March 8th, 2010
Moët gets good press and bad but it important not to lose sight of the fact that Moët & Chandon is a hugely significant champagne with origins hailing from 1743. To many, Moët IS champagne!
Moët’s parent, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), is a global conglomerate of premium brands, headed by the formidable Bernard Arnault. In champagne parlance, LVMH’s houses (brands) include: Moët, Dom Perignon, Krug, Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart and Mercier. In aggregate, between 20-25% of all champagne production falls under the LVMH umbrella.
What is interesting is the way Moët looks to grow its image and market share as the World emerges from recession. Category sponsorship (champagne) of the 82nd Oscars this year might be a master-stroke.
We note that Moët chose to give away golden jeroboams
(or are they bigger?) to specific Oscar winners - which at Park Lane we know our customers also find popular as personalised champagne gifts…
AND - Moet also personalised bottles (or are they mags?) for each category winner. Not quite a fully personalised label (but then that wouldn’t be brand reinforcement) but the closest they could get. Now this is the thing: it is exactly where we wanted to come from back in 1994 when we started out - personalising a well known brand - but we couldn’t find a house to play ball with us and that included Moët which was a preferred partner.
I doubt Moët will introduce this concept wholescale in the UK but at little old Park Lane maybe we should be content by remembering that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…
Arguably the World’s most important brand of champagne recognises the importance of personalising the bottles for the end recipient; hmmm - now where have we heard that before?!
Tags: Add new tag, Champagne, Dom Perignon, Krug, Mercier, Moet, Moet et Chandon, Oscars, Parklane Online, personalised champagne, Veuve Clicquot
Posted in Champagne, Park Lane Champagne | No Comments »
February 25th, 2010
Sorry folks - not the mystical World of Hades reached only by crossing the river Styx. Instead the murky underworld of crime; online fraud has hit us - and that is scarey!
We all get spam emails and countless viagra offers, etc., but duff transactions with validated cards? Now that IS news - at least to us anyway. Beware any overseas originating credit card registered to a UK address, even if all the addresses match…
All remedied now with a new layer of security in place but curious how Barclays Merchant Services, Sagepay and 3rd Man do not have a cohesive policy of prevention between them - thanks guys! Any loss is born by the merchant, of course.
I wonder, though, if one can get caught up in a suckers loop of some sort? Reason being, we have now had two stolen or cloned UK cards (again validated?!) attempt to be used to purchase champagne - but our human alarm bells rang because the purchases did not fit with the normal pattern so we checked in the old fashioned way and you know what: our telephone messages were not returned… 
Beware Rebecca Romero - but not the real one, of course!
And now we have a gazillion spam comments attached to various blog posts and my email account has been hijacked - apologies if I have not sanctioned your genuine comment or responded to an email query but I will as soon as normal service is resumed.
Roll on spring - and an end to this perpetual cold (and rain) - thanks Withnail; we do need a jukebox, methinks!
Pip pip.
Tags: Barclays Merchant Services, dodgy credit cards, online fraud, Parklane Online, Rebecca Romero, Sagepay, The 3rd Man
Posted in Park Lane Champagne, online | No Comments »
February 1st, 2010
In 2007, the UK imported more bottles of champagne than at any other time in its history - just over 39 million bottles. Total harvest that year was also a record 390 million bottles, according to figures from the CIVC and reiterated by research from Giles Fallowfield, although obviously there is a lag in production time from vine to wine.
Since then, the CIVC (Champagne trade body), advise a 12% fall in UK import in 2008 and a further 30% fall in 2009 (figures only available to the end of October so not yet officially published).
A net fall of 39.4% peak to trough would equate on a full year basis to a 15.37m bottle reduction from 2007 - meaning the UK is forecast to have imported under 24m bottles which is back to 1999 levels. And that before any de-stocking is taken into consideration. Ouch!
Reasons for this: champagne has been out of fashion; there has been little to celebrate and the cost has soared by over 30% - mainly due to the collapse of £/€ relationship - as well as numerous Government duty increases and high historic grape prices at 2007 and 2008 harvest feeding through to the cost of the bubbly ex cellars.
So, are we through the dip or trough? Let’s hope so. Aside from diminished merriment, the implications in France have already been extremely serious with harvest yields reduced by negotiation to below 10,000kg/ha from 14,400 the previous year as I reported in harvest yields. Assuming consumption steadies at 2009 levels then the inventory in French cellars will fall back into line over the next 24 months with price and product stability holding.
BUT - the big question is what about the planned Appellation extension of 12,000ha? This was due to start coming on line in 2020 to satiate the demand from all the emerging champagne markets, particularly China, Russia and India. Interesting to see from the CIVC’s own figures that these three countries combined show an import decline to October 2009 in excess of 50% - to just under 1m bottles in total.
Now that is sobering: put simply, in 2009 1/3 of the World’s population consumed as many bottles of champagne as 2.5m people did in the UK…
Don’t have nightmares.
Tags: Champagne, CIVC, uk champagne import
Posted in Champagne | No Comments »
January 26th, 2010
Some people love it and some not; I am in the love category. A great luscious rose with 
plenty of fizz, dry but not bone dry - perfect.
Love it so much, in fact, that we had it at our wedding reception - with our own personalised label of course - twelve years ago; pioneers then as most quaffers only knew Laurent Perrier as THE rose champagne.
But the World has changed; all the big houses produce pink and some of the biggest brands have uber-premium vintage rose - think Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame rose - that is also uber-costly - £200+ as opposed to under £100 for the GD white 1998! Bollinger introduced their special pink to the market in 2008.
So what’s the difference? The usual vintage/non-vintage distinction applies, as does the blending process (different grapes and vineyards). Principally but obviously it is the colour: the old way of production was to macerate the skins of the black grapes - ie. allow the colour to bleed out into the pressing and then use this in the blend. The more modern way is conventional blending - adding still red wine (pinot noir normally) to the white blend at the time of bottling.
The paler more blush coloured pinks are typically from the maceration technique and to my mind are usually softer and more approachable. Just a personal opinion, though.
Either way, rose champagne is perfect for a special Wedding day, perfect for Valentine’s day, perfect for Mother’s day and equally perfect for every day; enjoy!
Tags: Bollinger, Champagne, Laurent Perrier, Mother's day, personalised champagne, pink champagne, Pinot Noir, rose champagne, Valentine's day, Veuve Clicquot, Wedding day
Posted in Champagne, champagne production, pink champagne | No Comments »
January 15th, 2010
At the beginning of 2009 (and for the 14 years before), Park Lane was all about “private label champagne” or “own brand champagne” or maybe even “own label champagne”; never “personalised champagne”.
As the year unfurled, so it became obvious that “personalised champagne” 
is what people think of when they want their own champagne - and we know this thanks to the mountain of information that Google collects, analyses and regurgitates so this cannot be wrong!
And this because champagne is all about perception. Champagne is a highly regulated region and its wines highly prized: quality of product and respect for the brand is what perpetuates the magic, image and romance of the bubbly. This is why there is always surprise when an unknown champagne is ranked above a known brand champagne at a blind tasting - and yet both champagnes will use the same grapes blended in the same way to the same rules. On paper the brand champagne is perceived as being superior and typically it will be more expensive to buy and yet because it is a known brand, the consumer perceives it to be better quality.
So at Park Lane, and without a known brand of champagne to personalise, we still want a polished halo imagined to be hovering over us. We go to great lengths to choose good quality champagnes and to ensure all our products are appropriately labelled, including a deluxe back label, and properly presented; typically every bottle is wrapped in tissue paper before packing and despatch.
It is the little things that do count and with us the little things come as standard. If there was a measure of how far we came in 2009, it is probably not the number of bottles sold, not the conversion rate of online visitors to customers and not the cost per acquisition of a new customer. It is actually the significant number of customers who voluntarily contacted us to say how impressed they were by our levels of service, general customer care and attention to detail. All of which come as standard.
Now for 2010 we can concentrate on improving those other stats as well!
Pip pip.
Tags: Champagne, Park Lane Champagne, Parklane Online, personalised champagne
Posted in Champagne, Uncategorized | No Comments »
