Interview Primeurs 2009
A woman of influence...
Sylvie Cazes,
chairwoman of the UGC
Her name is unequivocally synonymous with a great family of the Bordeaux wine. Her forename is associated to a woman of character at the head of the Union des Grands Crus. Present on Vinexpo Asia, we wanted to know her feeling about this emergent market...
The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (UGC), composed of 132 members, realizes every year more than fifty communication operations and tastings in Europe, United States and Asia, complemented with the “Great Connoisseurs Weekend”, in May, in the vineyard.
“We have to decode, simplify, reasure, explain and make the Wine 'friendlier'.” Sylvie Cazes, Chairwoman of the UGC, explains.
“We have to work with the whole field on today's projects, tomorrow's fulfilments and to hold the same discurse turning ourselves towards export. Despite the difficult context, the fundamental work of the UGC and the mobilization of its members, with a vintage like 2009, pay off, if we refer to the success of the Primeur week. Carried along by this enthusiasm, of course we were present at Vinexpo Hong Kong. Asia is a market with a strong potential. On the Tuesday we had a big UGC wines tasting that met a phenomenal success! More than 1650 visitors, ie 400 more than two years ago, with mainly Asian, even if Vinexpo has an international vocation. Tasters with a level of knowledge, of sophistication and of training that has clearly evolved since the last fair. We noticed the same craze in Taiwan, on the Thursday, with 650 people. We can feel they appreciate, they understand our wines. They enter a sphere of consumption.The market is structuring little by little, the number of actors has increased. Hong Kong with its government's willing not to tax the wines, has become an inevitable turntable in Asia, with reliable actors and supplies. Taking moderate risks, without forgetting, whether as a wine grower or a négociant, to preserve our other more traditional markets, Asia is an attractive market. The strength of the Bordeaux wines, and peculiarly of the UGC, is due to our continuing and intensifying our actions and tastings in France as well as abroad, despite this difficult period, what some vineyards or foreign brands do not necessarily do. In this spirit, we have just received European funds enabling us to intensify some more our operations and our visibility in other countries.” Sylvie Cazes, also Chairwoman of the board of directors of the holding company of the family Cazes group, and councilwoman in charge of the oenotourism and of the valorization of the vitivinicultural field at the Mairie of Bordeaux, puts herself, with a team of the city council, into the project of the future Centre Culturel du Vin. Objective: opening in 2014!
Florence VARAINE
