Calces suburbs

>> Sunday 28 February 2010



Vineyard. Domaine Matassa, Calces, Roussillon, France

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Domaine Matassa, Calces, Roussillon, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

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Domaine Matassa is located in the small village of Calces in the Vallée de l’Agly in Roussillon. The village is home to ha handful of very talented winemakers, one of which is the couple Tom and Nathalie Lubbe of Domaine (or ‘Clos’ as it is also called) Matassa.

Tom, originally from New Zealand, and Nathalie Lubbe created the winery in 2002 in collaboration with Sam Harrop. The property has been created by buying plots of vineyard land mainly planted with very old carignan grapes. In the vineyards there are also some grenache and mourvèdre vines.

As several of the other winemakers in Calces (e.g. Gauby) Domaine Matassa is a biodynamic winery in an effort to make as natural and pure wines as possible. Many of the vineyards are very old, planted with very low density. The soil is very poor and not much water is available for the plants. The yield is also very small. In the winery vinification is careful and traditional, with some of the aging made in oak barrels.

http://www.matassawine.com

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Domaine Matassa stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Health treatment or hokus pokus?

>> Saturday 27 February 2010



Glass jars for herbs for biodyamic infusions: 505, 503, 504, 506... Domaine Gauby, Calces, roussillon, France

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Domaine Gauby, Roussillon, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine Gauby is just on the outskirts of the small village of Calce in the Roussillon, a village that is home to a handful of very talented winemakers. It is in northern Catalonia, in France, in the Vallée de l’Agly.

Domaine Gauby, with Gérard Gauby, was one of the pioneers for producing ambitious, high-quality wine in the Roussillon. Today the winery is run by Gérard and his son Lionel. They are also noteworthy for being a precursor in the area of the biocynamic movement in winemaking – using herbal infusions and composts instead of chemical treatments and synthetic fertilisers. This way of growing the vines tries to cultivate the grapes in as “natural” a way as possible. Much attention is spent on observing and tending the wines. Having a living soil and an extensive biodiversity is also important: many different plants and many insects and animals contribute to a stable growing environment for the vines.

The domaine now includes some 45 hectares of vineyards, mainly in the Côte de Roussillon appellation. Domaine Gauby makes both red and white wines. The reds are made from typical southern grapes: grenache, carignan, mourvèdre, syrah are the main ones. they also have some cabernet sauvignon. The white wines are made from e.g. grenache blanc, viognier and grenache gris. They have a relatively recent winery where they use a mix of traditional and modern vinification

http://www.domainegauby.fr

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Domaine Gauby stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Please don't wash the dishes!

>> Friday 26 February 2010



Sign: do not wash the dishes! Domaine Boucabeille, Corneilla la Riviere, Roussillon, France

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Domaine Boucabeille, Roussillon, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

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Domaine Boucabeille is a small family owned winery in the Roussillon area in the south of France. Today it is Jean Boucabeille who manages the property, works the vineyards and makes the wines in the cave. He has taken over from his father, Régis, although Monsieur Boucabeille senior still gives a helping hand.

The vineyards extend over 18 ha split up on different parcels. Some are beautifully located on the slopes of the Força Real hill. The vines planted in the vineyards are a mix of syrah, mourvèdre, grenache and carignan, a classic blend for the region. Domaine Boucabeille also makes some white wines from maccabeu and viognier. The names of the cuvees are: Le Blanc and Le Rosé, unsurprisingly, and for the reds Les Terrasses, Monte Nero, and Les Orris (which also exists in white). The wines are full-bodied with plenty of fruit and freshness. Some get a careful élevage in oak barrel.

http://www.boucabeille.com/

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Domaine Boucabeille stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Tracking your visitors - web statistics

>> Friday 19 February 2010

Trekking walking in the vineyards. Pommard village with church. Pommard, Cote de Beaune, d'Or, Burgundy, France

As a consequence of one of the previous posts on the redesign of this blog I had a question on statistics from someone who reads this blog (at least occasionally). I take the liberty to repeat the question and my comments here. I thought it could be interesting for more people:

Spurred on by your blog post where you compared WP and Blogger and mentioned this, I signed up to StatCounter and have even paid them for extra logs (on [the main site the writer operates] there are 1000s of pages hence it’s needed!). I’m finding the stats quite different to Google Analytics, for my main site it’s about 1/3rd higher on Unique visitors on average though not directly linear. On the other hand, for my WP blog it’s about 50% lower that the stats WP provides (but that doesn’t specifically mention Unique Visitors I don’t think).  What’s your experience? Which is more accurate/quotable on ‘unique users’?
I use both StatCounter and Google Analytics. StatCounter since very long. It’s easy to use and to understand. Much easier to understand than Google Analytics. Perhaps Google Analytics gets more use friendly once you’ve spent days and days digging into it. One tip: if you want to track some specific pages, create a special StatCounter project for it, with its own code, and put that on the specific page(s) you want to track (in addition to the general code – but I assume you put that in the footer).

Google Analytics and StatCounter does give different stats. I’ve read various comments on it but nothing conclusive. The basic problem is that there is no single and reliable way to collect statistics. Both StatCounter and GA use cookies, but they use them differently. Hence they get different results. Some comments say that the difference may be due to Google Analytics being more effective in NOT counting visits by spiders / web crawlers than StatCounter. Counting spiders inflates the stats (it’s not real people). Not sure if that’s true because some say that Google Analytics may give higher stats in some occasions.

I don’t think it’s much of an issue. I would say both are accurate. As accurate as you can get. Stats is in any case a rather nebulous area. E.g. what is “a unique visitor”? If I remember right StatCounter defines it by a cookie that has a 30 minute life time (you can chose to change that). If the same visitor comes back more than 30 minutes later it counts as a new visitor. I am not sure exactly what Google Analytics defines it as but I would think it’s similar.

The most important thing with stats is not the absolute numbers (albeit those are good for marketing purposes) but rather:
-    Trends: growth and fall in traffic. (Light-hearted example: a web site, not to be named, claimed that they had a lot of professional visitors since the traffic was higher in weekdays than on weekends… Hmmm. More likely, people surf for private things at work.)
-    Where visitors come from (originating sites)
-    Popular pages: which are those? Why do you think those particular pages are popular?
-    Keywords: which keywords do people search on in search engines when they find your site
-    And more

All of that an much more is in both StatCounter and Google Analytics. Use both and then decide which you like best. Or continue using both. It’s not expensive, but very informative.

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Too early for the birds



Unripe grapes. Vineyard. Syrah. Chateau de Jau, Cases de Pene, Roussillon, France.

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Chateau de Jau, Roussillon, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Château de Jau is a winery in Roussillon in southern France, close to the Spanish border on the Mediterranean side. It is a family owned property, owned by the Dauré family. They also own the Clos de Paulilles, which is on the coast. At both properties they have restaurants where they serve excellent food and, of course, plenty of their own wines.

The Chateau de Jau is located on the southern-most parts of the Corbieres mountain range, in the Vallee de l’Agly, a valley where many excellent Roussillon vineyards are located. The vineyards of Chateau de Jau extend over 134 hectares and are planted with a variety of grape varieties: syrach, mourvèdre, carignan, grenache noir, cabernet for the reds and macabeo and vermentino, muscat for the white wines. Their best know wine is probably the Le Jaja de Jau, an easy-drinking wine that exists in different varietals with a playful label.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Chateau de Jau stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Caramany, Roussillon - heard of it?

>> Thursday 18 February 2010



Vineyards, mountains and the Barrage de l'Agly dam. Caramany, Ariege, Roussillon, France

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Caramany, Roussillon, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

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Caramany is a small village and wine region in the Roussillon mountains, on the slope of the Pyrenees. The production is dominated by one cooperative, which produces most of the wine in the appellation. It is one of the wine villages that can use the Côtes du Roussillon Villages appellation. Nearby we find the curiously named Latour de France area and a little further north across the border to the Languedoc, we have Fitou.

It is a mountainous region with many beautiful views over the mountaintops, as well as over the lake, which is an artificially created dam (Barrage d'Agly). The grape varieties are mainly traditional southern grapes: carignan, grenache, and syrah. The vineyards are on the hillsides on more or less steep slopes. The soil in the vineyards is often very poor with schist and gneiss.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Caramany stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Water and wine (Banyuls)

>> Sunday 14 February 2010



Vineyard by the sea. Sailing boat. Banyuls sur Mer, Roussillon, France

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Banyuls, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

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Banyuls is both the name of a village (full name: Banyuls-sur-Mer) and the name of an appellation controllée. Banyuls is located on the French Mediterranean coast near the border to Spain, in other words, in French Catalonia.

The village Banyuls (or small town if you prefer, some 5000 inhabitants) is a charming seaside resort with a big beach, a long seaside walk, a pleasure boat harbour and a busy restaurant and café life. It nestles between the sea and the mountains with a backdrop of impressive mountain tops – the beginning of the Pyrenees mountain range. It is also famous as the birth town of the artist Aristide Maillol.

Banyuls, the wine, is an AOC that is used for fortified wines, in French called Vins Doux Naturels (VDN). The vineyards of the region spread out over four communes: Banyuls, Cerbère, Collioure and Port-Vendres (all four charming villages). The wines are made from grenache noir, grenache gris, grenacher blanc and carignan grape varieties. Macabeu, muscat and malvoisie may also be used. The vinification is such that grape spirit (alcohol) is added to the fermenting must at an early stage. This stops the fermentation and makes for a sweet wine. Sometimes the wine is aged in glass bottles (bonbonnes or demi-jéannes – demi-johns) outside, exposed to the sun, to make the wine in an oxidative style.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Roussillon Banyuls stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Blog and Facebook problem

>> Saturday 13 February 2010

Anyone who might have a clue what the problem is?

Since I changed template on this blog, and modified some other things (installed new widgets) whenever I “post to Facebook” something from this blog Facebook does not recognise and post the photo.

Previously, each time I posted something to Facebook, e.g. using the AddThis widget at the end of each post Facebook picked up the photo from the post and put it in my new Facebook entry. But that no longer works. Facebook doesn’t post any photo at all when I send something to it from this blog.

[UPDATE] It seems that it has something to do with the new template I am using, Webnolia (info and code here) but I can't figure out what might be causing the issue. (I tested if it might have been the TweetMeme widget and it was not. Nor is it  the LinkWithin widget since I use it on another blog, The BKWine Brief Blog, and it does not have this issue. That blog uses a standard Blogger template. [END]

Anyone has a clue as to what might be the problem?

[UPDATE 2:] This is really strange. To trouble shoot this Facebook-Blogger problem I created a new test blog with the Webnolia templat. Posting to Facebook from that blog worked fine. The image thumbnail from the blog posted fine on FB. Why??? I don't know. So I started adding all widgets/gadgets and (the very few) code changes I had on my real blog to the test blog to see what widget messed things up. Nothing. It all worked fine. Why??? I don't know.

What to do now? Well, I thought that one way to find out what was the problem would be to rebuild the (old) real Wine Picture blog and test it at every single step. I saw no other way to figure out what was the problem. (I had read in detail both the templates last night and could see nothing wrong.)

So I started rebuilding... And voila - after rebuilding the "real" blog from scratch it works. I have no clue, NO CLUE, why it didn't work before. But now, after having done all the work once again (much quicker this time of course) it works fine. It's probably magic involved somewhere.

Having done that I took the opportunity to add some improvements:

I changed the link design from "underline" to "dashed unerline". That's done with a css attribute:

You get an underline on links by default. If you don't want an underline you can specify:
a {text-decoration: none;}

But not using any underline at all is bad user interface management. Instead, I preferred to change to something less of an eye-sore than the underline: a dotted underline. (You can also do dashed.)

This is how you can do a dotted underline (if you know WHERE to do it in the CSS):

.post-body p a, .post-body p a:visited {
color: $mainLinkColor;
/* Change, OLD text-decoration: underline; */
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom-width: 1px;
border-left-width: 0px;
border-right-width: 0px;
border-top-width: 0px;
border-style: dotted;
/* Change END */
}
That's the section in the Webnolia template that needed to be changed.

I also introduced the same dotted underline in the sidebars, but only on "hoover". There are so many links in the side bar and the font is relatively small, so it would have been cluttered with a normal (or dotted) permanent underline.

[But there are still mysteries. Why, for example, does this post get full underlines instead of dotted ones? http://wine-pictures.blogspot.com/2010/02/blogger-vs-wordpress-comparison-of-blog.html]

Enough on this for today.

[By the way, here's a useful generator of hex codes to get the colour scheme right when modifying the colours in the template.]

WELL, WELL,WELL, here I am tinking I have resolved the FB-blogger problem. I've redone everything and tested at every single step, and it worked. And now when I post from the blog to FB, with todays Banyuls post .......... it does not work.

I GIVE UP.

FOR NOW.

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The summum of Portuguese gastronomy?



Grilled sardines. Lisbon, Portugal

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Lisbon, Portugal, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Lisbon is the capital of Portugal with some 2.8 million inhabitants in greater Lisbon. The centre of the city is a relatively small area in downtown Lisbon called Baixa. The city is famous for its hills, but the centre is on a low-lying flat area (hence Baixa). There are plenty of shops and a bustling pedestrian district.

Around the old city centre of Baixa there are other districts with their own character. The oldest is called Alfama which is a myriad of narrow streets and alleys, plenty of restaurants and bars where you can listen to the fado singers at night. Opposite Alfama is Barrio Alto, as the name indicates, it is on one of the Lisbon hills. You can reach it with the famous Gustav Eiffel elevator (Elevador de Santa Justa) from the Baixa district. This is also a district with a high restaurant and bar density. It is more dominated by night clubs and modern music bars than the Alafama.

Lisbon is a city with many different faces that you can spend many days discovering.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Portugal Lisbon stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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In flower (Savennieres)

>> Friday 12 February 2010



Flowering grape vine chenin blanc. Vine leaf. Domaine Chateau de la Roche aux Moines, Savennieres, Anjou, Loire, France

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Savennieres appellation, Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Savennieres (Savennières, to be entirely correct) is a small commune and village in the central Loire Valley, not far from Angers. It is best known for producing some excellent white wines. At its best Savennieres makes some of the best white wines in the whole of the Loire.

It is a small appellation with only some 300 hectares out of which only around half is planted with vines. The vineyards are entirely dedicated to the growing of the chenin blanc grape, a grape that is generally high, or very high, in acidity, with grapefruit aromas and sometimes a waxy or honeyed note. It may sound like a strange combination but it is delicious. The landscape is beautiful rolling hills, many north or east facing on slopes down towards the river. There are several small valleys around stream that give the are a charming character.

The wines can be both bone dry (en then I mean really, really dry) all the way to very sweet. The dry variants are by far the most common. There is a handful of producers in this small gem of an AOC, most of them producing very good wines indeed.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Savennieres stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Burning issues

>> Thursday 11 February 2010



Vineyard winter pruned with a wheel barrow from an oil barrel to burn twigs. Le Haut Lieu, Domaine Huet, vouvray, Loire, France

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Domaine Huet, Vouvray, Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine Huet, l'Echansonne, is a small winery in the Vouvray appellation, near Tours, in the centre of the Loire Valley. The winery makes primarily dry to very sweet white wines from the much underrated grape variety chenin blanc. They also make some sparkling wine. the winery is run since many years by the brilliant Noel Pinguet. Many years ago he took the winery on to the route to biodynamic wine growing and winemaking (a specialised form of organic agriculture).

The winery is located in the small village of Vouvray. In the long underground corridors, cut out of the soft tuffeau calcareous rock the wine is fermented in stainless steel tanks or in barrels. There are thousands and thousands of bottles, stacked in enormous piles, with aging wines.

The vineyards are located around the village. There are several different place names, Haut-Lieu and Le Mont are the best known.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Vovray Domaine Huet stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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The white exception

>> Wednesday 10 February 2010



Bottles aging in the cellar. Exception Blanc 2004. Domaine Pascal Jolivet, Sancerre, Loire, France

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Domaine Maison Pascal Jolivet, Sancerre, Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

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Domaine Maison Pascal Jolivet is arelatively recent winery in the upper Loire Valley. It is located just below the hilltop village of Sancerre. From for example the Hotel Panorama in the village (or another viewpoint looking towards Chavignol) you can see the winery buildings on the plain below. It was founded in 1987 by Pascal Jolivet. Since then it has accumulated more than 28 hectares of vineyards.

The vineyards are mainly located in the Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé appellations. The house is also a négociant and buys grapes to satisfy the demand from its customers. The dominant grape variety is sauvignon blanc, the white grape making racy, steely and aromatic white wines. They also make some red wines from the pinot noir grape variety. the objective is to bring out as much freshness and aromas as possible. The vinification is very ‘clean’ with fermentation in stainless steel vats, with a long and slow fermentation, using natural yeast, keeping temperatures low, sometimes aging the wines for some time on their lees.

This is a very dedicated and determined wine grower that has succeeded in carving a place among the classic Sancerre (and Pouilly) producers in quite a short time.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Sancerre Pascale Jolivet stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

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Blogger vs. Wordpress - a comparison of blog platforms

The recent blog redesign made me think a bit of the differences – advantages and drawbacks – of Blogger (blogspot.com) vs. Wordpress. Here are a few more comments. It is important to keep in mind that I am talking about Wordpress.com, i.e. the free version of Wordpress, hosted by Wordpress (don't confuse this with Wordpress.org, which offers the same platform, but without the hosting). Also, I am not trying to make any exhaustive comparison, just a few comments.

Both Wordpress and Blogger offer two excellent and completely free blogging platforms. Both can be “enhanced” if you pay a bit extra with e.g. personal domain names (url:s).

Perhaps the easiest thing to see in terms of differences is that it is easier to get a nice looking, well designed blog with Wordpress (Wordpress.com). This is mainly because in Wordpress you have more themes to choose from and they are generally better designed than the Blogger ones. In Blogger most themes look rather terrible.

On the other hand, you have much more flexibility in Blogger to customize a theme once you’ve installed it, changing colours, fonts etc. Wordpress does not allow you to tinker with the themes.

One of the things I discovered in my Wine Picture Blog redesign project was that it wasn’t actually all that difficult to install a new, nice-looking theme (I was almost going to say Wordpress-looking) theme. In Blogger you can install new themes, either from Blogger, or ones that you’ve done yourself, or from a third party. You can’t do that in Wordpress. This, in my view, overcomes one of the main disadvantages with Blogger (the sometimes childish built-in theme collection).

Another big difference is that with Wordpress you can build sites, not just blogs. Perhaps you can do that with Blogger too, but I have not seen it. This means that a Wordpress blog/site doesn’t have to look like a blog with new posts in a time chronology. You can build a site with static pages and a menu structure without it looking the least like a blog. Or you can do a mix of the two. This is a very good way of building a simple site. It does take some figuring out to understand exactly how to do the static pages and the front page, but once you’ve done that it is really easy to build the site. Here are two sites I’ve done in Wordpress:

This is also reflected in that Wordpress has a very different “back office” or management and admin pages than Blogger.

In Wordpress you get some built-in stats. It has its own statistics package that is part of their control panel. But it’s very basic. On the other hand, there’s no such thing at all in Blogger (of course, they want you to use Google Analytics instead). But what you really should do, both in Wordpress and in Blogger is install a separate statistics solution. I use two which are both very good: StatCounter, which is free with a limited log history and costs a small amount if you want to store more logs; and Google Analytics, which is free but a bit more difficult to understand. I strongly recommend using a stats package so you can learn from who your visitors are.

There’s an annoying limitation in Wordpress: it does not accept flash embeds. So you can’t pick up an “embed code” and put it on a Wordpress blog. On this blog (Wine Pictures) all the photo slide shows are flash embeds (from my Photoshelter BKWine Photography site). They are impossible to use on Wordpress.com. They say it is for security reasons. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is a way to encourage you to upgrade to a paying service. One of the most common flash embeds today are YouTube videos. In principle you can’t embed those on Wordpress either, but they’ve done a ‘fix’ so you can actually embed YouTube videos via a video module (that is built in). Quite an annoying limitation. Blogger has no such qualms about flash embeds.

Another big difference is what you can put in the side bars (the narrow column(s) to the left or right of the main column). Both Blogger and Wordpress have some “standard” modules that you can put in the side bars. Blogger calls them gadgets. Some call them widgets. The choice is limited on Wordpress but on Blogger you can basically put whatever you want in the side bars, in addition to the wide variety of standard ‘gadgets’. On this aspect Blogger is definitely a winner.

One more limitation in Wordpress.com is that they don't allow you to embed "commercial" links, for example product links to Amazon. So if you're an Amazon associate you can't publish product widget or links to the Amazon site. To do that on Wordpress you have to pay extra.

If I would make some kind of conclusion it would be to recommend Blogger, since Blogger is easier to use for the novice but it also lets the code-savvy person do much more sophisticated things with it (e.g. it gives you total access to the template code and css).

On the other hand, if you are looking for something that lets you build more of a “site” than a blog then I’d suggest Wordpress.com is for you.

But what is really the best option is to try both and see what you like best. Both are free, both give you the possibility to do unlimited testing and see if it turns out the way you want it.

Go ahead!

What do you think? What advantages and drawbacks do you see in the Blogger and Wordpress?

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The men in masks

>> Tuesday 9 February 2010



Vineyard workers spraying disease treatment. Mont Damne. Domaine Henri Bourgeois, Chavignol, Sancerre, Loire, France

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Domaine Henri Bourgeois, Sancerre, Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine Henri Bourgeois is a family domain wine producer in the upper Loire Valley. It is locate in the AOC region Sancerre, but the winery is in the small village of Chavignol, famous for its goat cheese the Crottin de Chavignol. It is probably one of the larger wine makers and wine producer in the area, making wine both from its own vineyards and from bought in grapes as a négociant.

Their own vineyards extend over some 65 hectares in various locations. One of the better known lieu-dits (place names) is Mont Damné, so called for its steep slopes. Most of the vineyards are planted with sauvignon blanc grapes, as can be expected in this appellation, making white wine. They also do some red wine from pinot noir grapes.

Henri Bourgeois, under the management of Jean-Marie Bourgeois, has also established itself in New Zealand, with a winery called Clos Henri.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Sancerre Henri Bourgeois stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

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Dagens Industri on BKWine today

Since we may have some Swedish readers of this blog I must mention a very nice thing:

Today Tuesday (I'm writing this at 17 minutes past midnight) there is a big article on BKWine - half a page - in the Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri (let's call it Sweden's FT, they even have the pink paper).

Buy the paper and read the article!

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In love with Loire?

>> Monday 8 February 2010

A few comments first:

  1. Today you get TWO photos. Great bonus day. (no taxes apply)
  2. IF YOU READ THIS AS AN RSS STREAM OR IN AN EMAIL ALERT: I suggest you at least this once go an take a look at the blog. For two reasons:
  • The blog has a new design and I'd like you to take a look
  • Each "today's wine photo" is followed by a slide show with several more photos IN THE POST. However, you cannot see those slide shows in an RSS reader or an email alert (for technical reasons). I just want to make sure that you are aware of those.
Now, to the core of the matter:



Chateau de Saumur along the river. A romantic couple. Saumur, Loire, France.



Chateau de Saumur along the river. Saumur, Loire, France

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Loire region stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

The Loire is France’s longest river, over 1000 km long. The source is almost down by the Mediterranean, in Ardeche. From a wine perspective the interesting things start happening when you have travelled halfway downstream and arrive at the two cities Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire. From there you pas a string of pearls of wine districts, with a vineyards, orchards and world famous chateaux.

Sancerre, Pouilly, not to forget Menetou-Salon, Quincy and Reuilly are, from a wine perspective, dominated by the white grape variety sauvignon blanc. You also find some pinot noir in the vineyards to make red and rosé and occasionally some chasselas. Floating down river you arrive at the “central” Vallee de la Loire with its chateaux and with its magnificent, but underrated white wines made from chenin blanc. They exist in bone dry to very sweet. There are also some wineries making sparkling. Many a winery here is underground, in caves carved in the soft tuffeau stone. Some winemakers use the red grapes cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, and gamay to make often light but sometimes profound red wines. There are many appellations: Vouvray, Touraine, Anjou, Montlouis, Savennieres, Chinon, Saumur-Champigny, Bourgueil and many more.

When you approach the Atlantic you come to Muscadet country, the wine for shell fish par eminence, made from the grape variety with the same name.

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire region stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

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"You might also like..."

>> Sunday 7 February 2010

The continuing story of the new blog design!

Some blogs I've seen has this nice paragraph at the end of each post "You might also like..." suggesting a few other posts that the reader might find interesting. I've found it to be a nice feature and one that might 'lure' the reader to explore even more of the blog.

Blogger has it's own Related Posts gadget but that works by suggesting related posts based on the labels. That does not work for me since i don't (currently) use labels.

Instead I found an even better designed widget called LinkWithin.

It suggested 3, 4 or 5 related posts from your blog and they are all illustrated with an image from that post. So perfect for a photo blog!

It doesn't have any advertising (good) but you can't make any custom configuration of it (bad), except choosing how many suggestions it should make. It's rather opaque how it chooses the posts to display ("several factors, including title, tags, and contents") but the selection seems OK. The technical posts seem to get references to other tech posts.

It installed without a glitch and looks really good (I think) on the blog.

I wonder what their business model is. They say that they "plan to introduce revenue-sharing features in the future, but they will be optional". Sounds OK.

For the moment I'm anyway very happy with it, so I'd definitely recommend trying the LinkWithin Related Posts Widget.

What do you think? Does it serve up relevant related post in your opinion?

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Getting the bullet back

In the recent post on the new blog design I lamented that the unordered list bullet had disappeared in the side bar in the new blog design.

I now have it back, albeit not quite the way I want it. Here's what I did.

Inspecting the template I find this piece of CSS code:

.sidebar li {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
line-height: 1.8em;
list-style-type: none;
border-bottom: 0px solid $sidebarListLineColor;
}

Meaning that a list item in the sidebar will get no bullet. I simply remove list-style-type: none; and the bullets reappear.

However, what I'd REALLY like is to replace the standard bullet with just a simple dash (-). All those big fat bullets are a bit of an eyesore and a simple dash would look better.

Anyone knows how to do that?

Read more...

Sauvignon blanc



Bunches of ripe grapes. Sauvignon blanc. Domaine Henry Natter, Montigny, Sancerre, Loire, France

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Domaine Henry Natter, Sancerre, Loire stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine Henry Natter (no, it’s not Henri) is a family owned wine property in the Sancerre region. The winery is in the village of Montigny not far from Sancerre itself. Henry Natter and his wife Cecile started making wine in the 1970s with only one and a half hectares of vines. Today they have some 20 hectares of vineyards.

The wines are very mineral, grown of stony limestone and clay (with some flint) soil. The vine growing is organic. They pay attention to biodiversity and make sure that there is many different plants around the vineyard, as well as a dynamic fauna. The wine making in the wine cellar is mainly classic using both large wooden vats as well as stainless steel tanks. Some wines have also been aged in oak barrels.

They also make a red and a rosé wine from pinot noir grapes.

http://www.henrynatter.com

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Henry Natter Sancerre stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

Read more...

A new blog design

>> Saturday 6 February 2010

If you’ve been here before you will notice that the blog has a new look! How do you like it?

The first thing you see is perhaps that it is not black any more. I did not go "all the way" as David Sanger and make it white with black text. There are good arguments for doing that, since it is much more readable. And the BKWine Photography site is already with white background. But perhaps I just wanted to test how it looked with a light gray background instead.

What do you think? Should I change it to all white? Or back to black?

The second big change is that it is a three column design.

One of the big reasons why many argue for Wordpress instead of Blogger is that it looks nicer. Wordpress also has three column templates. Blogger does not have any built-in three column designs. But doing a bit of searching on the web you can find free Blogger templates. It takes a bit of searching (and imagination) to find something that suits you. I found what I liked on OurBlogTemplates.com (as you can see in the footer). It was very easy to download and install. The theme I chose is called Webnolia. And some of the templates do look really good.

I think Blogger would compete better with Wordpress it they made it easier, and more obvious to choose different themes. Many people seem to prefer Wordpress because "it looks better", but that is purely a question of the design (the template). Blogger has also many advantages compared to Wordpress, and features that WP doesn't have. Bot somehow it seems that digging Wordpress is the thing to do. This is not to say that I have anything agains Wordpress. Only against those who off hand dismiss Blogger uncritically because 'you should'. I've built two sites/blogs in Wordpress (Ett Vin Blir Till and Languedoc) so I've tried that too and have nothing against it. It has its advantages too.

But then the really hard work starts. To tweak it so that it suits you.

I did some testing first on a “dummy blog” just to see if it could do the things I wanted it to do, and it could. (I created a new blog with a dummy name that I could test the design on and then delete.)

So then I decided to go for it. Install the template. A bit scary since if it went wrong I wasn’t sure that I could get all of the old blog back. The design (template), yes, no problem. That is easy to back up. What I was worried about was the “gadgets”, more often called widgets or modules – the things in the side bar(s). I don’t think there’s a way to back up and restore those and since I had some that had quite a bit of contents it would be time consuming to redo. (UPDATE: There's actually a post on safeguarding the widgets / gadgets that I hadn't seen: http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/2008/09/how-to-install-new-template-without.html, but it worked fine without that.)

But I went ahead. And installed the new theme. First it looked really, really, REALLY strange. But that was because the ‘gadgets’ were all in the wrong place. When installing the new template you had the option to keep the old gadgets, which I did. Fortunately. But they did not all arrive in the correct place in the new template. After moving around all the gadgets to where I wanted them (and deleting some old ones, e.g. the not so useful AdSense ones, adding some new ones) it started to look pretty good.

Then came what is almost the most complicated thing of all: getting all the colours and fonts right.

Most themes, Webnolia included, use far too many different fonts, and far too many different colours, boxes, lines and other graphic elements. But after spending quite some time in the Fonts & Colors section of Blogger it started to look pretty OK. But I warn you – it is a time consuming thing and you have to be really, really careful with the details.

There were four (or more) different fonts used in the template. I changed that to only two, and two which are very similar. Makes for a more harmonious text. To get rid of all the various boxes and lines (borders) I changed most of the colours: by setting the colour of the contents, the colour of the border, and the colour of the surrounding area to the same colour the "busy" design disappears. There are lots and lots of page elements that you have to think of and I've probably missed a few.

(UPDATE: If you use the Webnolia template DON'T miss that you need to do a slight modification in Settings > Comments > Comment Form Placement choosing "Embedded below post".)

One of the things I couldn’t fix easily was that there are no bullet points in the link lists in the gadgets. I really miss those. Perhaps I can get some if I dig into the css code of the template but that’s a bit too complicated at the moment for me. Any suggestions?

I also took the occasion to install the TweetMeme widget on the blog – the little balloon that says how many times a post has been tweeted and that gives the visitor an easy way to tweet the post. Installing that took quite a bit of fiddling and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you know a bit about the technicalities of blog code (not a lot, but at least a little bit). I read the instruction for adding TweetMeme in their help section but that did not work. At least it did not come out in the way I wanted it to look and in the place I wanted to have it. Googling a few more pages though, and looking at the source of some pages who used it, I found out how to make it appear on the page the way I want it. I hope.

The same thing goes for the AddThis widget at the bottom of each post. I had it installed previously but it had to be reinstalled when I changed theme. Not a big deal, but you have to make sure all details are correct. And quite easy to install in the template.

The new template also included a gadget to include easily a sort of menu bar at the top of the page.

Changing from a two column blog template to a three column template gives you better possibilities to organise all the stuff you want to show in the sidebars. In some cases perhaps you just want an added column for ads. I wanted the added column primarily to display separately the list of the sample stock photo galleries. From what they say in the instructions, you can even use this template for four or more columns. I also wanted to move away from the white-text-on-black-background design I had and make the whole appearance a bit more elegant.

Overall, it was actually much simpler than I had feared. It took me the better part of a Saturday afternoon to get it all right (or most of it right).

So, there you are. That’s the story behind the NEW Wine Picture Blog.

Do you like it? Suggestions for improvements?

Read more...

About BKWine Photography

PHOTOGRAPHS ON WINE, VINEYARDS, GASTRONOMY, FOOD AND TRAVEL

All photos on BKWine Photography are by me, Per Karlsson, bar a few exceptions taken by my wife (& business partner) Britt.

WINE

I travel in wine regions almost a third of my time and visit some 200 vineyards each year. It takes me to wineries all over the world: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Greece, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro... to mention a few in Europe. Outside of Europe I've been to South America and South Africa (soon). We also have some pictures from Slovenia and China.

The wine photo collection includes many vineyards, wineries and winemakers. But our photo library also covers some more unusual subjects, like technical photos on winery equipment or details of vines, vineyards and soils.

GASTRONOMY & TRAVEL

Wine often goes with food, so the food and gastronomy photography is a natural extension of the wine photography. In the same way, travel photography is part of what I do. I happen to be Swedish so there are also quite a few photos from Sweden.

BOOKS & WRITING

We've written and photographed two wine books. Our first book was on the wines and the vineyards in the Languedoc region. Our second book was on vine growing and wine making.

We publish perhaps 30 article per year on wine, food and travel, mostly in the specialised press. We also run an online wine newsletter on wine, read all over the world: the BKWine Brief.

In other words, we know our wines, wine regions and winemakers better than most...

SOME REFERENCES

Mitchell Beazley (The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson & Jancis Robinson, The Wine Companion by Hugh Johnson), The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Fodors, Forbes, Geo Magazine, Lonely Planet, Men's Vogue, Fine Wine, Decanter, Connoisseur Magazine, Delmar Learning, Frommer's, John Wiley & Sons, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill Publishing, Thomson Learning Publications, The Independent, The Times Books, Travel & Leisure, USA Today, Gourmet Traveller Wine (Australia) and many others.

We love wine, food and travel which is the reason we do what we do.

- Per Karlsson

CAN'T FIND IT? Our collection includes some 30,000 images. We are progressively putting the whole collection on the BKWine Photography site but it will take some time. Contact us if you can't find what you're looking for. We might have it, but not yet online.

CONTACT: Per Karlsson, BKWine AB, 51 rue du Chevalier de la Barre, F-92130 Issy les Moulineaux, France | ph +33 6 83 51 12 53 | info@bkwine.com | www.bkwine.com |

NEWSLETTER: We occasionally (every two months or so) send out a newsletter informing you about new subjects in our collection, promoted features and news.




Read more...

Who says Sancerres don't age?



Bottles aging in the cellar. Domaine de la Perriere, Sancerre, Loire, France

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Domaine de la Perrière, Sancerre, Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine de la Perriere is on a slope just outside the village of Sancerre in the upper Loire valley. From the hilltop village of Sancerre you can see in big white like letters in the vineyard “Domaine de la Perriere”.

The vineyards are planted with the classic grape varieties for the region: for the white wines they use sauvignon blanc grapes, and for the red wines it is pinot noir. They have 42 hectares of vineyards, some located around the winery, near the Sancerre village, and also in Bannay, Verdigny, Saint Satur, Crezancy and Vinon.

The winery itself is quite a curiosity worth seeing: it is entirely located in a gigantic underground grotto, carved out of the soft tuffeau calcareous stone. You enter through a hole in the mountainside and come in to a gigantic hall that houses fermentation tanks presses, aging cellars and even a well guarded room with some old vintages of the wine. With the high humidity in the cave it is no surprise that the bottles are all mouldy.

http://www.domainelaperriere.com

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Domaine de la Perriere Sancerre stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

-

Do you have wine & travel picture needs?
Let us know if you have any specific photo requests from wineries and vineyards.

More from BKWine:
- Go on a Wine Tour
- Subscribe to our newsletter(s)
- More Wine Pictures


© Copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine

Read more...

This is cabernet franc - for sure

>> Friday 5 February 2010



Bunches of ripe grapes. Cabernet franc. Domaine des Roches Neuves, Saumur Champigny, Loire, France

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Domaine des Roches Neuves, Saumur Champigny, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine des Roches Neuves is a small winery in Saumur Champigny in the central Loire Valley, not far from Saumur. It was created in 1991, and is still run by Thierry Germain, a very talented winemaker.

The Saumur Champigny appellation in the Loire valley is perhaps not among the most well know ones, but you can find some very good wines in the area. Thierry Germain is a master of producing high quality red wines from the main Loire red grape variety: the cabernet franc. He also makes some white wine from some very old vines of chenin blanc grapes from a vineyard that he acquired in the mid-90s. He makes a few different cuvees: Terres Chaudes, Marginale, Insolite…

Thierry Germain and his vineyard manager Michel Chevret, started to work the vineyards with biodynamic methods in the early 2000s. The first results were very promising.

http://www.rochesneuves.com/

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.



Loire Domaine Roche Neuves stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

-

Do you have wine & travel picture needs?
Let us know if you have any specific photo requests from wineries and vineyards.

More from BKWine:
- Go on a Wine Tour
- Subscribe to our newsletter(s)
- More Wine Pictures


© Copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine

Read more...

What grape variety is this?

>> Thursday 4 February 2010



Bunches of ripe grapes. Domaine des Baumard, Rochefort, Anjou, Loire, France

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Domaine des Baumard, Anjou, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Domaine des Baumard is a family winery in the small town (village?) of Rochefort sur Loire, just across the river Loire from Savennieres. The location is in the central Loire Valley, in Anjou close to the big city Angers. Today it is run with excellence by the engaging Florent Baumard. The winery is in the middle of the village but the vineyards are spread out over several different appellations in the region.

Domaine des Baumard makes a wide range of wines, both red, rosé and white, but it is the whites that have made the fame of Baumard. The great white wins are made from the much underrated chenin blanc grape variety. It can make very steel, racy and elegant bone dry wines. But it is also a grape eminently suited to making sweet wines, sometimes with noble rot and sometimes just with late harvest and ‘passerillage’. The appellations for the white wines are Vin de Pays, Savennieres (dry), Coteaux du Layon and Quarts de Chaume (both sweet). They also use some other grape varieties, e.g. they make a very interesting white called Vert de l’Or – from the verdelho grape.

The red wines are made under the Anjou Rouge AOC from cabernet franc grapes. They even make some sparkling wine, Cremant de Loire.

http://www.baumard.fr/

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Domaine des Baumard stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

-

Do you have wine & travel picture needs?
Let us know if you have any specific photo requests from wineries and vineyards.

More from BKWine:
- Go on a Wine Tour
- Subscribe to our newsletter(s)
- More Wine Pictures


© Copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine

Read more...

A close shave

>> Wednesday 3 February 2010



Trimming leaves and branches off the vines. Chateau de Tracy, Pouilly sur Loire, France

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Chateau de Tracy, Pouilly-sur-Loire, stock photography samples, by Per Karlsson, BKWine.

THIS IS ONLY A SELECTION OF SAMPLES. Use the image SEARCH function to find more relevant photos.

Chateau de Tracy is a winery in the upper Loire, in Pouilly sur Loire, just across the river from Sancerre. It is owned by the family of the count d’Estutt d’Assay. The main building is a rather grand chateau overlooking a valley. As many of the properties in this region, they make exclusively white wine from the sauvignon blanc grape, with the appellation Pouilly-Fumé. Some tasters say that the ‘fumé’ (smoky) comes from a slightly smoky or flinty aroma in the vine, coming from the flinty soil. I have great difficulties discerning that. The wines are very racy, elegant and fresh. In the area there is also some white made from chasselas (under the Pouilly-sur-Loire appellation).

The vineyards are managed in what is called ‘culture raisonnée’ (sometimes, curiously, called sustainable wine growing in English). This means, in short, that they use very little chemical treatment but if really needed they will use it. An interesting experiment they are doing is a vineyard planted with very high density – vines planted at 17,000 vines per hectare (compared to the usual 7000 to 10,000). This has turned out very well and produces a full-bodied complex sauvignon blanc wine. They call it “HD” (haute densité).

http://www.chateau-de-tracy.com/

All images © copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine. Images may not be used without our permission.


Loire Chateau Tracy Pouilly stock photo samples - Images by Per Karlsson

- TIP 1: You can 'grab' this slide show and embed it on your site. Click the lower-right up-arrow.

- TIP 2
: Click the 'full screen' button (next to the little envelope) if you want to see the images in larger size.

-

Do you have wine & travel picture needs?
Let us know if you have any specific photo requests from wineries and vineyards.

More from BKWine:
- Go on a Wine Tour
- Subscribe to our newsletter(s)
- More Wine Pictures


© Copyright Per Karlsson, BKWine

Read more...

Sheltering from Google Image Indexing?

>> Tuesday 2 February 2010

There's an interesting discussion going on on the Photoshelter forum on Google Image Search indexing of images.

Some people are very upset that their images are not rapidly indexed. Some people have had some very great information to share on how to do things. It seems clear that there is work to do to make the Photoshelter site work even better, but also very clear that each photographer needs to take things in his own hands and work - IN THE LONG TERM - with improving images. Photoshelter will not do the work for you, but does provide some very good tools and some very (very) good advice. Your web site does not exist in isolation. You need to connect it to others. Many others.



Frankly, I am very impressed by the Photoshelter service. Since a few months I use it as an experiment. If all works fine I will build a (more) customized site around it, including e.g. an integrated blog. It will also include the possibility to license the images directly on my site and perhaps even buy prints.

Coming back to this thread on Google Image Search on the forum. I thought I'd make a page (this one) with links to some of the posters / photographers on who have posted in that thread.

It seems, according to the discussion, that I have achieved relatively good Google indexing and ranking. That may be because I've been doing this blog for a few years as well as some other SEO related things. A long terms strategy that seems to work.

One effect of that is that if I put a link to one of my galleries or images on this blog it is rapidly indexed by Google. Perhaps the effect will be the same if I link to the other photographers.

So, here are some of the photographers who have appeared in the discussion:

And if any of you would like to link back to me I'd appreciate that, to my all now custom URL: www.bkwinephotography.com. My specialty is wine, vineyard, winery photography, with some food & gastronomy, as well as travel.

The whole purpose of this post was to have an excuse to link to the people above. ;-) Perhaps you will see some effect. Actually, it is beyond question that you will (all (legitimate) back-links enhance your 'juice').

But it may take time.

And you're not alone.

Read more...
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