What do YOU consider a "Cult" wine?

Was just wondering what the consensus is on what makes a wine a “Cult” wine.

For example in my store we carry two cabs that I would consider “Cult” wines, Husic Estate Cabernet at $110/btl (case production is between 250-350 per vintage) and Triple 777 Cabernet at $90/btl (case production is 125).

For me a “Cult” wine should be something hard to find that also provides good QPR, thus something like Screaming Eagle while hard to get doesn’t get a “Cult Wine” label due to its price to quality ratio.

Maybe I’m wrong and if so I would be interested in hearing why.

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I have always thought of “Cult Wines” as any number of wines that are made on most continents, that are made and priced for a certain consumer. They must have high points from a select few critics and generally too high prices. I think many of them taste very similar to one another.

Hard to find, yes. But I don’t think QPR is part of the equation at all. Being a cult wine means people are willing to spend money to the point where additional quality does not justify the price and most of that price increase is due to the label.

So this?

So if I made a wine that received 97 pts from 2 or 3 big name critics and charged $5000 a bottle but I made 500000 cases of it, you would consider that a “Cult” wine? Even though you could buy it in every little wine shop in the world? That strikes would strike me as overpriced juice that everyone “thinks” is a great cult wine.

I’ve had plenty of great wines that never get reviewed due to production levels or the winery just didn’t care about points. Are they not any good because a so called expert didn’t give it a high score?

Just trying to get some sense of what others consider a “cult” wine but to me high score and price = Cult wine doesn’t make much sense.

Verset and Juge are “cult” wines in my book.

Cult to me connotes a geeky, rabid following, willing to chase the wine to all ends.

Seems like most of these California “cults,” they are relatively easy to find.

Bill, in all seriousness, IIRC the term was coined for small production Napa Cabs which were only available direct via mailing list. Grace was one of the first, Harlan and Screagle soon followed along with many others.

Your examples are small production hand-sell wines, since few people have tasted or heard of them. Cult wines can have much larger production, but still sell thru without any effort on your part, often not even being sold much thru the 3 tier system. QPR has NOTHING to do with it, at least after the first vintage or two (SE sold for $50/btl for their first release in 1992), and in fact are typically the very opposite of QPR.

You can define it any way you want, but your stated definition is at odds with how most think of cult wines.

True cults for sure. But I was answering for the “Cult Wine Movement” wines. Those big homogeneous…

This is how I’ve always thought of it. It grew to encompass some non-Napa Cabs like SQN.

Many of these seemed to lose their cultish veneer post economic downturn.

A mailing list that will probably take you more than 20yrs to get on…

This. QPR is not part of the equation. Sounds like a sales’ rep pitch. And I have heard it before, “this is the a new cult wine”.

JD

Since the replies I’ve seen seem to indicate that I am off in my definition I googled it and found this (if you can believe anything on the internet):

Cult wines are those for which dedicated groups of committed enthusiasts will pay large sums of money. Such wines include, for example, Screaming Eagle from California and Penfolds Grange from Australia, among many others.

Cult wines are often seen as trophy wines to be collected or as investment wine to be held rather than consumed. Because price is often seen as an indicator of quality, sellers may adopt a premium pricing strategy where high prices are used to increase the desirability of such wines. This is true even for less expensive wines. For example, one vintner explained that “on several occasions we have had difficulty selling wines at $75, but as soon as we raise the price to $125 they sell out and get put on allocation”.[1]

Other wines that fall under the title occasionally are from Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhône and Italy.

These wines when scored highly by Robert Parker have had a tendency to increase in price resembling the Bordeaux investment market.[2]

So I am wrong in my definition although for me I would rather find and drink the guys that no one has heard of before the price explodes and prices me out of the market !

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This is more like my definition. Wines with a smaller rabid following that are great but nobody knows about. In many cases these are great bargains for many, many years. They can be found, but you have to know where to look. Not high scores from
Parker or Wine Spectator, if they rate them at all. Only wine writer to get the wines, if any do, is Gilman.

Sometimes they get discovered and prices go through the roof.

A limited production wine not available through retail channels that sells on the secondary market for multiples of what it costs from the winery.

Used to also have to have a Parker score (not any score but an actual RP score) of at least 97 or 98 but he’s no longer relevant.

^^ This. ^^

Cult wines are not available in stores unless they procured in on the secondsry market/consigned.

The wine world is full of small production wines, many very good. Small production doesn’t mean that they will be cult in the future or that the price will increase if people find them. Cult wines are driven by auction, scarcity and ‘coolness’ factor to those that like the wines.
It sounds like you have wines in your shop that you enjoy and that are small production, that’s great, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that others will find the same pleasure and the prices will increase.

Right.

There’s not a legal definition - it was, as Alex said, originally used by wine writers to describe a very few Napa wines that became very expensive. They tended to have relatively small production and “hard to get” was a part of it insofar as they were beyond the financial reach of most people. The term came about with the Wall Street boom back in the 1990s where traders were just trying to spend money to show that they had it. They ended up snatching a lot of those wines and in many cases, treating them as investments rather than beverages.

There are certainly wines made world-wide that are only made in small numbers and/or small amounts and/or for select clients. But I’ve never heard of any of them being described as “cult” wines in the American vinous media.

And I don’t think the term means anything at all any more, since a lot of those wines became available with the downturn a few years ago and so lost their cachet, and the influence of Parker has faded so much.

If they’re easy to find and large production, they’re not a cult wine.

For the OP: on this board, I think most folks consider Cult Wines to refer to those California cabs of the 90’s mentioned above. Specific time and place. It has expanded to include more recent mailing-list wines but still mostly California. I think the Parker hype, mailing list only, illusion of scarcity and a few other conditions to make this a “thing”.

Hard to find or highly allocated or highly expensive wines with a following from elsewhere I just don’t hear people calling cult wines much here - Juge and Selosse and even Leroy/Dujac/DRC or Tondonia. Or Allemand, Giacosa, Gonon, etc. Or a dozen others. These are just the things that certain people start collecting. People who go after auction riesling are kind of a cult, yes, but I just don’t hear people using that phrase. All wine collectors find those things that they go after and seek out and get somewhat obsessed with. And if they get hip or popular they rise in price and become more scarce and the object of desire, jealousy and admiration. True of any collectible. If you argued that “cult” can be used here, dunno where you can reasonably draw the line…

Vis-a-vis your internet quote, I would never consider a high volume wine like Grange to be a cult wine, same goes for Vega Sicilia.

And then there are the Unicorn wines, which come from dead/retired producers, terroir which has changed hands or been ripped up, tiny production, etc: Overnoy, Verset, Cros Parantoux, etc.

The originally sainted ‘Cult Cabernets’ as decreed by the Pope of Cult Cabernets, Robert Parker, were:

Screaming Eagle
Harlan
Colgin
Bryant
Araujo
Shaffer Hillside
Abreu

At the time of beatification, Colgin was Colgin Herb Lamb and Abreu was Abreu Madrona Ranch (their other vineyards/wines came later).

The moving finger having writ moves on; those were the Cult Cabernets.