lack of anticipated growth for its exit. Is Costco.co.uk appealing enough to lure customers away from the might of the supermarkets, Majestic, and the increasing number of savvy online-only merchants entering the market? Only time will tell.

Louis Roederer Wine Writers Awards

Monday night was nerve-wracking and exciting in equal measure. It was the Louis Roederer Wine Writers' Awards and I was up for Best Emerging Wine Writer.

I arrived at the Gherkin intoxicated by the promise of the evening. We all had to check our bags, Heathrow Airport style, through an X-ray machine, and walk through a metal detector. Christelle went off.

Shooting up 35 floors in the speedy lift, I got a rush of blood to the head, but was soon rewarded with a spectacular view across the London skyline. It was a Dickensian evening – smoggy and grey, and the city stretched out before me like a painting. The sky seemed to mirror the colour of the buildings out of sympathy. I spotted St Paul's in the foreground. It looked so tiny, like a scaled down miniature. The whole vista looked imaginary - a painted backdrop to our reverie.

I grabbed a glass of Roederer from a passing waiter and was disappointed to discover that my bellyful of butterflies wasn't enough to deter me from the canapés. I had hoped, for once, to be able to show some restraint. Soon however, we were being ushered up another floor into the tip of the Gherkin, where we were greeted by Louis Roederer head Frederic Rouzaud.

The evening drew a number of the wine world twitterati: Jancis Robinson was stood to my right in a tailored gray jacket, and Tim Atkin to my left. Rouzaud introduced the latest vintage of Cristal – 2004, which we all got to try. I remember being more impressed with the 2002 last year, but that may have had something to do with the novelty factor of trying it for the first time. The '02 was golden and rich in flavour, while the '04 seemed far more subtle and introverted.

Charles Metcalfe took the stage and the awards were announced. I was up against the dynamo that is Rebecca Gibb, Jancisrobinson.com's Richard Hemming and Gabriel Savage of The Drinks Business. Rebecca and I were stood next to each other, and, after racing through the first award, they were suddenly announcing ours. My heart began to pound. This could be it. This could be my moment.

Charles read through the list – it was exhilarating just to hear my name called out. 'This person has been rewarded for her remarkable reporting that defies her young years'. I knew I hadn't won - all my articles were features. Rebecca Gibb's name was announced and she weaved her way through the crowd and up onto the stage.

Hats off to Rebecca; a deserved winner. Not only is she a Master of Wine student, but she freelancers for all the top wine titles and is about to set up a wine school in Aukland - I didn't stand a chance! Other winners on the night were Jancis Robinson for her website, Decanter's own Andrew Jefford, who was crowned Wine Columnist of the Year, and Simon Woods, who scooped Online Wine Columnist of the Year. I stuck around for a few more glasses of fizz, then sloped off into the night with a bottle of Roederer swinging by my side.

Armand de Brignac: the Jay-Z effect

On Wednesday night I was invited to a party at the Park Lane Hilton hosted by Armand de Brignac Champagne, better known as Ace of Spades, to celebrate their Brut Gold being voted the number one Champagne in the world.

The prestige cuvée, which sells for £250 a bottle, scored 96 points out of 100 in a blind tasting of over 1,000 brands organised by FINE Champagne magazine, beating the likes of Krug, Bollinger and Dom Pérignon to the top spot. Milling about the bar in a sharp suit was Armand de Brignac CEO Jean-Jaques Cattier, a diminutive man in his mid-sixties with Martin Scorsese glasses.

I couldn't resist asking him about the Jay-Z connection, and how he felt it has affected the brand. Jay-Z after all, is Armand de Brignac's biggest supporter. Since boycotting Cristal in 2006, Jay has got behind Ace of Spades in a big way, featuring it in his 2006 music video Show Me What You Got and introducing his high profile homies, including P. Diddy and Kanye West to the brand.

'I don't mind the association with the hip-hop world at all', Cattier tells me. 'I'm happy for the exposure Jay-Z's endorsement has given the brand. He's helped get our name recognized.'

So how did a small Champagne house in Chigny-les-Roses manage to catch the hip-hop mogul's eye and in three years command £450 a bottle (for the blanc-de-blancs) and have a demand that cannot match its supply? The story goes that Jay-Z spotted Armand de Brignac in a liquor store in New York three years ago and was so taken with the bottle design that he ordered three cases from the estate to be featured in his Monaco-based music video Show Me What You Got.

Cattier upholds the story that the two had never previously met, meeting for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival last year. But it all seems too convenient that the same year Jay boycotts Cristal, a new and suitably 'bling' Champagne comes onto the market. You've only got to look at the design - the flashy gold and silver bottles with pewter ace of spades labels to realise this could only have been thought up by someone in the hip-hop industry. It's got Jay-Z's stamp all over it, and I am far from convinced that the Champagne was conceived without his involvement. Perhaps with Ace of Spades, Jay-Z is being the ultimate magician, leading us to believe the illusion that he stumbled across a brand he actually created.

Champange Cattier are adamant that Jay-Z had nothing to do with the conception of Ace of Spades, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole enterprise was his idea; a way of expanding his ever-growing empire and sticking two fingers up at Cristal while he's at it.

But what of the Brut Gold? Did it merit its 'best Champagne in the world' status? In a word, no. Sorry Jay. The nose was closed and I struggled to get much from it. It was better in the mouth, with detectable autolytic notes along with lemon zest and crunchy apples. Clean, clear and crisp, it had a rich mouthfeel and good mousse, but in comparison with Krug, DP and Cristal, it was big and clumsy, lacking the elegance and finesse of a world-class Champagne. It was more masculine, more in-your-face, more... bling.

Cristal: hip or hype?

Last weekend we hosted our Decanter Fine Wine Encounter at the Landmark Hotel in Marylebone. It was a great turn out - just under 100 producers from around the globe came to show off their wines, including Château Palmer, Chapoutier, Seghesio and Craggy Range. Château Palmer were showing their 1996, which proved such a hit queues around the stand were five deep with tweed-clad gents jostling one another, glasses aloft, in hope of a drop.

A number of the wine world glitterati flew in to present masterlcasses, from Michel Chapoutier and Christian Moueix to the charismatic Angelo Gaja, who provided the highlight of the weekend by comparing Cabernet Sauvignon to John Wayne as a lover and Nebbiolo to Italian screen legend Marcello Mastroianni. Wayne, he argued, would be strong and powerful but a bit boring, whereas Mastroianni would bring something different to the table (or bed) every night.

I got to try some sensational wines over the two days, my highlights being Angelus 2004, Chryseia 2007, and Gaja 1976 Barbaresco, which was to die for. I'd been looking forward to the final masterclass of the weekend – Louis Roederer, as we were going to be serving Cristal 1999 in Jeroboam. They were brought into the kitchen in their bright orange wrappers like giant Christmas presents. Three of them; the three kings. We unwrapped them and left them to chill in the ice box until we received orders to pour.

Created for Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1876, Cristal gets its name from its crystal clear, flat-bottomed bottle. Fearing assassination due to a rocky political situation, the tsar ordered the bottles of his favourite fizz to be made clear and flat so they couldn't be laced with poison or planted with a bomb.

In the late 1990s, with the emergence of 'bling' culture, rappers like the Notorious BIG, P Diddy and Jay-Z chose Cristal as their Champagne of choice, ordering it by the case load in clubs and boasting about their conspicuous consumption of it in their lyrics. Cristal became a byword for cool in the hip-hop world; the Champagne holy grail. Moët just wouldn't cut it anymore - it had to be Cris.

But the love affair with Cristal ended for Jay-Z at least in 2006, after Louis Roederer managing director Frederic Rouzard made the following comment in an interview with The Economist when asked if he thought the association with hip-hop would harm the Cristal brand: "What can we do? We can't forbid people from buying it. I'm sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business." Jay-Z quickly boycotted Cristal, moving on to Armand de Brignac or 'Ace of Spades' as it's been nicknamed, which is quickly replacing Cristal in hip-hop circles as the trophy bottle to be seen sipping from.

But what of the Cristal 1999? How did the cult cuvée perform on the night? By the time I got some in my glass, after two of the three bottles were poured in the masterclass, it had gone flat. It was like arriving at a party an hour too late. As I sipped it, I imagined what it might have been like, had I tried it as soon as the cork popped. It was certainly light and elegant with a complex and alluring honeyed nose, but worth £2,200 a bottle? Of course not. No wine is.

Panic grew in the kitchen post-masterclass when doing the routine bottle count. Where was the third Jeroboam? The masterclass leader sent a search party out to the Champagne room, while we combed the kitchen fearing the worst. Could an opportunistic ticket holder have crept in and shoved it up his lambs wool jumper? Surely not. The search party returned empty handed. We were still a Jeroboam down. Retracing the bottle's last steps, I rushed to the ice box and flung open the lid - there it was, laid back, luxuriating in the ice.