I had two merchants tell me the same. No online listings so that there’s nothing on Wine Searcher. Anything on WS is either grey market or risks not seeing another allocation. That said, I don’t think there’s anything under $100 anyways. I can get the wines locally in small quantities as cheap as anywhere else (I think), and it’s still around $109-119 for Maillons and $139-149 for Pierrieres, $179-199 for the others.
Looks like we have a two tier market for champagne. The big boys small uber cuvees, the artisanal small producers like Collins and Cedric Bouchard that are championed by William Kelley (is he the new kingmaker in some categories of wine?) And I guess Selosse is in it’s own slot. These appear to be the peaks with the rest of the herd filling out the middle. It really is weird. Panzer had an allocation of Collins with the cheapest cuvee being $150 and the Cru Enfers at $400. Good luck trying to beat those prices anywhere…
There was lots in nyc about two weeks ago. It just sold. And he may not like his wines in wine-searcher but they were there for the taking. I think they don’t linger very long.
Been drinking these and loving them for a while now–fortunate to still have a few, though my stash is depleted. I’m glad to see him getting the recognition, but I am curious as to what precisely he has against listing prices online–not like Cappellano and reviews. Anyone know?
For a while, there were the big house tete de cuvees, then Selosse (and I guess Salon), then the mass of growers, where no one had really distanced themselves in terms of pricing. There was always the question of which grower the “next Selosse” was going to be in terms of pricing. That question now seems to be answered, with Collin, Bouchard, and a small handful of others.
(NB: I think we’re seeing a bit of the same dynamic in Germany, where you have Keller, which like Selosse has really distanced itself from the pack pricing-wise. The question is, who’s next?)
I will say, this isn’t really accurate; there were a few places that had them on WS as part of their standard process (everything goes on the system and therefore on WS), but most of those were already sold.
Presumably an attempt to create the impression of scarcity and increase prices (the opposite of Keller, mentioned elsewhere in the thread, who could not do much more to keep prices down).
I don’t think it’s accurate to say there was lots of Collin for <100 not long ago. Maybe the Maillons, but I’ve been buying tons of Collin for years, and the Blanc de Blancs were over 100 a while ago.
The prices on Collin haven’t gone up that much, actually. However, he had been quite clear that he wants a lot of his champagne to be drunk at good restaurants.
What does that have to do with listing wines in wine-searcher? Places like EMP have the mags of all the really hard to find stuff because he wants it there. Some retailer putting his wines on wine-searcher won’t change that. Come on.