Finally, spring arrives after a hard winter. The inflorescences, which will soon give life to the clusters, seem to guarantee a positive fertility.
The first variety to flourish is Chardonnay.
At this time, even more than in others, the constant control of the vineyard is an absolute imperative; the winemaker constantly checks the state of health of the vine.
Fortunately, in our vineyards, the vine enjoys a good phytosanitary status.
We are in a decisive phase, closely linked to the future performance of the vineyard, in the shoots of the vine we can recognize the inflorescences of the panicle, similar to small green spheres, called inflorescences. In each one of them, there are many floral sketches, from which the individual flowers develop.
The flower, initially covered by a protective layer, detaches at the beginning of flowering and exposes the pistils and stamens. Right here fertilization takes place.
It is curious to know that the vine grown in Europe is hermaphroditic; it has male and female reproductive organs, self-pollinates and, therefore, does not require any intervention by insects. Fertilization occurs when the male seed fuses with the female ovarian cell in the ovary of the plant.
The development of the inflorescence depends largely on the climatic conditions: the higher temperatures can accelerate their development, but the rain or a sudden phase of heat can also cause the appearance of flowers and smaller berries, as in the case of rains of recent weeks, which has delayed this process.
We speak of a fascinating phenomenon for both experts and amateurs. The vineyards are currently characterized by a pleasant perfume, an intense and delicate smell, which makes us lose the notion of time, of space, and frees us from everyday stress. A perfume that we never want to forget, something so heavenly, impossible to explain with words and that you simply have to perceive it.
This time our business travel to Kapellen, Belgium, was fleeting but intense of work, of emotions and gave us the opportunity to learn a lot. Constantly, in the minds of each member of our team, echo the words of Herbert Spencer « The great goal of learning is not knowledge, but action », so on 4th of May we went to the action participating in the Spring Tasting organized by our extraordinary importer Global Wineries. The event took place on Saturday and recorded an influx of over 300 people, not bad for being during a weekend!
Mont Marçal presented itself with a wide range of products ranging from the most versatile cavas such as Mont Marçal Brut Reserva, Mont Marçal Brut Rosé, to the more refined and creamy ones such as Gran Cuvée and Aureum, up to the Marcelona wine range, a production designed for the easy consummation of fresh, aromatic and explosive Mediterranean wines. The Gran Cuvée is the product that had better acceptance among the Belgians. The reason is that it has been on the market for a long time and from the first moment, it has loved and hypnotized people, who never want to abandon it, an honor for us!
The Global Wineries family accompanied us at every moment and was always aware of our needs. Their love and concern is what makes us feel at home.
A different Saturday, where we started with positive vines and ended with the hope of having left even better taste to the Belgian palate!
Our next visit will be in September during the popular event at Kapellen Wine Village. It is a 3-day event, where we could enjoy more the companion of our Belgian family.
See you soon!
As every year (and always with an increasing enthusiasm) we embark on our trip to the US to establish and strengthen our relationships, offer commercial support and plan business visits with our historical importer Classical Wines from Spain, our faithful companion since the origins of its creation in 1984 and renowned for having the most complete Spanish wine portfolio.
Moments of hard work alternated moments of sweet memories.
Steve Metzler remembered: « I first arrived in Penedès in September 1983, but I did not meet Manuel Sancho until February 1984. I was still working in a wine store; we tried to import a pallet through a local importer who sold a lot of Castellblanch. He introduced him to us as a favor. At the end of 1984, I started looking for distribution as an agent. At the beginning of 1985, I met Almudena, we got married in August and soon we became real importers of buying and selling. Everything little by little, there was no money, only the hope. Since we had more than 10 years of experience in this sector, compared to the rest of the Spanish wine market, we had the time to settle down without problems.”
Verity wines, the distributor of Classical, is our second stage. With their great team, we visited the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Albany and New York City and noticed in the eyes of the workers the reflection of the passion for our products. For them it is essential that on the labels people can appreciate that our cavas are Vintage.
In the city of New York, we were able to organize a tasting of our cavas with the entire commercial team, where we value and confirm the very good potential of this distributor, which dispose of a team of about 40 sellers for the State and its office is located in 8th Avenue, very close to the Empire State Building.
Few can have the privilege of enjoying an office in this strategic area.
In the State of Connecticut, we visited our Hartley and Parker Distributor in the Southern Connecticut area, 30 minutes from NYC. It is a residential area for all those who want to live away from the frenetic pace of the biggest city in the USA.
It is always a pity that each wonderful experience comes to an end. Our last destination was the State of Massachusetts where we focused all our energy for a couple of days in Boston, one of the most important cities in the USA, where there are the most prestigious universities in the country, Harvard and Cambridge.
Our distributor in this State is Carolina Wine & Spirits, Martignetti Companies a very important distributor and with enough presence and visibility in the market. The sensations and the contacts made there are very promising.
During these two weeks-long travel we found true fans of our cavas, professionals who would like more interaction with someone from the winery and curious people who asked for technical information and anecdotes of the winery.
Our mental schemes guide us towards solutions that are repetitive compared to what we can imagine. It is difficult to think outside of our own patterns and it is absurd to believe that there are patterns shared by all.
Each man is an individual and, as such, has a different identity of thought from all others and it is interesting to know how to accept the criticisms and new ideas of those who cross our destiny, it is important to know how to accept divergences and enjoy all the recognition and merits concerning our products.
The treasure that we took to Spain is respect for the opinions of others and the thrust that new ideas can offer us. Knowing how to confront others is important because only from the comparison can something new be born.
Vinos Yamazaki was founded in Shizuoka in 1913, at the beginning they dedicated all the efforts to the commercialization of Sake and later they began with the importation of wines.
Nowadays, they continue with the commercialization of Sake and also with the import and sale of wines and delicatessen from all over the world, being one of the best known importers in the country. It dispose of 24 big gourmet stores in strategic places in Japan where Mont Marçal is present with many references of its portfolio.
Our mission began on 6th of March with a dinner in the city that saw the birth of Vinos Yamazaki and where it currently has its honorary headquarters, Shizuoka. We participated in an event where a dinner is held with about 300 people, in which Mont Marçal is made known with a welcome drink of Extremarium Brut Reserva.
During dinner people could taste our key products for the Japanese market such as Extremarium Brut Reserva, Aureum Brut Nature Gran Reserva and Mas Marçal Garnacha.
The days passed quickly as planned, according to the frantic and tireless pace of our Japanese colleagues. Japanese culture is very fascinating. The Japanese, in many ways, feel nowadays very close to Europe, but they also live a great and ancient diversity, of which they are rightly proud. The sense of honor and respect that distinguish Japanese culture, especially as far as concerned work, help to create situations of peaceful and efficient meetings and relationship problems rarely arise. Japan is a hyper-organized country, where attention to detail and attention to guests are intrinsic to its culture. But there are also common features, the most important is the love for beautiful things, for quality and for tradition and Mont Marçal feels very identified with this attitude.
The export team follows the programmed routes with the same dynamics of the first day visiting Yokohama and Sopporo and giving support in the stores of Tokyo and surroundings where the following stores are visited several times: Ikebukuro, Shinagawa, Kitasenju, Shinjuku, Yokohama, proposing pairings and organizing masterclass.
We are more than confident of working with a very good partner in Japan. They take great care and value the quality of our products, increasing the loyalty of end customers who personally contact us to communicate that they are great fans of our range of products. This is significant and it makes us feel very proud and with a desire to improve more and more.
We thank the magnificent Vinos Yamazaki Team and congratulate them for many more years of successful activity, they deserve it due to their great work.
We already talked about our Dom Wina distributor in our blog, in one of the trips we take twice a year to support the activities it organizes.
At this time of the year the Horeca 2019 Event took place in the small and cozy Sieraków at 30km from the breathtaking Krakow.
At 12:30 on 14th of March, the event began. It is organized officially for a professional audience of the Horeca channel in the intact nature of the place where the owner Pawel organizes the festival with love and impeccably each year. Accompanied by Italian, Argentine, French, Israeli and Uruguayan wineries the owner of the company opened the tastings with a detailed speech about the situation of Dom Wina, especially the new incorporation and the new Dwor Sieraków vodka produced by them and that is having an impressive success. We had the honor to try it exclusively and to understand more thoroughly its production process and its maceration with typical forest fruits of Poland.
Although Dom Wina has an extensive portfolio of Mont Marçal, this time the products presented were the Gran Cuvée cava, the Marcelona Blanco wine, Marcelona tinto and Mont Marçal Crianza.
The affluence of the public is about 250 people. The Gran Cuvée is the star of the moment with the Crianza red wine.
We understood that Poland is a country that loves the most complex and consistent products. The palate of the Poles is satisfied and complete only when a wine or cava have a certain consistency and a precise long aftertaste.
The acceptance of our products in this market is very good, the most part of professionals tasted our cava, they repeated it and they were really interested in knowing more about the history of the cava and its denomination of origin, an aspect that stood out a lot and let think about the curious nature of the Poles, who for a moment, confident, let themselves be taken by hand and transported in our vineyards to enjoy the sight of the first buds and the faint perfume of the approaching spring.
Once the festival was over, as always Pawel with Arthur and Kasia, two important figures of the Dom Wina team, is the soul of the party and gave the “go-ahead” to start the delicious and entertaining dinner where the Polish delicacies accompanied the wines of other wineries and our cava.
We left this desolate but pleasant and quiet place to go straight to the frenetic Prowein fair, two completely antithetic events. In our heart it was necessary to keep alive the memory of these days spent among the forests and the perfumes of the real Polish campaign. In this way, we were able to keep cold the nerves and face the most important wine fair in the world.
Have you ever seen those beautiful photos of naked vines with drops like tears at the end of some pruned branches? This phenomenon called « bleeding » is the characteristic sign of the awakening of the vine that unmistakably marks the arrival of spring. The phenomenon usually takes place between the end of February and March and marks the time when the bud break phase of the vine begins. Generally, during the winter the plant is in the « dormant » phase, it is subjected to pruning and the branches that will produce fruit are selected. Being in a lethargic phase, the plant has reduced its vital functions to a minimum. Between March and April, when temperatures begin to rise and the earth warms up, the vine slowly resumes its lymphatic activity.
The vine begins the phase of growth that will cause the plant to be covered with foliage and the buds, that will become the future branches, will appear. By May, however, flowering will begin. This is a very important moment because the pollination of the flowers will yield the precious fruits: the grapes that, in September, after the harvest, will become wine.
This year the bleeding of the vine started at the beginning of March and the bud break around the 15th of the same month. Do not forget that the period depends on different aspects related to the seasonal trend and the type of vine.
To speak of spring is to take courage and emanate a cry of liberation when our soul warms up under the still weak rays of the sun. Spring is regeneration of ourselves. We wake up like the vine from the torpor winter and we enjoy life with more euphoria and positivity.
Spring comes with the awakening of exuberant nature by the infinite palette of colors that intoxicate the view and give the soul a feeling of calm with oneself and with life. Like the vine, not everyone is ready at the same time for this sudden change. Some people are more prone and there are also those who take longer … beauty means accepting the moments of each one.
This year was very important for ProWein fair because of its 25 successful years of trade fair history in the world of wine, once again becoming a reference for all countries. The agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner opened the 2019 edition with the following words: « When we launched ProWein 25 years ago, none of us could have imagined just how incredibly it would develop. It’s taken a massive amount of hard work and strong support along the way from our partners to grow this exhibition step by step into the world’s largest and most important trade fair for wine and spirits ». « We’ve got many things planned for our future as well, » says Hans Werner Reinhard, Managing Director of Messe Düsseldorf. A pair of heads of state, prime ministers António Luís Santos da Costa of Portugal and Andrej Plenkovic of Croatia, were even on hand at the exhibition grounds to join in the ProWein anniversary.
Each year the growth is exponential. Düsseldorf received a total of 61,500 industry visitors from the retail and restaurant/catering businesses. Visitors traveled from 142 countries (2018: 133 countries) and expressed strongest interested in wines from Germany, Italy, France and Spain.
As regards the wine and liquor suppliers, this year approximately 6900 people attended the fair.
It is relevant to highlight that the most important exhibitor countries in ProWein 2019 were Italy (1654), France (1576), followed by Germany (978), the overseas regions (600), Austria (335), Spain (661) and Portugal (387).
The dates of the next edition are already fixed: from 15th to 17th March and by 2021 the projects are even more pretentious with an expanded layout of the pavilions.
For what Mont Marçal consists, the meetings have been developed as expected with a very active participation by all our distributors who decided in advance the meeting. They delighted us with their presence. These moments together gave us the chance to meet them again, talk about the projects and objectives.
On 25th February we arrived in Bratislava with the suitcase full of enthusiasm and space to fill with new experiences. We started our trip with the help of our importer in Slovakia, Martin Czafik from Bsp, who after showing us the city and telling us some anecdotes about his life, brought us his enthusiasm for working with us. Bsp is an importer born out of passion, from the desire to work with wines and cavas from Spain, working only with Mont Marçal and proposing products such as Mont Marçal Reserva, Gran Cuvé and Aureum in the Slovak market. In a few days, next 17th of March, we will meet again at Prowein, one of the most important fairs of the sector that will take place in Duesseldorf.
Bsp showed its satisfaction in matters of management, organization and logistics with Mont Marçal, praising the close communication between both companies. Feedback has been very positive despite the fact that it is difficult to introduce cava in the Slovak market, since most restaurants are Austrian and Italian, with Schaumwein and Prosecco as protagonists.
From Slovakia, we head to Blatnička, a town of 300 inhabitants in the Czech Republic. There we met with our importer Vino Hruška. Michael Morrison, the import manager, showed us the farm and the vineyards and we had the option of tasting the Vino Hruška’s products. Her director of Marketing, who remarked the usefulness of our website, asked us for more exclusive information about the winery and the family Hruška invited us to eat with them.
The proximity is the characteristic that distinguishes the company, every half day the president, the technicians of warehouse, the administrative and the workers eat together and exchange opinions about the daily work.
Its expansion process is evident and we are very confident in its good work.
This has been a very important trip especially to meet our importers personally. These relations with them are what we want to promote in Mont Marçal since the success of our export work depends largely on this, as well as being able to demonstrate the quality of our products.
This is time to make London protagonist of our blog and more specifically, it is time to speak about our distributor Ellis of Richmond the star of these days. We already talked about its history and its foundation in a previous news of our trip, which took place last year.
In a Victorian environment, overloaded with antique furniture of unmistakable style, floral upholstery and immense crystal lamps that illuminate the rooms with a faint and very pleasant light, every year the event of our importer took place in the Vintner’s Hall of the Vintners Palace. This place received its first recognition in 1363 and is nowadays the ideal place to celebrate a classy, refined and exclusive event.
It is worth mentioning the royal decree that was signed in 1973 authorizing this institution to regulate the consumption of wine, delegating important responsibilities such as teaching the consumer to drink properly and in the healthy measures wines, champagnes and cavas in order to spread the culture of wine.
Very often, in this palace courses and events are organized to approach the winemaking tradition in an environment that, without doubt is the reincarnation of the desire of all English to enjoy high quality products in the company of the exponents of sensational wineries such as AB Valley, DFJ Vinhos, Kellerei Kaltern Caldaro, Vignetti Le Monde, Cantina Gorgo,Cantina Crociani, Monte Faustino, Donatella Colombini, Cantine Umberto Bortolotti, Wairau River Family Vineyards, Paulett Wines, David Bruce, Markham Valley, Chono Wines, Backsberg Estate, De Wetshof Estate, Bluebell Vineyards, Lestapis, Lucien Boillot, Domaine de l’Amandine, Champagne AR Lenoble, Château d’Esclans, Jean Baptiste Adam, Caves Languedoc Roussillon, Lorgeril, Chamoagne Lombard, Noelia Bebelia, Bodegas Resalte de Peñafiel, Bodegas Taron, Fincas de Azabache, y Hacienda el Ternero…and obviously Mont Marçal.
Our collaboration with Ellis of Richmond continues for years with excellent results, new challenges, and good expectations between the precision and the strong sense of responsibility and hard work typical of British people and the passionate nature of our land and our precious denomination of origin.
The event lasted two days, on 5th and 6th of February, on a Tuesday and on a Wednesday, ideal days for restaurateurs, managers, professionals and apprentices not to miss this essential appointment. The influx of visitors is amazing, more than 600 people who, visiting our stand, have been transported to the beauty and peace of our vineyards, between the fresh air of the hills that surround us, between the sea breeze that reaches our farmhouse, breathing the Mediterranean essence of our environment and the perfume of our land.
Mont Marçal Reserva, with its freshness and aromatic intensity, Mont Marçal Rosado, with a touch of roses and jasmine and Extremarium with its complexity and its creaminess are the stars of the festival.An event that we will remember with nostalgia, in a great city. Yes, because London creates dependency. While we visited the city, immersing ourselves in its traditions and breathing its history, we met on the street different kind of people and we were attracted mainly by the speeches they make and their open mind.
London sometimes seems like a lion roaring in front of your face that wants to scare you, stop you and throw you back. If you are not willing to let yourself go and be tolerant and open minded, you will not appreciate this city and you will not fit in with the frenetic pace that characterizes it and you will end up feeling disoriented, excluded, isolated in the midst of millions of people.To fully experience the wonderful London you have to have a natural predisposition, courage, put a lot of effort and passion in understanding and appreciating the human race and you will need a lot of energy and be ready to see many rapid changes, as fast as a pedestrian who goes to work crossing the street among thousands of cars that follow their path with speed.
London is a city that transmits feelings, this is a fact, feelings that you live in every corner, because to visit this city you do not need meticulous preparations, just wanting to get lost, to learn and be willing to live with different nationalities: the Bangladesh taxi driver, the Italian who prepares pizzas with all his art, the Moroccan who works in his supermarket open 24 hours or the real Englishman who goes to work thinking about everything he will have to do during the day and waiting for his tea-break.
We start the New Year with a visit to our Swiss distributor Vinosur, based in stunning Zurich, the economic center of all of Switzerland. The city offers all the comforts of a cosmopolitan metropolis, but without losing its naturalness and simplicity. Switzerland has some of the most evocative landscapes in the world and produces images of majestic mountains and green fields where, calmly, as if it were a slow motion recording that we never tire of seeing repeatedly, the cows walk and graze.One of its greatest possessions is something intangible: it is neutrality, respect for different cultures, and peaceful coexistence in respect for others and for Mother Nature. Because of this, the sensation we have and the chills that this city provokes us are due to its great landscapes, its flourishing cultural scene and its gastronomic delicacies.It is the moment of the year, after Prowein 2018, in which Mont Marçal confronts its results with Vinosur distributor, more precisely with the owner Daniel Gampp and his son Diego. The protagonists of this meeting were the sales increases, promotional activities in order to spread the culture of the cava in the country (a difficult task due to the strong and firmed presence of the Italian Prosecco as star bubbles product) and ideas of master class and professional events to be able to provide the opportune explanations about our denomination of origin. Diego Gampp now consolidates his presence in the company, and with the typical energy, the positivism and the preparation of the new generations, he surprised us, felt in love with us and involved us, like a tornado in full action, with his new proposals and ideas.
For their part, they see that CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT, one of our business pillars, is something tangible and perceptible, for our part, we appreciate their work methodology, their seriousness and commitment.
We wish to visit soon our Vinosur distributor, specifying more projects and pursuing our dreams, which we hope will come true.
See you soon … (better during summer!)
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