Henri Forest’s AOC Minervois wins Naked Wines competition

PRLog (Press Release) - Sep. 12, 2012 - Out of 240 wines, Le Clos de l’Olivier Minervois 2010, which is produced on the Villepeyroux-Forest estate (near Carcassonne), came out on top.

Henri Forest, Manager of the estate in Villepeyroux-Forest, explains, “This is a great day for the Villepeyroux-Forest estate. Thanks to hundreds of British wine drinkers who singled out our wine, we will be living our dream and exporting to the UK for the first time. We very much look forward to working with Naked Wines and growing our business.”

With the help of the French Trade Commission UBIFRANCE in London, Villepeyroux-Forest, the estate of Henri Forest which is based near Carcassonne (in South-Western France), participated in a competition launched by Naked Wines. The UK-based online wine retailer organised the Zero to Hero competition in order to find the most talented, yet undiscovered, winemakers.

Having blind-tasted 240 wines, Naked Wines’ Angels (as the visitors to the wine website who invest in wine on a monthly basis are known) chose the top three. After a final tasting, the Angels declared the winner to be Le Clos de l’Olivier Minervois 2010 from the Villepeyroux-Forest estate. This wine is an AOC Minervois, which is a blend of two types of grapes — Grenache and Shiraz.

Previously an unknown estate in the UK, Villepeyroux-Forest consequently won a permanent UK listing and an upfront £50,000 order from Naked Wines. The winning wine is now retailing for £14.99 on the Naked Wines website. One of the Naked Wines judges describes is as follows: “Dark fruits, aniseed, honey, and smoked loveliness. Ruddy marvellous.”

Henri Forrest explains, “Until now, we have privileged pure and fruity grape varieties, but, thanks to this breakthrough [with Naked Wines], we are set to expand the range of AOC wines across blended wines that use old grape varieties, such as Carignan, Shiraz and Grenache. The aim is to offer our customers more powerful wines, on top of our fruity examples. These wines will be on show at ProWein, in Düsseldorf, in March 2013.”

About Naked Wines

Naked Wines was founded in 2008. Having attracted 250,000 customers, the online retailer now ships 10,000 bottles of wine per day. Naked Wines has 100,000 Angels. The company uses the revenue it generates to fund independent winemakers, such as Henri Forest.

For further information about Naked Wines, please go to: http://us.nakedwines.com/


About the Villepeyroux-Forest estate

In 2006, Claudie and Henri Forest acquired the Villepeyroux estate, which covers 40 hectares of clay and limestone soil in the municipality of Malves, in the Minervois region of South-Western France, near the historic city of Carcassonne.

At the beginning, all wine produced was sent to a co-operative wine cellar but, in 2008, the family decided to restore the wine cellar on the estate and start production on a larger scale. In 2011, Stéphanie Forest, daughter of Claudie and Henri Forest, and her husband, Yann, joined the estate in order to assist in its expansion.

In March 2013, Henri Forest will be at the ProWein trade fair in Düsseldorf (Germany).

For further information about ProWein, please go to: http://www.prowein.com/

For further information about the Villepeyroux-Forest estate and its winning Minervois wine, please go to: www.villepeyroux-forest.fr

For further information, please contact :

Quote ref. : FTPB3772
Ms Katherine WOODS - Press Officer
UBIFRANCE Press Office in London
Tel: +44 (0) 207 024 3640
katherine.woods@ubifrance.fr  

View other press releases at :
http://www.ubifrance.com/uk/

Note to Editors

Copyright - The UBIFRANCE Press Office in London is waiving its copyright on the content included in this press release, which means that recipients are free to reproduce, modify and circulate it if they wish to do so and as far as copyright law is concerned. If a given publication such as a trade magazine (to which the Press Office subscribes) goes ahead and publishes an article on the basis of this press release, we would like to be informed so as to retrieve the published material, and so as to be able to send it to our client company/entity in France (i.e. the company/entity that provided us with the information contained in the press release in the first place). We keep a printed copy of the published material in the relevant file in our office, and a second copy may infrequently be kept in a press-book that may be shown to potential clients when they visit the Press Office. Other than that, a single scanned copy is sent electronically to the client/entity in France (or, more rarely, a single printed copy is sent by post). This is important to us and to our clients. By reproducing material/content that the Press Office sends to a given publication, the recipient (i.e. the publisher and/or editor) is deemed to have agreed to the limited and legitimate use of the published material - in return and in due course - by the Press Office, as described above. If the recipient of this press release objects to the potential limited re-use of his (her) published material by the Press Office (as outlined above) in the name of his (her) copyright, the said recipient should inform the Press Office as soon as possible, and the manager of the UBIFRANCE Press Office will contact the publication concerned by return of email (contact.ftpb@ubifrance.fr), which will be followed up with a telephone call and/or a letter in order to try to find a compromise that would be acceptable to both parties. The Press Office seeks to comply fully and actively with copyright law in all its aspects within the United Kingdom and as per European Union laws and regulations.

Embedded images - For journalists and editors who need the pictures embedded in one of our press releases, it is very easy to retrieve them. What you need to do is as follows: within the body of the press release, left-click on the picture; this should magnify the image to a size that is directly usable; then, right-click on the magnified picture and choose the 'Save As' function; finally, save the magnified image as a JPEG file on the hard disk of your computer, giving it the name that you wish to use in connection with the story concerned. If you have any problems with this procedure, do not hesitate to give us a ring. It is always possible for the Press Office to send you JPEG pictures as attachments in an email upon request. Thank you.

Reader responses - Please advise us of publication of this press release and continue to send reader responses to the Press Office. This is the only way we can ensure the follow-up is done efficiently.

Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/11973182/1