Posted from CellarTracker
Thnx Jeremy, got of few of these in my Rayas allocation this year. A lovely wine for sure and true to its DNA
Killing me…:.
I got nothing!
Love this stuff.
I just got my yearly allotment last month. Jeremy’s tasting takes the words right out of my mouth (in the non Meat Loaf sense). This is again how they are labeling the Vacqueyras. The AOC labelings of their other wines are also less region specific than they used to be. Given that 2015 was hardly a year with dilution problems, I’m wondering whether the AOC ruling on the Vacqueyras having too light a color is going to be a permanent thing. AOCs have made such stupid rulings before.
Fascinating, wasn’t aware of this.
So in some vintages there’s a CdR and also a CdR Grand Reserve that takes the place of an otherwise labeled Vacqueyras?
Hi Jonathon, thanks for solving a small mystery for me.
I had noticed the labels changes but had no clue what was going on.
This year here in NZ we received the 2020 regular des Tours and the 2015 des Tours Grand Reserve.
Last year when I got the 2014 it was also labeled as Grand Reserve but two years ago the 2013 is labeled as Vacqueyras.
I had thought the relabeling of the Vacqueyras was just going to be the 14. But, yes, both it and the 15 were labeled Grande Reserve. Someone on another thread said this happened in 98, but I bought the 98 Vacqueras, so labeled, in the US back when you could get a bottle for $20 instead of $300 or whatever they cost in the US now.
I am starting to suspect that this may be the case moving forward as the result of some extended exasperation with getting AOC authorization, but I have no evidence for that so it is pure speculation on my part.
Brodie, have the des Tours become as prohibitively expensive in NZ as they are in the US. For a wine that sells for ca 32 Euros at the domaine, an expected mark up in the US would be twice or at the outside 3 times that in dollars, not 10 times, as it is here.
Jonathon, the prices have definitely been steadily creeping up. This year, the trade prices from importer to retailers were US$60 for the 2020 Ch des Tours and US$105 for the 2015 Ch des Tours Grande Reserve. I got 4 bottles and my price after retailer margin was US$130.
For reference the trade price for the 2013 Ch Rayas was U$400 this year.
Overall New Zealand gets very small volumes which the importer divides up amongst four retailers and a restaurant. The wines are heavily allocated and basically never show up on the shelves or online. There is one retailer who prices the wines to international market pricing and his stock does not sell very quickly and mostly goes to offshore buyers.
I buy from the other 3 retailers to get the volumes I am after.
