I couldn’t agree more about Ente. Until recently, his Bourgogne Chardonnay was trading around $40 on release. The $199 being asked for the 2015 is downright insulting, especially considering Burghound’s review.
“BH 86-89 (6/2017): (from a mix of vines in Meursault between 15 and 30 years of age.) Here too the expressive nose if agreeably fresh with its attractively layered nose of pear, apple and white floral wisps. There is both excellent volume and punch to the delicious medium weight flavors that terminate in a lemon-tinged finale. This is a very fine effort in the context of its level and worth checking out. Drink 2020+. Outstanding Top Value!”
It’s the three tier system gone awry as each finger in the pie has gotten greedy. I’m told ex-cellar prices are still a small fraction of what US pricing is. What the market bears. If the stock market tanks and dollar remains strong, we may see a small wine price correction.
Exactly. Claude Dugat’s Charmes-Chambertin is 80 EUR from the Domaine. And when it sells for 650 USD in the USA, it is not the Dugat family that is profiting.
The bubble is sustainable for grands crus and the top premiers crus, but a correction may be coming for the lower appellations, given that there is volume available in 2017 and 2018.
Not sure about this. When Bordeaux went up with the opening of the Chinese market, there was a time when the first growths were six times plus (and more with Lafite) than the super seconds. A slight correction resulted in the multiple going down to around four times, still a historical high, but that seems to suggest that there was slightly more downward pressure on the top wines.
Not surprising, as it is pretty hard to open a $1000 bottle daily or even weekly.
But people actually seem to open bottles of Burgundy. I see many more people drinking DRC and d’Auvenay than Lafite and Latour. Of course, that’s just anecdotal, but my sense is that there are still enough drinkers to offset the speculators, given the tiny quantities.
I once asked Aubert Du Villaine why Romane Conti is so expensive and he said, regardless of what he charged out the door, the market price would wind up the same- basic supply and demand.
You can buy a certain cult Macon producer for $15 a bottle at his vignoble. He came to America and was pissed that the same bottle was selling for $75, so he is now severely limiting export.
My cousin’s prices have exploded but I do not see where they are living any better off than 10 years ago.
It makes me wonder in which cases the producer themselves decided their wines were worth more than they were getting (for example, if Armand Ente decided his wines should be commanding Coche prices) vs. whether somewhere down the distribution line someone decided to jack the prices up…whether the quality of the wines justified it or not. Even in these later days of Burgundy being expensive, I used to buy Boisson-Vadot wines as a good deal. All of a sudden the Meursaukt Grand Charrons jumps up from about $45 to $145.
With Tremblay, I was just curious where along the line she leapfrogged others like Dujac and the price of a premier cru jumped to $500…what is the price at the domaine, where along distribution the prices were jacked up, whether in the USA the wines if sold by your retailer friend at normal markup through normal distribution channels is actually $150 a bottle and the $500 price I am seeing is grey market speculation or retailer gauging, etc. just makes me wonder when we see a quick quadrupling of prices in general.
By the way, I am in no way saying that the producers I have mentioned are not making excellent or even great wines. I am just curious about how quickly a producer becomes an almost “overnight sensation” in terms of their pricing jumping up by a factor of 4-5.
The answer is different in every instance. Ente, for example, is sold via an agent, Vinifera, and the agent controls the pricing. They don’t even sell direct to private clients any more. Tremblay is relatively expensive from the domaine but nowhere near what you are seeing in the USA. Producers such as Claude Dugat, Raveneau and Ramonet are actively cheap. Coche from the Domaine is 51 for Meursault AOC, 57 for Meursault Rougeots, 112 for Perrieres and 205 for Corton-Charlemagne.
If you go to Chablis, you can find Raveneau at cheap prices in a couple of restaurants and the same with Coche in the Cotes D’Or.
This summer, we found Ramonet and Mugneret Gibourg at way below US prices at a couple of stores in Burgundy. However, they limit the number the number of bottles one can buy or require you to buy other wines. For example, at the Caveau de Chassagne Montrachet, I could buy whites from Ramonet for excellent prices because I bought reds from Ramonet, also at great prices.
My recollection from an August visit was that it was more than a 20% increase - I don’t recall the figure, but I was really surprised, and 20% wouldn’t surprise me as the domaine is really tiny.
Just a single data point but I believe representative.
The retail price I have paid for the Dujac Clos de la Roche has gone up about 35% in the last five years. For the 2015 and 2016 my prices were between US$250 and US$270. Only minuscule amounts of the Dujac GC come into my local market but because the retailers can buy direct from the Domaine, the prices are very good. Of course allocations and bottle quantities are very small.
It is not the domaines who are driving the price increases, it is the secondary market.
Here in WA state the retailers can’t import and must go through licensed distributors. Dujac grand crus…at $250-270 I would buy all I could. At $800-1,000 I pass. I am just glad I bought all I could in years past and am pretty much done buying new vintages at this point.
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. I have to get my behind to Burgundy. It’s been too long.