Thoughts on Buying and Consuming BURGUNDY

[Markus_S]

I am not talking arbitrage. My question pertained to whether it makes sense to purchase more than you have tasted, if there is the ability to offload those purchases in the future; there is a cost here of brain damage, capital (opportunity cost of money sunk or different bottles not drunk), let alone the risk of declining wine prices (this feels a little like housing where folks think future vintage pricing only go up!). However, waiting 3YRs to decide I liked the Hubert Lignier 2015 VV enough to buy some may preclude me from having bought any at all. In 3-10YRs time, if I keep tasting at the rate I am… I imagine I would not need to be doing this at all, because my tastes/knowledge base will be more evolved.

They don’t call Burgundy a “minefield” for nothing!

[Subu_Ramachandran]

Just very shortly some of my experiences:

• you will not understand Burgundy if you only buy/drink one level (e.g. Village or Grand Cru), you should try and follow all or most … and from different Villages
• you will not understand Burgundy if you only buy/drink TOP vintages, you should taste all vintages (and some have the advantage reaching maturity earlier)
• you will not understand Burgundy if you only buy/drink the top (most expensive/reknowned) producers, you should also try less famous (but good) producers
• you will not understand Burgundy if you only buy/drink young (immature) wines, taste also wines at their apogee (15-30+ years)
• you will not understand Burgundy if you only buy/drink one style (modern/traditional etc.)

Burgundy is like Quantum Mechanics. To quote Feynman:

“If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you don’t understand Quantum Mechanics.”

[Greg_K]

I’ve had some older Lignier 1er cru VV - you’ll be just fine.

[Howard_Cooper]

How about buying a couple of bottles of Bourgogne Rouge by Arlaud or Mercury by Faiveley or a village wine by either and open the bottles. See if you can find a 2012 or 2014 so that the wine has a bit of age to it but still are reflective of what the wineries are doing today. On both wineries, if you go back too many years, you start getting the wines of the fathers rather than of the current people and I think in both cases the current family members running things are better. I have a very close friend who is friends with Cyprien Arlaud and while he has liked wines from the domaine for a number of years, he is particularly high on the more recent vintages.

I would not load up too much on any one producer right now until you know what you like more, but sure buy some bottles of the grand crus you are interested in. Maybe mix up the grand crus a bit to try their wines from different villages. Faiveley is both a major land owner and a negociant. You probably will reduce your risk if you buy a wine from a vineyard where they own the vines. A good retailer should be able to tell you which is which.

As for vintages, for the Grand Crus, I think 2014 and 2015 are lower risk than are 2013s. I have not tasted too many 2013s, but the 2013s I have had tend to be tannic, which makes it less clear as to drinking windows.

[Shan_A]

Thanks Howard. I’ve been picking up a few Bourgogne Rouge or village for 2015 and 2016, including those by Arlaud, Faiveley, Duroche, Meo, C. Dugat, Camus and 1-2 others. In retrospect, I should have looked for 2012s… but frankly it was difficult to get some 2015s and 2016s given I am new to the retail game, so I ended up buying 2015-16s when I saw them… vs. being smarter and trying to seek out 2012s. This is probably what I regret most in order-of-operations… should have bought a horizontal of Bourgognes as a first step to tasting. Re Arlaud and Faiveley, I have done exactly that (aided/informed by folks on the WB board who have posted recently and in past). And lastly, I have picked up a few other horizontals… e.g. LSG, Gouge vs. Chevillon, others. Need to set up some more WB events…

[Howard_Cooper]

Don’t skip Hudelot-Noellat.

[Shan_A]

Don’t skip Hudelot-Noellat.

Am going to hit them at Paulee. But maybe should pick up a 2016 Bourgogne now to add to the future horizontal.

[Maxwell_A]

Howard, any critics you’ve found more or less reliable over the years? I know the most important critic is yourself and what you taste, but if you have no choice but to go from someone else’s advice, who would you pay most attention to?
I guess the best thing to do is to follow the critic that has the palate and preferences closest to yours, but still, no one will line up exactly with yours and all critics have differing levels of objectivity and subjectivity in their reviews.

I think John Gilman and Allen Meadows both do an excellent job, but are very different. John is extremely subjective, favoring the more traditional style he (and I) like and downgrading wines made in a more modern style. Allen is much more objective, which seems on surface to be more correct, but in some ways makes it harder to be able to tell which wines you actually will like. While I like both a lot, do note that neither saw the problem with 2004 Burgundies and, at least John, still does not.

On this board, there are a number of excellent posters on Burgundy. Do not ignore them. A great thread is Consolidated off-the-beaten-path Burgundy TNs - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers However, there also are several supposed experts on Burgundy on this board who seem to drink Burgundy from more of a Bordeaux lens. They always tend to favor bigger and richer over more seductive. Beware of their recommendations unless your palate matches up with theirs more than mine. Note, that I know a couple of the people I am thinking about here and the recommendations they make and the points they give are their real beliefs but when we taste together I often like different wines than they do. Not denigrating the persons, just disagreeing with their preferences.

Good to know. I subscribe to both Gilman and Meadows and have found pretty much what you’ve described. My tastes do align a lot with Gilman and yours it looks like. Meadows being more objective does make things trickier for me sometimes and I try to take into account the way he is describing the style of the wine especially. I do plan on delving through the Burgundy related posts here so thank you for the heads up on people here being good resources but having different style preferences.

[Maxwell_A]

As mentioned before, a lot comes down to your budget and your available space. If you had unlimited funds, why not buy a bunch of the great producers’ great wines, and just for breadth of scope buy the better premier crus they make as well. And buy them in great, good, and average vintages to see how they differ? Of course, many of us don’t have unlimited funds, and must therefore make some decisions. Those decisions become more difficult if you have $1000 a month to sink into your Burgundy cellar than if you had $10,000 or $100,000.

I am not saying that you cannot build an excellent Burgundy cellar with more limited funds, one that you will enjoy and learn from over your lifetime. But the great producers we all know about have gotten prohibitively expensive, so your question about whether you should buy the “classics” just comes down to whether you can afford them, and how much the experience of drinking a fabulous bottle of wine is worth to you. Would you pay $1,000 per bottle? $5,000?

Personally I love great Burgundy, but I have come to the conclusion that no wine experience is worth that much to me. You can get seduced into overspending when you read the sublime language of the reviewers’ tasting notes. Yes, a $100,000 stereo sounds better than a $10,000 stereo, but by how much?

I was lucky enough to put together my Burgundy cellar back when the great wines by the great producers were expensive but not absurd (though not early enough for them to be inexpensive or even reasonable), and the great producers have that reputation for a reason…which is why there is no reason for someone with an unlimited budget to deny themselves. Others of us need to decide how we spend our wine dollars. I would never sell my Rousseau’s now, regardless of their market price, but I would never pay market price for them now…big difference.

Although how I bought Burgundy over the years worked for me in accumulating a good cellar, I would not recommend it. I did not have the opportunity to taste much before buying, unlike others on these boards, so I bought based on reviews that I trusted, being Tanzer starting in about the 1988-1990 vintages, and adding Burghound and Gilman later. Based on consensus I bought widely, usually in 3 bottle increments, and bought from a wide range of well-regarded producers, generally cherry picking their best grand crus and best premier crus. Some might say that my purchases were skewed in some way, and lacked overall context, but it allowed me to cellar some great wines, and over time I did find what appealed to me stylistically. One mistake I made was not to taste each wine upon or near purchase. If I had bought in 4’s I could have tasted one early, put the rest away for some years, and learned more over time. The wines I wanted were too expensive for me to buy in 6-12 bottle quantities, for the most part, but following them over time would have been a great learning experience. All along I aimed for the top producers, except for DRC which i felt was too expensive, while keeping my eyes open for the newer up and coming ones, and that I do not regret. Some people talk about buying in every vintage, or buying in all but the lousiest vintages, but again it comes down to allocation of funds. I am glad I bought heavily in 1993, 1999, 2005, 2010, and fairly well in 1996, 2001, and 2002, and sparingly and very selectively in 1995, and 1998, and little to none in 1997 and 2003, and I am happy to have totally bypassed 2004 and 2011. In my opinion, Burgundy is expensive, even in lessor vintages, and although there is educational value in experiencing them all, again it comes down to allocation of limited funds. And there is always great fun in backfilling as you discover that less heralded vintages you may have paid less attention to are coming along nicely. In my opinion, if you must allocate resources, there is nothing wrong in being selective and going for quality of producer and of vintage and of wines in their stable, as long as you provide yourself some context of experience and are open to figuring out which styles you like and which you don’t.

Lastly, I would say that a case of excellent premier crus is worth more than the same amount of money spent on a single bottle that is supposed to be “ethereal”, and despite the seductive language of the critics’ tasting notes, that ethereal experience is elusive and rare despite how much money you spend per bottle chasing it. And the more you spend per bottle, and the harder you have to work to procure it, and the longer you cherish it in your cellar, the loftier your expectations. Burgundy, and maybe all wine, is like baseball…if you bat .300 in a bottle living up to your expectations, you are really doing well. So only spend as much on a bottle as you are willing to lose.

This was extremely helpful. What I hoped for in this post was just what you wrote, a look into the perspective of someone who has had lots of experience making these decisions on what to buy and when it’s worth it and when it’s not. Of course this will be different for everyone depending on the variables you mentioned, but it helps to hear what other people have done and how it worked for them. The point about deciding how much a great wine experience, or the possibility of one is worth is very thought provoking. Also, the example of the case of premier crus vs the single “ethereal” bottle was a very enlightening. I do find that the critics flowery language push me in the direction of going for that one bottle, hoping for an amazing experience, when maybe I should instead go for a few bottles of the really good bottle that’ll still be great. I don’t have so much experience tasting the difference in quality between aged grand cru and premier cru and comparing it to their prices, so I must go based on what the critics have said and how I know grand cru bottles should age. I do sometimes wonder how the price difference between them correlates with the quality of the drinking experience.
Robert, thank you so much again for the valuable insights!

[Robert_Grenley]

I am not talking arbitrage. My question pertained to whether it makes sense to purchase more than you have tasted, if there is the ability to offload those purchases in the future; there is a cost here of brain damage, capital (opportunity cost of money sunk or different bottles not drunk), let alone the risk of declining wine prices (this feels a little like housing where folks think future vintage pricing only go up!). However, waiting 3YRs to decide I liked the Hubert Lignier 2015 VV enough to buy some may preclude me from having bought any at all. In 3-10YRs time, if I keep tasting at the rate I am… I imagine I would not need to be doing this at all, because my tastes/knowledge base will be more evolved.

I would suggest buying every wine produced in Burgundy in every vintage, wait 15 years, and sell everything you don’t like.

[Shan_A]

I would suggest buying every wine produced in Burgundy in every vintage, wait 15 years, and sell everything you don’t like.

That is taking the concept to the extreme, but taking concepts to the extreme is a valid test of underlying logic. In this case, I think the statement is logical… just impractical. There must be at least one whale out there somewhere, doing exactly this?

[Robert_Grenley]

For 30 years I have been buying Burgundy, at least 90% of which I never tasted before I bought it. I did not have the ability to travel to Burgundy every year before buying, nor the access to any kind of industry tastings, etc. I also thought it worthwhile to purchase the wines mainly as prearrivals, both for better pricing and just to be able to access wines that were likely to be in greater demand and may not be available to buy later except at much higher orices if at all. I therefore relied upon the reviews as mentioned earlier…early on only Tanzer, later adding the others mentioned. I also backfilled vintages as wines occasionally became available at decent pricing. Later on I was able to taste some examples of a vintage to get a better idea of whether the vintage was to my liking, but of course still well over 90% of what I bought was bought untasted.

Buying after tasting is always better if you have the ability to do so, but there are not many of us who do…unless you really limit your purchases to wines that are more readily available…and in Burgundy, depending upon your market area, that can be VERY limiting.

So remember, I am not saying anything against buying wines that you have not tasted…in Burgundy that can be a very expensive and, as mentioned, limiting endeavor depending upon your access and location and resources. Nor anything against the thought that wines you don’t like years later can be sold. I am just saying that the idea of trading in Burgundy like one would trade stocks, or hoping to buy Burgundy and sell later to capture profits that can be reinvested in Burgundy, treating Burgundy like investment capital, strikes me as somewhat bizarre.

[Markus_S]

… I am just saying that the idea of trading in Burgundy like one would trade stocks, or hoping to buy Burgundy and sell later to capture profits that can be reinvested in Burgundy, treating Burgundy like investment capital, strikes me as somewhat bizarre.

I think a lot of what was considered bizarre is now the new normal, everywhere.

I think my percentage of buying Burgundy without tasting is closer to 100%, not counting producers that I’ve had in the past and have a feel for the wines.

[Robert_Grenley]

Yeah, me too. I was being generous when I said at least 90%. I think it closer to 99.9% for me too.

[Oliver_V]

My approach to Burgundy is as follows:

1. Buy a cheap mixed lot at auction of a bunch of producers I’ve never heard of.
2. Taste them and find the best one
3. Look for further examples from that producer to taste across their range
4. Find out their cheapest bottling is $300 a bottle
5. Cry in a corner for a bit

[MitchTallan]

My thoughts on buying and consuming Burgundy is that you can save yourself a lot of heartache and regret if you buy Cru Bojo instead. I am dead serious. I have bought a fair amount of Burgs over the years and continue to cellar quite a bit. In terms of sheer drinking pleasure, the cost to experience ratio favors Cru Bojo significantly. The flavor profiles are similar but different, sure. And yes, that one in fifty orgasmic blow-your-mind experience will only come from Burgundy. But at such a high cost! It aint worth it. A very wise man, Bertrand Russell I believe said, "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

[Howard_Cooper]

Yeah, me too. I was being generous when I said at least 90%. I think it closer to 99.9% for me too.

What is the percentage of Burgundies you are buying from producers you have never tasted before. Sure, most of us have to buy wines we have not tasted. But, if you like a producer from other vintages, doesn’t that help your odds a great deal? If not, would you consider it useful to buy and open a less expensive bottle from a producer whose Burgundies you have not tasted before (say a Bourgogne rouge) before committing serious money to buying a bunch of grand crus from the producer?

[Howard_Cooper]

My thoughts on buying and consuming Burgundy is that you can save yourself a lot of heartache and regret if you buy Cru Bojo instead. I am dead serious. I have bought a fair amount of Burgs over the years and continue to cellar quite a bit. In terms of sheer drinking pleasure, the cost to experience ratio favors Cru Bojo significantly. The flavor profiles are similar but different, sure. And yes, that one in fifty orgasmic blow-your-mind experience will only come from Burgundy. But at such a high cost! It aint worth it. A very wise man, Bertrand Russell I believe said, "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

Everyone has their own taste preferences but I would rather have a Bourgogne Rouge from a producer like Hudelot-Noellat or Henri Jouan than almost all Cru Beaujolais I have had. You do not have to agree with me, but I don’t think Beaujolais (including Cru Beaujolais) and Burgundy taste that much alike.

[MitchTallan]

Yes Howard, Gamay and pinot noir are different. Who woulda thunk? But when pinot does not hit the mark, it is flacid or green or leathery/flat. It has to be spot-on to shine. I am drinking a $30 bottle of '16 Sunier Fleurie right now and it is all you could want-vibrant, intriguing, crisp but fruity, no leather, no lack of verve (which is what I mean by “flacid”), it is 100% fun. It is similar to Burgundy but different. And for the price, better. IMHO of course.

[Greg_K]

Yes Howard, Gamay and pinot noir are different. Who woulda thunk? But when pinot does not hit the mark, it is flacid or green or leathery/flat. It has to be spot-on to shine. I am drinking a $30 bottle of '16 Sunier Fleurie right now and it is all you could want-vibrant, intriguing, crisp but fruity, no leather, no lack of verve (which is what I mean by “flacid”), it is 100% fun. It is similar to Burgundy but different. And for the price, better. IMHO of course.

I think this is a purely personal perspective. To me, drinking Bojo instead of burgundy to scratch a similar itch would be no different than drinking Condrieu instead of Cornas because they’re close to each other.