Burgundy wine sales slump due to UK squeeze…
Burgundy wine has become the latest casualty of the financial crisis, with producers bemoaning a slump in sales to the UK.

Telegraph.co.uk

Rather underlining that point and market move is the 25% discounting of 2006 Burgundies announced by one well-known importer into the US. Some might try to spin the message that it is due to the renewed strength of the dollar, but the strengthening is only 8% in the last calendar year (0.7 to 0.76 €/$) same as when they will have been negotiating 2006 prices, and exactly where it was 2 years ago. The discount is because the wines are not selling…

And from today’s Liv-ex report on fine wine:

Around 20%, sometimes more, has been knocked off the peak prices of Bordeaux’s leading labels – a result of both their high liquidity (they are the easiest wines to sell) and also, as reported in previous surveys, the fact their prices have increased the most in recent years

DRC, Krug and Grange overtake some of the cream of Bordeaux in the Fine Wine Top 100 Power List. Interesting reading…

Australian white burgundy that is…

Now what about Domaine de la Romanée-Conti? You don’t see too much critique of the domaine as people are probably too worried that they might ‘lose’ their allocations of wine, but I think I will (eventually) raise a valid point here.
I took delivery of a modest 4 bottles of DRC 05 last week. I’m not sure why I decidied to open the package, maybe it was just to see if the labels were solid gold to reflect market pricing – the answer was yes, and no, one of the bottles was indeed gold – a gold-topped bottle of Montrachet, the thing is I didn’t order one…

The Montrachet was mistakenly in the package in place of a more modest bottle of Echézeaux. Now it was time to test the system! I could have said nothing, but that’s not my style, so I sent a mail saying that my Echézeaux was missing, but as they now (theoretically) note the bottle number at the side of the customer name (more on this later), my bottle should still be in their store – I didn’t mention the ‘gold-top’ in my cellar. It took a couple of days, but the merchant came back and said, “We have checked everything and found out, that you got one bottle of Montrachet (bottle Nr. 1044) instead of the Echézeaux”. They went on to say that if I sent back ‘my’ ‘gold-top’ I could have my Echézeaux!

I have no problem with the above, it’s how it should have been, but I find it interesting that the domaine’s ‘big brother’ approach to sales seems (at least in part!) to work – i.e. the referencing of bottles to their purchaser. The domaine’s clear intention is to try and restrict resale to get the bottles into the hands of drinkers rather than traders i.e. by threatening (maybe ‘implying’ is a better choice of word) not to sell again to people who are found to offload their wines for profit within weeks of purchase. I personally feel – to some extent – that this is a good thing, but I also see a sense of irony here: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has a pricing level based significantly on the history of tradeability for the wines. If the wines were not so tradeable, then the domaine’s pricing might be only 30-40% of current pricing so ultimately they would be less financially successful…

Rather than (as intended) smoking my keyboard with prose for next weekend’s scheduled Autumn issue of the Burgundy Report, I seem to have spent a whole day trying to catch up on what’s gone on over the last 3 weeks. First I particularly like the post on the Berry Bros weblog that commemorates their 1909 price-list whilst launching the 2009 version.

I didn’t check the 2009 numbers, but I assume they’re higher! Interesting that (below) Romanée-Conti is not so expensive relative to the other (latent) grand crus – I wonder if they still have some of that Chambertain, Clos St.Jacques in the cellar – it’s not impossible – as it sounds rather interesting…

So what else have I spotted(?) Well there’s a nice piece on the 2008 vintage from David Clark here. Note that his perspective is one of a ‘central Côte de Nuits’ producer so as valuable a data-point as it is, it’s only a small part of the 2008 story – I’ll expand next weekend in the new issue.

So what else do we have? Well, amongst others, I’m sure you will need a wine investment strategy! – though I’m not sure it’s appropriate for the scented ‘Bitch Goddess Of Grapes‘, despite good performance in New Zealand, particularly as fine wine prices hit new lows – perhaps the Leroy ‘brand‘ is an antidote(?) but I doubt it given the offer on 1993 Leroys that hit my inbox last week! Clearly wine karma needs improving for most if not all people!

While I was away there was the Hospices de Beaune auction. That was bad timing on my part as I was in possession of two lovely invitations to visit and taste old wines – you can’t win them all I suppose. Anthony Hanson’s description of the wines as coming from a ‘Burgundy lover’s vintage’ – well he would wouldn’t he(?) – didn’t help very much, despite them being very pretty wines, but Maison Albert Bichot certainly put their money where their mouth is, and didn’t Albéric look dapper!

It was nice to see someone talking about real Beaujolais whilst I was away – not just once, but twice – so far I’ve avoided the marketing efforts of the ‘nouveau-ers’. Even more surprising is the public discovery of two new regions in burgundy – the Mâconnais and Chalonaise!

I think that’s enough tenuous linking for 1 day…