The new integration with WineMarketJournal is giving me completely wacked prices. I just bought a bunch of wine for a client and he got pissed off when he saw that they were valued in CT at half of what we paid. I looked each of them up, and the new CT valuation was completely off. Here are two examples:
2005 Château de la Maltroye Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Grandes Ruchottes - CT Value $45 (lowest price in country $123)
1999 Paul Pernot Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet - CT Value $69 (lowest price in country $152)
When CT was integrated with WineBid, the prices were pretty standard … about 15% less than the current low retail. This problem may be because WMJ doesn’t have many wines in it’s database and CT is now using the orig. prices paid by the community instead of current valuation.
Am I the only one that’s noticed this? I tried to search this board and the CT forum, but only found a couple of one-off issues, like champagne that was totally overvalued because of an error. Help!
I’ve noticed it. Prices are real wacky and in the cases I’ve noticed it they are way under the market. I don’t use this feature much so haven’t piped up about it.
Robin, I didn’t notice much of a change, but then again I have a pretty low-value cellar, so that’s no surprise! Eric did forsee issues with this particular feature, but I’m not sure if there’s a ‘fix’ in the works or not.
I posted a slightly similar thread on CT Forum, Eric explained the situation.
WineBid broke off their relationship with Eric very unannounced. No explanation.
Eric had to scramble to get the WMJ built out at a time when he was scrambling to release GS.
He indicated that he is working to try to make the valuation info better, he has seen more than one complaint.
I figure give him some time, it will get sorted out. In the time being, I’m updating my low value bottles with the WB data I saved off before the change.
I suggested to Eric to use wine-searcher, which has data on far more wines, and where I think something like the 25% median-from-the-bottom of the prices for a given wine would be an accurate indication of value. He said that wine-searcher would be impossible to use because their data is not normalized (i.e. provided in a database-like format), which is understandable. He also said that using globalwinestocks.com would be a possibility, however.
re: the Pernot. Why are you buying potentially premoxed white Burgundies for a client? FWIW, $69 is about what I would expect this wine to sell for in light of the oxidation risk. It was around $50-$60 on release, got more expensive in the rising tide that affected everything else, and now should trade at the same significant discount as every other at-risk 1995-2002 white Burgundy.
BTW, Robin, look at Wine Market Journal. You can drill down tot he ACTUAL auction lots that traded and the actual prices. In some cases we might have data transposed, or I have seen quantities (say on a case lot misrepresented). But in this case I suspect Keith is closer to the truth…
I KNEW that someone would give me a hard time for buying White Burg for my client! The reason that I am buying him these wines for him is that he loves White Burgundy. As a consultant, I have done my duty by:
Skipped buying '96 and '02 white burgs completely
Warned my client about all the pre-mox issues, and given him a heads-up that he may have 20-30% oxyidized wines, so that number should be factored into his white burg budget (and that he should always bring back-up bottles when going out)
checking CT and avoiding wines that seem to have a preponderance of premox issues. If you check out the '99 Pernot you will see that there have been no issues with this wine other than some cork stuff
Verified that my client knows to drink post-'96 white burgs while they are young-and-restless. Although he is missing out on the joys of older white burg in the future, we went long on '90 Corton Charlies, which are currently drinking fabulous.
BTW, as a white burghwhore, I follow the same rules for myself and have had few problems. Wish I could say the same about the bottles that my fellow burg-collecting friends have poured for me! (And don’t even start me on the Sauzet issues at the Anguilla event this last summer)
Thanks, Eric! My bad for not being able to find it in the forum … but I did try to find it, honest! I’m glad that the conversation is now here on WBSKRS (sp?) too. I will certainly contact everyone I know at WineBid and try to get them reconsider. I hope that everyone else on this board does, too!
It makes me wonder if I’m getting royally screwed by WB. I’ve stopped bidding on WB since the change. They didn’t seem very concerned by my note but I did get a response:
Thank you for your email. I will share your concerns with management.
I have notes on this wine on CT including one premoxed bottle. I don’t know what the wiki says about it but that may include more info on the ox risk than CT. Buying the wine if you want to roll the dice is fine, but the price you paid should reflect the risk so the $69 figure you quoted is not surprising to me (personally, I probably would not be a buyer above $40 or so - even good bottles of this seemed more like an early drinker and may be in decline).
There are 13 notes posted, and only two bottles are flawed, with one being corkiness and the other note was yours which is ambiguous “seems to teeter over to the begining stages …”. Your other two notes on this wine are over-the-top great and posted after the initial note. Please check Winesearcher and you will see that this wine is $135 - $170. It would be nice to get it for $69 and if you’d like to sell me yours at that price, I’m a buyer!
I don’t think there’s anything ambiguous about my note when you read the whole thing, but the important point is that while people may be asking $135-$170 for the wine it would not be smart to pay $135-$170 for the wine and a FMV of $69 sounds reasonable to me.
Based on 10-out-of-11 glowing reviews (not including cork issues) and many wonderful experiences personally with Pernot’s Grand Crus through the years, I think that is a very smart price for BMB! I am sorry that out of all of the notes you were the only one to get something that “teetered” on pre-mox, but at least your other two experiences with the wine were fabulous and you were able to experience in all it’s loveliness as I have.
I’m Peter Gibson, editor and publisher of Wine Market Journal. We are very honored to be working with Eric LeVine and CellarTracker/GrapeStories to provide them and you with live wine auction trade data. Thanks to all who have posted, subscribed and offered feedback. We appreciate it.
I’m new to this board, so kindly bear with me as I first clarify what the Wine Market Journal does and what it cannot do. The Wine Market Journal tracks every solid lot trade at all the major live auction houses in Europe, Asia and the United States. We do not track mixed lots, because there’s no consistently accurate way to extrapolate each lot member wine’s value relative to the hammer price of the lot as a whole. So, the valuation you see on our site or on CellarTracker is the average price per bottle (in $US) for the wine during the most recent quarter that it traded as a solid lot.
There were three instances cited where wine values seemed low. Allow me to provide details of these particular valuations:
1999 Paul Pernot Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet last traded at Zachy’s in New York City on 12/7/2006. A full case lot of this wine was sold for $830, which includes the buyer’s premium. The works out to $69.17 per bottle.
2005 Château de la Maltroye Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Grandes Ruchottes last traded at Christie’s in Amsterdam on November 1, 2009. Two full-case lots were offered, and both hammered for 368 Euro, which, with the exchange rate at the time, worked out to approximately $546, or $45.50 per bottle.
1985 Dow last traded at Christie’s in New York on April 25, 2009. Two full-case lots were offered: the first one hammered for $384 ($32/bottle) and the second for $360 ($30/bottle), making an average of $31 per bottle.
Moving forward, we are working very hard to capture trade data from internet auction houses. We hope that by integrating these internet auction results we will fill in the gaps where WineBid had data for wines that we don’t. Since WineBid does not make public its results, I will have to contact them to see if they would be willing to provide me with their data. I can and will get data from Spectrum Wine Auctions and Brentwood Wine Company, and I have put in a request to Acker, Merrall & Condit for their data. To my knowledge, Magnum Wines is no longer operating.
In the meantime, we are very serious about the veracity of our data and have a “Report Errors” button at the bottom of every page on our website. We encourage subscribers who discover a questionable result to click this button and let us know exactly which trade looks awry. We’ll do the research to confirm or correct the matter, and will get back to the subscriber with our findings. Help us help the entire wine community: please click this button!
Again, thanks for all the great response to our partnership with CellarTracker and thanks for allowing me the opportunity to respond to these topics.
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