Good evening all- hope everyone is well. As with last year, dispensing with the financial play by play and focusing on a more general discussion. I wish I could be watching live, but at a long weekend show and so just now watched the Der Ring results, with Mosel and Nahe to come over the next two days.
If anyone is there live at any of the events, we all welcome your feedback. I will try to get results summaries posted next week as time allows unless Rodrigo is kind enough to come back and post his excellent summaries.
I just finished watching excerpts of the Der Ring auction and, as anticipated with regret, the auctions were overall softer than last year. Some reputedly excellent Pinot Noirs went for very low prices, and I was really shocked by the low prices for some of the sweet wines. I am regretting not putting in some bids for the BA and TBAs, but happy to be bringing home a nice array of bottles and magnums of the Pinots.
For the Mosel and Nahe- some key auctions to watch,
Mosel - Egon Muller - This year they are offering the 2023s which were absent from last year’s 2024 auction. In the 2023 auction, the 2022 Kabinett topped the 500 Euro mark while the most recent Spatlese results were distinctly behind but still quite high. Given the significant pullback in auction results in Asia these last few months, I am anticipating a pretty serious drop with these wines as well- or at least with the Kabinett and Spatlese. They had already come incredibly far in the past decade and were immune to the strong pullbacks for wineries like Schaefer when the 2022s were offered after some records for 2021- and so even if prices drop 25-35% they are still going to be very strong results from a long term perspective. Let’s see what happens, but I expect Kabinett to hammer at a number beginning with 3 or 4, and for the Spatlese to come in about 30% less. This is the year I hope to again be getting a few of these to bring home.
Nahe - Emrich Schonleber Auf der Lay - This will be a great lesson in scarcity value. Since the estate began selling the wine in bottle and magnum with the 2020 vintage, there have usually been around 600 bottles available. This year there are just 180. The wine has hammered in the 200-215 range the past two vintage, but even with generally lower demand, a supply of 180 is bound to have quite an impact. I would expect the final price to be 400+.
Mosel - Willi Schaefer- I have only tried one 2024 Schaefer so far, and it was absolutely dazzling. While the Kabinett and Spatlese remain at the upper end compared to peers in the auctions, they have fallen far from the record prices set for the 2021 vintage. This year I expect they will come back up a bit. The supplies are pretty good, but the general commercial release was very small- and if that one Kabinett I tried was a good bellwether for the rest of the portfolio, I think these will buck the downward trend I am expecting overall.
Nahe - Keller - The last time Keller offered a Pradikat Schubertslay was the 2021 Kabinett in the 2022 Auction which fetched a jaw-dropping 1,200 Euro per bottle - up strongly from 850 Euro and 700 Euro for the 2020 and 2019 vintages, respectively, in the previous two auctions. My perception is that demand for Keller is not as Asia-centric as is the case for Muller, and so I would not expect soft Asia demand to have as much impact on the price. But this year we are presented with a Spatlese- and it will be interesting to see how it fares as compared to its Kabinett brethren. In particular I am thinking on how in recent auctions the occasional Muller Spatlese offering is now selling for less than Kabinett. We shall see, but I expect this one to be more resistant to market softening than just about anything else in the sale.
Good luck to everyone! Tell us what you won when it is all over!
The Kabi hammered a bit higher than I expected at €69. My low bid was €67, so narrowly missed a big haul.
Shocked to see the Spat go for crazy low €108. I didn’t bid for enough anticipating it would be closer to €150+. That’s significantly lower than even the fabulous 2019 at €123. Didn’t see that one coming after it got 5* from Johannes Selbach.
But happy I ended up with a few of each regardless. Those are the only two wines I bid on this year.
My bids came up a few EUR short on each of the few things I bid on yesterday. With exchange and tariffs, was willing to buy at sharp prices only. Glad for Alex Loersch that his wines went above my bids. His Spat was the one in particular I’d have loved to snag a bargain on, but so it goes.
Today, my bids on Haag Kabi and Spat had room to spare, ditto for Willi Kabi. My bid for Dr. H Kabi hit the hammer right on the nose. Very happy to get all of those. A few others were short, mostly well short, but those were mostly wines where I was somewhat lowballing my bids, willing to snag a bargain but otherwise willing to sit out.
All of my bids were on the double-digit priced bottles, I don’t play at 100+.
Even with tariffs, glad I stocked up on the WS Kabinett this vintage. Also got a fair number of the AJ Adam Ausleses - always a magical wine . Per reviews it seems to be very special indeed. I feel for the producers, importers and retailers, but for consumers this reset is very welcome.
Addendum - Among the wines I bought, the Haag 750s both hammered for less than last year, the Willi Kabi for slightly more, and Dr. H is new to the VDP so no comparison from last year.
I’m participating in the Nahe auctions. My comissioner said prices seem soft, except for the Keller lots. Like they said, “you never know with Keller”. I’ll be appearing on a video they asked me to record, I think they told me around lot N6
Here is a complete accounting of Mosel results. Grateful for the posting of the VomBoden page. It has most results, which cut down greatly on the time needed for me to review videos to make a complete accounting.
Much softer than I expected- I felt pretty daring predicting a price starting with a 3, hence my qualifying that by saying 3 or 4.
Your Kabinett price is accurate in states where DI is going on, but down here and in many states where the wines go through the full 3 tier system, 2023 Kabinett is retailing for about $300 and the Spatlese for about $400.
That is going to create a very difficult situation in what surely has already been a bit of a sensitive matter. Like many collectors here, I do not usually mind paying a bit of a premium for certain things because of the long term value of a strong relationship with retailers and a distribution system that makes good sense in many respects. But in recent years distribution of Muller has shrunk dramatically because the premium has become too dear. Even at cost, the wines can be difficult to move despite being among the very best of the region. This is not going to help that situation.
I will comment more generally after the Nahe results- but one thing that strikes me is that these results- not just in absolute terms but when you look at the relative performance of wines against each other- are very much the sort of outcomes we would see in the 2014 and prior vintages. Taking into account a bit of inflation since the 2014s, these 2024s (and some 2023s) are a strong return to the way things used to be- as if the runup that began in earnest in the late 2010s and culminated with the 2021s had never happened.
Will do Nahe coverage tonight. Keller is definitely one to watch closely today - if anyone is going to be fully or partially immune to the correction we have seen so far, it will be them.
I just now had a quick peek at the auction before heading out to the show today, and it looks like Auf der Lay went for 241 Euro. That is a nice jump from 215 last year- but considering supplies were 1/3 of usual and the very high MFW score - that is another really strong correction.
But happily I got my usual 4 bottles. This is why I pyramid bid- I put in high bids for 2 and 3 bottle allocations to be safe, but still did 4 at a lower number just in case.
Good luck today everyone! I will post Nahe results late tonight when I get home.
