The only wines that was tough to find was Lafleur. I have been offered Cheval at the same price as Lafite.
There is no scarcity. You should be able to negotiate first tranch prices a few years later. And first tranch prices are already inflated.
Such a racket.
Really? And you know this how?
You have personal experience over the past 5 or 10 years so that you know this to be so?
if buyers in the industry had your knowledge and certainty they would not need to purchase 2.5 years in advance.
Please could you share how you know this with such certainty.
This is the 2018 vintage we are discussing, do you think what you are stating as a fact, do you think that is true for 2017, '16, '15?
I’m curious how you have arrived at this wisdom that most of us who do this for a living do not have this knowledge which you have.
Not sure, William, why your post comes across as so irascible. Except for a few wines, there is plenty of Bordeaux around, and most are going for close to opening prices. You have only to look at your own problems with 2009/2010 to see the truth of that. And with three to four great vintages since 2014, the market is pretty well flooded with high scoring Bordeaux. Can you tell us why you feel there is a scarcity of top Bordeaux?
As for experience over some years, let’s take another great vintage, 2005. I can buy pretty much what I want for close to opening prices. Putting my money into bonds afforded a better return than Lafite 2005. I keep talking about the greed of the top estates. The nonsense began with the 2005 vintage, and never righted itself. And historically, the market does not absorb two good vintages well, let alone the half dozen currently available.
There are many reasons why the industry buy in advance, and currently the chance to make money is way down the list. They mainly do it now to protect the allocations which they have built up over decades. They fear withdrawing from the market will end up with them losing those carefully acquired allocations, so they keep buying buying the overpriced vintages, sit on them for years and sell badly either for little profit or none at all. Low interest rates allow this model to continue; it will not indefinitely. So no, there is no shortage of Bordeaux in the market place.
The names I mentioned are sold out via the négociants where I buy, do not know anything about the situation in the U.S.A. to be honest…
Most Bordeaux is not scarce, some Bordeaux are scarce…2018 Durfort-Vivens are just 7.000 bottles for instance. Production of 2018 Palmer and 2018 Pontet Canet also significantly down due to mildew. Les Carmes Haut Brion has a small production, same as La Conseillante. Just to give some perspective…
When you spend twenty posts complaining about pricing and the fact that there’s a glut of Bordeaux from great vintages available and cases upon cases stuck in your own warehouse , you really have no right to jump down anyone’s throat, especially mine, given that we’ve been largely on the same page in thisiscussion.
The high production volume and staged/limited release to buoy prices and pretend that there’s scarcity is about as well known a ploy as anything in wine. Are you going to try to make an argument that high end Bordeaux is scarce? Even Carmes is still available, and the highly touted Rauzan, and the production-is-down Pontet Canet. It’s all out there if you look. Please - would love to hear it. Galloni and Martin and multiple other critics have griped about the pricing disconnect between the Bordelaise and the rest of the market. Multiple posts in this forum have suggested that the wines are priced too high and first tranche reload offers are going out because no one sold through. I’ll let you go back and read them yourself if you happened to miss them.
There has been tons of 2014, 2015 and 2016 Bordeaux at multiple online auction sites in the past few weeks within 5-8% of first tranch pricing (if I remember correctly). I will let you do your own searching - feel free to prove me wrong.
And I have not heard a soul suggest to me that 2018 is somehow a more illustrious vintage than either 2015 or 2016. In fact, many here prefer 2014 for classicism and price. So saying “but it’s 2018!” Is just more BS hype that we are being fed. I already found 2016 prices to be offensive and only bought what I bought as birth year wine for my son.
And while I can’t speak to your business, from the perspective of a low-level consumer, EP is useless, outdated and broken. We all know that the samples fed to critics during the EP tastings are highly manipulated and may bear little resemblance to what’s in the bottle. Who knows what you’re buying EP except a name and a track record. With Parker gone and the Asian market receding a bit, what is driving prices to the current heights? I can invest the same money and make more than the difference between the EP and eventual retail price, and I can taste, or read reviews of, the finished wine before making purchasing decisions.
A total racket. System is broken.
I was in total agreement until the last paragraph. There was a time when we were concerned about samples, particularly when the samples were from barrels which had done their malo in barrel, as opposed to the rest of the harvest. This was done openly, the reason given that it showed the wines potential more accurately than normal malo.
Nowadays, samples are pretty representative, and although some may mess around with better samples, I can’t personally think of any chateau that is doing it. We used the UGC tasting supplemented by other wines to really check our primeur tasting notes and scores, and I always found the wines in bottle pretty accurately mirrored my EP notes.
Are you basing your comments on any chateau in particular?
Mark,
I am not basing on any particular Chateau. There have been multiple articles, starting perhaps with the Decanter article in 2013, and one that i cant find but which was linked on Terroirist a few months ago suggesting the practice was still commonplace, if less useful post-Parker.
I find barrel tasting to be difficult and unpleasant, personally, and I am not a part of that scene. But I rely on critics, just like most of us who don’t have the privilege of going to EP tastings.
Didn’t John Gilman give up on EP because of the difficulty with barrel tasting evaluations? I have to say, I place far more credence on the overall quality of the vintage and the track-record of the Chateaux than I do on critics doing mass barrel tastings, and doling out 96-99 point scores like candy, and with such certitude. Truth is what’s in the bottle, and even young it is hard to asses.
I have nothing really to add to this discussion (I was never a customer for the top tier bdx and am out of the futures game altogether) but I do want to say I have found the exchange fascinating to read.
I appreciate the folks sharing their experiences and thinking.
I’ve no desire to offend anyone so I wish to withdraw from continuing this discussion.
I do sincerely appreciate the folks who have genuinely contributed their view and experiences.
I will depart this conversation with one thought, the wine industry is no different than any other profession.
30 - 40 years back I was in the Entertainment industry in New York and Los Angles. The view from the outside is quite
different than when you work day to day within - Record labels, club owners, Record Co. presidents, concert promoters, publicist, the representatives of talent and talent. My god the day to day experiences and life is shocking.
And every day I would hear or read of people on the outside who were certain they were familiar with the core inner workings.
I imagine if I went for treatment at some facility such as - the Hand and Upper Extremity Institute of Greater Washington and then felt I could speak as a professional following my experiences, a Doctor of that hospital would find my comments perhaps poorly informed or lacking complete knowledge that someone who has gone through medical school for years and then who worked at that facility - would with the depth of training and experience - have information that would allow him to shine a brighter and more accurate light on the details.
I realize there is no way I will get away - if I am honest - as my original intent was to express myself and share as an insider a point of view.
Not realizing that just like the bands trying to break into the business who were certain they understood all of the concerns of a Record label…
Or management co.
I realize now it is a mistake for me to continue to share these kind of issues in this forum - and that realizing my honesty now will possibly provoke anger.
My original intent was to share and express and with the other comments to be helpful that my position and experiences allow. Same as when I made my original comments about Jon Fox . However I was viciously attacked for sharing my insights into Jon Fox. I was met with so much rage of people certain of their point of view.
I sincerely appreciate the respectful manner folks have responded in this dialog and I am trying to do the same and withdraw - with my explanation.
I mean no one harm or criticism. I believe your views are your experience and I’m happy to leave it at that.
Aloha
William
Mr. Country Lawyer Esq., what do “hard asses” have to do with this discussion? ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
William, I found your posts very interesting and thought provoking, and I really did not perceive (as a bystander) any attacks by or on you – just some disagreements. I’d be disappointed if you felt that you couldn’t contribute in the future
that is extremely kind.
I tend to be over sensitive and do not wish to offend anyone…
I really appreciate your comments.
this Wine Berserker is the entire extent of my experience on Social media
aside from perhaps one comment every year praising or condemning a business on YELP…
this is not for me…
but really - that is very kind of you and thank you - I genuinely appreciate your thoughtful comment
Noah,
As I said, I heard rumors that chateaux were playing games, but never experienced it apart from the malo in barrels I mentioned before.
I did en primeur from 1994 through 2012, and I got better the longer I did them. You are right that they are not easy, but only about half the time are they unpleasant. Yes, you can be thrown by bad samples, unrepresentative wines, weather conditions, what you did the night before, what part of the day you taste the wines etc. But I know that when I tasted I tried to be absolutely focused on what I was tasting, and overall, the results when I retasted wines were very consistent with my en primeur notes. I would add though that the en primeur campaign is made all the more difficult by being done March/April. Many of the wines were less stable than they should have been having just finished malo. The right time to taste would be June, when the wines were properly stable.
I also helped put together the final assemblage for a couple of chateaux. (I was not paid for this, and never reviewed the wines). Fascinating experience, done over multiple days, when you check your previous notes. Certainly seeing it from the winemaker viewpoint made me understand far better the elements that make up a wine, and how they harmonize.
If I have to ‘splain it…
It’s a Cuban thing. We like ass.
You need to meet Princess Vitarah.