Beausset and his colleague Geraldine Reinhold Von Essen are attempting to travel "around the world in 80 vineyards".
They are asking wine producers from Chianti to California to give them their best wine for free. When they get back to Spain, where they are based, they will auction it for charity.
So far, their journey has taken them to South Africa, Thailand, China, Australia, New Zealand and Chile.
They will visit Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru and the United States before returning to Europe to tour the vineyards of Portugal, Spain, Italy and France.
As they travel, they are sending their liquid booty back to Spain where it will be stored in a cellar until the auction in Barcelona in early 2008.
"We're interested in quality rather than quantity," Beausset told Reuters by telephone from a vineyard in southern Chile.
"The vineyards are free to give us whatever they want, but we always try to ask for bottles that are a little different, or of high quality."
Their journey has yielded some fine donations, including a magnum of Pinot Noir from New Zealand's Staete Landt vineyard, one of only 30 such bottles in the world.
But perhaps the most fascinating leg of their journey took them to the vineyards of Thailand and China, countries little known in the West for their wines.
"In China, viniculture is growing quickly ... some of the vineyards are very good," said Beausset, 32, who runs a wine import-export business in Barcelona.
"Most of the wine is red because the color red is a symbol of prosperity in China, so it's very good if you can offer someone a red wine."
No comments:
Post a Comment