Back from Bordeaux. Easter. Watching Andy's lambs playing tag in the field, ignoring the rain.

What did the visits to the top Bordeaux Estates tell me apart from how well it is possible to live?

Very well.

Firstly, there's nothing wrong with the 2008 vintage.

Secondly there's plenty wrong with the Bordeaux wine trade. There has for a while been a wide chasm opened up between the few at the top who sell their best wine at huge prices to very rich collectors and speculators desperate to get a share of superb and above all scarce 'names'... and the many at the bottom who have to give wine away or who just don't sell wine at all, these days. They have problems not because it’s not very good, but because a myriad of little chateau names mean nobody can get customers to remember their names. Supermarkets don't want baffling names.

Disaster looms.

Sad thing is the overall quality has improved by leaps and bounds recently. The vineyard and cellar techniques of the top chateaux are common knowledge and can now be replicated by the humblest if they study and slave at it. And the great names are far from owning all the best soils. Bordeaux is big.

All of which leaves me and my Company a big opportunity and, I feel, a great obligation to help both our customers and our growers. To find or have made, wines that are as good as the top names but affordable.

Making the best wine with every expensive vineyard and cellar technique deployed doesn't cost much more than £10 a bottle. So we can afford to source fruit from really excellent places, give it 'the works' and still keep the price well below what top restaurants charge for a basic 'house wine'.

Wines that cost £1000 a bottle don't taste a hundred times better than a £10 bottle. They taste maybe 2 or 3 times better. At best. I just spent a week checking this out. It is possible to achieve that 2/3 times improvement for very little cost.

In our Chai au Quai Jean-Marc and Mark are doing just that.

Bordeaux's finest wines are amazing. We just need more of them. And we need a name people can remember. How about 'Chai au Quai'?

OK?

Back there next week with bigger ambitions!