Wine is a particular passion of mine. Making it… blending it… and most importantly drinking it!
I am proud that we have created some very good Karma wines over the years. So I would love to share some stories about our various current releases and how they came into being.
KARMA BORDEAUX RED (CLARET)
This is very much our flagship wine and came into being as a total coincidence.
A number of years ago, I was staying at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens as we were negotiating the acquisition of our resort in Crete. As I departed to the airport, I grabbed acopy of the international paper hanging on my door (to be honest, I never normally bother reading these papers).
Reading the article on the plane, I learned about an extremely enterprising scheme by the Chateau Lynch Bages.
Now, Lynch Bages is a beautiful and historic chateau in Pauillac, the most famous village near Bordeaux that produces some of the finest Grand Cru wines in the world. Think Lafite and Latour to name just two.
The Chateau was working with a Californian wine entrepreneur and essentially allowing individuals and companies the opportunity to blend their own version of Lynch Bages, with the help of the estate winemakers, as long as they committed to make and buy 1000 bottles.
I loved the idea – the fractionalisation of wine making! So I contacted them and a friendship and working relationship began.
As you may know, a Bordeaux red wine is a blend of various grapes – primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet franc and Merlot.
I now go several times a year to work with the experts in blending a beautiful wine for Karma. It’s so so apparent the level of skill the wine blenders have.
As each grape variety is grown in totally different vineyards, and each has its own unique character and taste, then part of the creative process is selecting what % of each grape goes into creating the wine. Also, as the wine ages in barrels, these characters and tastes change so one must be adaptable in the blend itself to accommodate these changes.
As a rule, our Karma wines are primarily Cabernet Sauvignon dominated and this year it was:
Cabernet Sauvignon 60%
Merlot 30%
Cabernet Franc 10%
I am intrigued to hear what everyone thinks of this blend! If it’s good please praise the winemakers. If bad, then blame me!!
My friendship with the Chateau Lynch Bages people also led me to the Marathon de Medoc as part of their team.
Having never run a Marathon before (or ran over 5 km ever), this was a daunting task, and is probably a testament to their amazing wine that I even agreed to do it in the first place!!
But I somehow managed to get around – who says wine is bad for you?
So please also revel in my pain when you try a bottle!
On this note, I will log off now and open a bottle of something red and savage to help with my self-isolation this evening.
I will be back next time to talk about some of the other Karma wines.
In the meantime, stay strong and healthy and let’s all be like fine wine and get better as we age.
John Spence
