Why is there so much Burgundy for sale at auction?
No one actually drinks it.
Everyone buys a case so they think they are part of the elite, then they try a bottle and sell the remaining eleven.
The Burgundy producers import so much Algerian Syrah for blending that the amount of Burgundy produced is actually twice the amount of the local production and they have to hide the excess through auction sales
Chaptalization increase volume exponentially so it has to be sold somewhere
There is a massive shift in taste caused by global warming and no one likes Burgundy any more
No, stupid, global warming is making pinot taste like Hermitage, so the AFWEs are all selling it and switching to Loire Cab Franc
Other, please explain in the thread below.
0voters
I have a question. I often scour the Internet auctions to find interesting bottles to snatch at a low price just to experiment. I always have to wade though hundreds of bottles of Gerard Domain Berthold Comte de Boillot Roty Meo Premier Cru Clos de la Mer de Merde just to find a real bottle worth considering. My question is this:
Why is there always so much Burgundy for sale at auction?
Doesn’t anyone actually drink the stuff or do you just trade it back and forth just to prop up the price, like Bitcoin?
I think a lot of people buy Burgundy without having enough understanding of the wines (and how long some of them take to come around), must happen a lot to people who hear its been a great burgundy vintage and buy a few high scoring wines and put them away for ten years and then try one and wonder what all the fuss is about
I was seriously talking about volume, in a silly format. I agree that Screagle and SQN get flipped, but it alays seems to me that there are many more lots of Burgundy for sale than other regions, relative to production. For example, at the current Acker Internet auction, there are more Burgundy lots than Bordeaux lots, and we know that Bordeaux produces orders of magnitude more bottles of wine than Burgundy. There are 1059 Bottles of Red Burgundy for sale at the Acker Internet Auction this month, while only 1018 bottles of Red Bordeaux. I believe that is not an unusual result based upon a years of flipping through auction catalogs.
Most people assume foreign/exotic is better. They do it with cars, wine, watches, etc.
Unless they’re foreign/exotic themselves. Of course, I don’t know how exotic Burgundy is.
I think people sell it because they can. If I buy a wine for $50 and you offer me $500, I’ll probably let you have it. There’s a lot of wine available.
Bottles or lots? I wonder if part of it is the fact that there are just so many more bottlings from Burgundy. With Bordeaux you’re talking about 50 SKUs that dominate the auctions. With Burgundy you have hundreds, even thousands, of producer/vineyard combinations, sometimes dozens per producer. That creates lots of buying and selling opportunities. Of course, this also creates an illusion of scarcity; there may not be much of any one wine, but there’s a good amount in total.
Jay - I think your premise is just wrong. I don’t know what the story is with the Acker items (their website doesn’t show any catalogs now, so I don’t know what you’re basing your OP on), but for any given auction, the mix is dependent on the particular cellars that are included. Maybe one Burgundy buyer wanted to monetize some stuff this month.
Bordeaux: 170 lots
Burgundy: 83 lots
California: 137 lots
(“Mixed case” lots not counted, as that would have taken too much time, but they seemed to be about evenly distributed within the regional groupings. I didn’t include Sauternes in Bordeaux. There were Champagne, Spanish and Italian wines, too – lots of Solaia, in particular.)
And here’s the thing you’ll love, Jay. Guess which Californians are being dumped? Screagle, Colgin, Abreu and – gulp! (or drum roll, depending on your sympathies) – SQN!
Do you think the sellers just decided these didn’t like these wines?
A very high proportion of the Burgundy lots were DRC, and there’s a high proportion of first growths among the Bordeaux. Overall, it looks like investors who bought trophy wines and are now cashing out.
