Seems like a contradiction in terms but so often it is the rear view we rely on to move forward. I am quite sure that history has been clearly in David Cameron’s mind at the birth of the UK’s Liberal-Conservative coalition government this month.
About the only significant thing I remember from A-level economics - aside from Adam Smith’s invisible hand - was the likening of the UK economy to an economic car which was so very difficult for the Chancellor to steer given that there was only the rear view mirror to look out of for guidance; seems that difficulty still stands twenty years on!
It is certainly this way with the champagne producers. They remember from bygone years how different qualitites of juice need blending differently in order to maintain the consistent style of champagne that is the trademark style of their house.
This, in fact, is the genius and very essence of Non-Vintage champagne in that the blend of cepages (grape varieties) from different crus (villages) and different years gives the blender all the natural tools at their disposal to allow the development of their familiar “house style” and the magical champagne. Just as it was back in day of the so-called inventor of “champagne”, Monsieur Dom Perignon.
And so it is with us at Park Lane - to a point. We now know that personalised champagne is a product that is well suited to the internet. We have high quality champagnes and excellent service. Together this makes a winning and proven coalition. The web site we built needs plenty of work as it evolves but we can deliver that based around the constructive and helpful feedback we receive from our lovely customers (or rather that Nick receives as all feedback goes direct to him!); effectively the rear view mirror telling us what we are doing right and what would make it even better.
So there we are; 
learning from where we have been to navigate to where we are going; rear view all the way… EXCEPT on my recent visit to the producers in Epernay when, while boarding the channel tunnel, the rear view was horrendous and the only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to be there! And that just goes right to the heart of things - add expect the unexpected into the mix and thank you Iceland for another round of UK disruption.
Of course, it is important to be specific about which rear view you are looking into and hoping to learn from…
Bottoms up!
Amid all the Election fever - and are those party leader 
The quality of the personalised champagne labels will actually be better than photograph output from next month so what more of an excuse is needed to break out the bubbly?
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”.
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!
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.
Nope, not Google fruit but genuine champagne grape fruit!
Effectively this is pressed juice that cannot be used for a certain time and which is intended to subsidise yield in the event of a truly awful harvest in the future. 2,000kg/hectare headed to top the blockage stocks up to their maximum limit this year and the balance of the juice went off to become industrial alcohol. As it was such a prolific harvest, the producers could afford to be highly selective - hence why so many grapes were left for the birds. Interestingly, it was mainly black grapes that I spotted on the vines across the region.
as a sort of demand stimulus, particularly while the £/€ equation is so horrid.
There will be a glut of supermarket cut price champagne offers in the UK this year as we run up to Christmas. In fact, this has been the pattern for the past few years so no change there. These headline grabbers are highly restricted offers and are being subsidised by the supermarkets so they can secure our grocery purchases at the same time. Scary fact: Tesco handles 1 in every 4 bottles of wine sold in the UK as an “off” sale, according to the Daily Telegraph on Saturday!
