I’ve bought cellar door and at wholesale in the US for the same vintage. If you factor in a reasonable wholesaler markup (the wholesaler and importer are the same in my market, it is a DI product) it makes sense. The wholesaler needs to make some kind of money. The high prices you see are one of two things: 1) retailers who got the wine grey market marking to either market prices or the price they paid (which was probably higher than normal channels), 2) retailers marking up the wines to make up for the loss leaders they had to sell to even get an allocation.
I don’t understand this talk of gouging. Are lawyers the only people allowed to make a living? If you’re a good, long time customer of a retailer who gets an allocation, you probably still get one at normal mark-up. That would be about $199 for the 2017 Chambolle-Musigny Feusselottes. If you aren’t that kind of good customer (good means you buy broadly and don’t just try to cherry pick) why shouldn’t the retailer price to market?
The “let them eat cake” voice of ITB-ish, the guy who can buy wholesale. If you aren’t ITB and don’t buy $10,000 of wine from a store a year, you don’t deserve good prices. The retail price in the US for 2015 MG grand crus was probably close to 5 times cellar door. It is almost 2 1/2 times what I paid for the wine in a store in Burgundy. Please tell me this is about tariffs.
Look, for me, I am now at an age where I really don’t care. I have enough Burgundy to last me a lifetime, and at my age the really high prices in the US keep me from buying wines I should not be buying. But, I constantly read threads here where people blame the high prices for Burgundy on producers and tariffs where the real cause for high prices in the US is the US trade and people ITB-ish, and your post confirms this point. Why shouldn’t the retailer price to market?
My restaurant gets allocated the wines because we do a lot of business with the portfolio of the wholesaler. We also get Rosenthal allocations because we do a lot of business with the portfolio, the whole portfolio. We do not get Dujac, DRC and others that come to the market because we don’t do business with those whoelsalers. The retail price at normal markup should be around $425 for the 2017 Clos Vougeot.
Why is is “greed” and “gouging” when a retailer sells a wine at market price? In fact, they are probably foolish not to sell cherries at market price. The only reason to do so would be to reward loyalty to good customers. This isn’t always about dollars spent, but how annoying you might be and how broadly you spend those dollars. If you’re someone who only wants to come in and get allocated wines for the lowest prices, why should someone sell to you?
I’m not talking about tariffs at all, just supplying facts about the business. Just because they don’t work out for you doesn’t make them unethical or unfair.
The unfortunate part is 2016 & 2015 vintage of M-G wines arrived into the US market through official, authorized channels, i.e. not Grey Market or Parallel sources, prior to October 2019 when tariffs were imposed. 2017 vintage is the first vintage to be affected by tariffs in US for M-G wines unless, of course, prior releases were re-released into US after October 2019. The pricing for 2016 & 2015 vintages being significantly higher than 2014 vintage was undoubtedly a result of higher, Ex-Cellar prices due to small volumes; extremely high demand; and all tiers of sales channel maximizing profitability. It is merely disappointing when great drinking comes to an end for many long time enthusiasts. No individual, or entity is too blame when all are attempting to earn a living, although I still blame Instagram.
Yes, the prices did change ex-cellar and subsequent wholesale from 2014 to 2015 to 2016, about 10% per year. There was almost no Chambolle-Musigny Feusselottes in 2016. My prices actually stayed stable from 2016 to 2017. I think they must have got in just before the tariffs or the supply chain did me a solid and absorbed the increase.
Instagram is a problem, but I’m happy when growers I know (and like) can sell their wine more easily and for more money even if that means I don’t get everything I want at the prices I used to pay.
FWIW we often have wines like this on our list at or below the market retail price but COVID-19 may wipe us out forever and then Howard will get the last laugh.
Great to hear 2017s may have arrived pre-tariff! I bet they are delicious, too. I have not been keeping up with the arrival, availability, and pricing of wines as much as in the past due to aforementioned reasons. I am thankful for a great run - when so many bottles lay orphan across the US and were readily available at fantastic prices especially pre 2010 vintage - and will continue to adore the bottles cellared now.
Look, you can call it not being foolish, I can call it gouging, but you and I agree on my main point. The really high prices in the US for Mugneret-Gibourg wines are not primarily the result of increases in prices by the domaine or as a result of tariffs. It is the result of large markups by the US trade. I am just stating facts about the business.
As to who is blaming producers and tariffs, look at this thread:
“The pricing for 2016 & 2015 vintages being significantly higher than 2014 vintage was undoubtedly a result of higher, Ex-Cellar prices due to small volumes; extremely high demand; and all tiers of sales channel maximizing profitability. It is merely disappointing when great drinking comes to an end for many long time enthusiasts.”
You tell me, did the domaine go up significantly in price for 2015s over 2014s?
Your discussion of cherry pickers is another red herring that is totally in contrast to the what is stated by posters above:
“Had a decent allocation for quite a long time but couldn’t stomach the price rises in 15.”
“2015 was the beginning of the end for so many long time Consumers.”
Retailers can do whatever they please. I don’t care. I buy most of my wine from two US retailers, and I buy less than half the wine I did a few years ago. But, let us be honest here. AS YOU ADMIT, the price increases in the US do not reflect ex-cellar prices at the domaine. They reflect what you call “pricing to market” by the US trade. Call it whatever you want, but let us agree where the markups are coming from.
Please be honest. Did Mugneret-Gibourg significantly increase ex-cellar prices for the 2015s? I don’t really care about what retailers are doing. I just don’t want to see people blame higher prices on a very nice wine-making family.
There were ex-cellar price increases from 2014 to 2016 about 10% per year and my wholesale prices mirrored those increases. Significant has a different meaning to me so you’ll have to be more explicit about what you mean. There are a lot of nice winemaking families all over France (many of them deeply struggling) and I too like the Mugnerets (who are doing just fine like most folks in Burgundy). The thing is that the wines that come through the official channels doesn’t make it into wine-searcher, for the most part. They go to restaurant wine lists and long term customers of retailers that get an allocation. I think the bottles that are on W-S are re-sold or grey market bottles, so we don’t really know who is pricing to market and and who is just putting a normal mark-up from a more expensive base cost. Just like the stock market isn’t the real economy, wine-searcher and emails from grey market retailers are not the real wine market.
What I object to is your use of the term gouging and implied unethical behavior. You don’t actually know what anyone is really doing. A general point is that I don’t think gouging is possible with this type of good.
The people that whine about price increases are generally the same people who support a lot of grey market retail because they undercut the same wines brought in through official channels in their market. That’s all well and good but the end result is that if you want to take advantage of market inefficiencies for Vilmart Rubis, priced to market Mugneret-Gibourg, Allemand, Gonon, whatever is the other side of that coin.
Once again, you are going off point. Multiple people on this thread have stated that they lost long-term allocations or have seen the price rise substantially (which I take to mean a lot more than 10% per year). Would you agree that people with long-term allocations are generally not cherry pickers? For example, one person stated “I was able to justify purchases (long retail relationships with prices less than full retail helped) through ‘14 for BR, V-R, NSG, Chaignots, snd, believe it or not, even C-M Feusselottes. With ‘15 vintage I could not justify any bottling - prices increased 33-50% - and will arguably never be able to buy another vintage on release.” Would you agree 33-50% is substantially more than 10%. Thus, I think your neverending discussions of cherry-picking is a red herring that has nothing to go with what is actually being discussed. And, as I said, most of my wine comes from two stores and most of my purchases not from those stores are wines they don’t carry or things I get when I go to Burgundy. Even when I go to Burgundy, I typically do not buy wines I can get at a reasonable price at the two stores where I get most of my wines.
Yet, again, my purpose in my posts is to shine a light on where price hikes are coming from and in this case it really isn’t the winery - and in your last post you even confirmed this.
All I know are ex-cellar and wholesale prices for M-G. I don’t know where those people shopped and I don’t know what the prices, in fact were. I don’t know if they were grey market or official channels. However, what I know about it is a lot more than you know about it.
Again, the prices you see on wine-searcher or from grey-marketers are irrelevant to our discussion. Why cherry-picking isn’t a red herring is because it is, in large part, the driving force behind these price increases for certain wines, M-G among them. Collectors will pay a premium for these wines but as a retailer, you don’t get to just buy these wines you have to buy a lot of other stuff. It’s also a natural consequence of grinding down the margins on most other wines. The loss of friction in this marketplace is what everyone wanted and this is what it looks like in real terms.
My point is that it is a complex landscape and when you scream “gouging” you’re incorrect. You’ve failed to even explain what gouging would even mean in this context.
Not sure I understand the vitriol towards “cherry-picking”. Why you should buy wines you don’t want to get wines you do want at somewhat lower prices?
For example; I was offered a number of “allocations” of 17 Lignier that includes a six pack of village wines along with random premier crus with two bottles of msd vv and one bottle of cldr for ~2000.
No thanks. I managed to put together cases of cldr and msd vv for cheaper relative prices then the “allocations” without too much trouble.
As a long time customer of a specific retailer of MG, the only time I saw significant price increases was when the tariffs kicked in. Other than that it was pretty gradual, except for some reason Feuselottes, which shot up.
I’m not sure that vitriol is the right word but I balk at the expectation that a retailer should allow you to buy allocated wines at the lowest possible price and that doing anything other than that is gouging. Lignier seems to be available at normal retail mark-ups, as do most of the Rosenthal portfolio. The only ones that are strange are Fourrier CSJ and Griotte which have a large grey market.
I’m not telling anyone how to shop or what they should buy, what I’m telling folks is that if all you want are cherries (and everyone here is chasing the same three dozen wines) then you should expect to pay market price. The only way around that, and maybe not even then, is to develop a relationship with a retailer who works with the distributor and importer of those wines and see what happens or maybe with some work you can find them, as you have, on the interwebs.
I think there are vast variations in the pricing of the Lignier wines, specfically the MSD VV and CDLR, in my experience. I’ve generally been able to find stuff for low prices with some work and a decent war chest for wine purchases.
I see a lot of Lignier at what would be standard retail or less, which would be about $250 for the 2017 MSD VV and $525 for the CDLR. The MSD-VV has gone up about 10% per year 2014-2017 even from 2016 to 2017, despite the tariff. The CDLR took a sizable jump (20%) between 2014 and 2015 and then stable from 2015 to 2016 and then a 16% jump in 2017, which I’m assuming is mostly tariff.
I think that is important to realize that Rosenthal just cannot buy MSD 1er VV and CdlR from Lignier. They buy across the board and thus need to sell across the board.