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Posts Tagged ‘personalised champagne’

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Chelsea Champions

Monday, May 10th, 2010

chelsea-honours-2010

8-0: WOW!  Unlike the UK general election, great to have a clear winner in the English Premier League football competition!

Seizing the Barclays Premier League silverware from Manchester United is a mammoth acheivment for Chelsea;  I am sure everyone involved from Abramovich downards are still revelling in the glory and long may it last.

In our own little way, supplying the personalised champagne to Barclays as sponsors of the English Premier League for this season is part of the day job BUT seeing it in action at such a global event is a huge thrill.  The only drawback is that it would be great to do the spraying….

chelsea-winners-2010

Well done guys and good luck when 2010/11 dawns;  I am sure the competition will be even more fierce but we look forward to seeing which winners will spray the bubbly yet again in May 2011!

To join the celebrations, we are offering our own little incentive:  order personalised champagne from us until the end of  May and receive £10 discount from your order value.  This is for each and every order, with no limit on the number of times you come back.  Test our services; tell your friends; tell your colleagues; tell your family and then tell us what we should be doing better.  PLEASE!

Simply add voucher code BPL09 when you get to the checkout.

And all this on the day I get back from an epic road trip last week down to Italy to watch stages of the Mille Miglia;  hope in future years that we will be competing - but is a Fiat Topolino really the right call?!toppolino-coupe1

Ciao!

7NFFRZPVBNH2

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Posted in Champagne, Clients | No Comments »

Geek ‘n Rolla 2010

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

It is very nearly the one year web anniversary for Park Lane - how scarey geeknrolla20101is that and where have the last twelve months gone?

Our involvement with Geek n’ Rolla courtesy of Mike Butcher (Techcrunch Europe) and Petra Johansson (Twisted Tree) signalled the imminent launch of our great Park Lane online adventure last year;  what an adventure it has been!

Thanks due to Ben and the boys at award winning design agency Fhoke for coming up with the excellent label design - all over again!  Beware, there is likely to be an interactive competition with free champagne for the next Techcrunch awards…

And here we are a year on, thrilled to be the official supplier of personalised champagne again for the #gknr awards today and this is a photo of one of the speaker’s bottles before despatch from our cellars yesterday.  Hope that is a good image of Mike and wonder who will be taking this one home

So, for all those interested and keen (especially to tune into @hermioneway’s background chat!), checkout the live feed of events and the after-party at SE1, London.

And for all those who get a bottle, give us your comments please!

Chin chin.

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Posted in Champagne, technology | No Comments »

Funny Old World

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

champagneAmid all the Election fever - and are those party leader live debates a good thing? - I never predicted a surge in champagne demand from nearly every category of customer we deal with; strange but true!

Maybe it is the time of year;  maybe it is collective joy at emerging from the toughest winter for thirty years, or maybe some of those economic green shoots are for real as opposed to imaginary?

Either way, busy busy in Epernay - field report from France next week when I visit our producers - and busy busy in the UK.  At Park Lane, personalised champagne orders and enquiries continue to arrive at all times of day and night - which is just SO exciting!  I know the internet never sleeps, but why are some users never sleeping either?!

The build process for the totally new website is underway and we should be live testing in June.  This site will offer depth and breadth so usability will be much much better - and thank you to everyone who does send feedback to us as this really does make a difference.

The technological advance also includes state of the art label production on the very best material available coming soon.  This new equipment and technology is an enormous leap - think Rolls Royce Phantom from Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (both brilliant in their context) - and is fabulously exciting for us.   james-ingle-relaxing-at-homeThe 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?

I am delighted to announce that James Ingle will be joining the team from 10 May to concentrate on building and reinforcing the bridges we maintain with all our corporate customers.  James is a hugely dedicated and capable gentleman and, above all, someone you really want around as he is just so nice!  The Park Lane quality and service ethos is second nature to James and I know he will be very popular with customers and fellow employees alike.

And what about the Premier League football shoot out?  premier-league1As I have said before, we love working for Barclays Capital as league sponsors but there is certainly something of a sweat on at the moment within the BarCap sponsorship team:  at the time of writing, any one of the three league leaders could carry the trophy away!  Barclays contingency plans - obviously including personalised champagne! - are being drafted for winning presentations at any of the three possible grounds.  A bit like the apparent Buckingham Palace contingency plans for funerals of leading Royals - except rather less gloomy and with less obscure project names!

Spring Calves

As a regular importer of goods from France, there is a certain satisfaction to me that the delicious Hélèna (and hubby Patrik) are buying 20 of our highland cows for live export to France next month!  Vive Le Republic…

And on that bombshell, today’s 8 year old birthday celebrations beckon.  Pip pip.

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Posted in Highland Cows, Labels, Park Lane Champagne, online, personalised champagne | No Comments »

Spring from winter

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

March seemed to flit by, notwithstanding the horrid weather.

It was a busy period at Park Lane with our plans for personalised champagne moving forward and gathering traction and shape throughout the month.  If anyone knows someone who would be a super salesperson for the corporate champagne market in London, please email me - in absolute confidence.

At this time of year, the tirage is occurring in the Champagne region.  Literally, this is the bottling of the previous year’s harvest according to the recipe the cellar master has devised from the juice he has to hand.  The blending - or assemblage - will already have been decided.  Remember champagne is a blend of grapes and, in the case of Non-Vintage champagne, a blend of grapes and years.bpl-champagnes-2008

So each producer has decided what proportions of chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier will be blended together to reproduce the house style this year.  Drilling down another layer, the decision should have included what percentage of chardonnay from vineyard 1, what percentage from vineyard 2, etc., to be absolutely sure the resultant style will be as desired.   In addition, how much of the juice from the different grape types (cepages) from earlier harvests (vins de reserve) will be included.  Decisions decisions but these are important ones that cannot be underdone later!

And then the yeast and sugar solution (to feed the yeast) is added at the same time.  The bottles have a crown cap (similar to a beer top) fitted, are shaken and then head down to the cellars for the start of their ageing in bottle.

The yeast live in the bottle, gobble up all the sugar, emit CO2 as their by-product (the source of the magic bubbles) and then die.  It is argued that more lengthy ageing in bottle (the legal minimum is 15 months) gives the wine more time in contact with the yeast, and thus more opportunity to acquire complex overtones with vanilla/brioche type aromas…

I always think that the producer’s cellars resemble a medical operating theatre during the tirage period.  External contractors arrive with special machines to carry out the bottling, pipes and hoses criss-cross the floors from various tanks and vats, bottles rattle through the machine with terrific accuracy, pace and noise (the operators all wear headphones), and people scurry to and fro loading bottles into crates for transportation to and laying down in the cellars.  After the work is done, champagne all round;  how very French!dsc_0392dsc_0395

I am off to see the champagne producers later this month so should be able to report back on the market from the cellar face, so to speak.

Until then, please find me a great salesperson!

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Posted in Champagne, champagne production | No Comments »

Moët et Chandon

Monday, 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 jeroboamsMorgan Freeman Moet Oscars 2010 (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…Personalised Oscars Moet

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?!

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Posted in Champagne, Park Lane Champagne | No Comments »

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