NEW 1ers FOR MONTHELIE AND THE MAP OF VOLNAY 1ers IS REDRAWN
Monthelie has 6.73 more hectares rated as premier cru. The Institut National de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO) has just classified the following four as 1er cru: Les Clous (3 ha), Le Clou des Chênes (1,5 ha), Les Barbières (1 ha), Le Clos des Toisières (0,43 ares). The INAO has also extended the area of a fifth premier cru, Les Riottes, by 80 ares, so it now covers 4 hectares.

Volnay has rather a complex patch of 1ers so rather than add more, the plan is to group some together – effective for the 2006 vintage. Four sectors have been joined together: Pitures premier cru has made a successful takeover bid for Chanlin i.e the wines produced in the locality of Chanlin will now be labelled Pitures. The same applies to En L’Ormeau which will now be included under Les Mitans. Le Ronceret will now include Les Aussy, and last, but not least, names of Carelle sous la Chapelle and Carelles-Dessous are to be merged as Carelle-Dessous la Chapelle. Easy!

The way it used to be…

It was a timely mail. After such a long run of taint free wine opening I can report the opening of two consecutive bottles of tainted wine – they just happened to be Jadot’s 99 Clos de Bèze followed by the Chézeaux (Ponsot) 99 Clos St.Denis – I don’t want to think about replacement cost…

Anyway, back to the mail. The arch evangelist of stelvinised burgundy Grégory Patriat of JC Boisset sent me a mail today with 3 articles from the French ‘press’ all published in the last week. I offer you my own ‘loose’ translation of one of them from this original:

Throw out your corkscrews!
The prosecutor condemns cork. The lawyer defends the screwcap.

What is the common denominator between Vaudeveys 2003 from Laroche (Chablis 1er Cru), a Château Louvière 2003 from André Lurton (Pessac-Léognan) and Schlossberg 2004 from Domaine Albert Mann (Riesling, ‘grand cru’)? – agreed three white wines! But there is more… What is the bond that links them to Château Agassac 2004 (Haut-Medoc) and a vintage 2005 Chambertin grand cru from Jean-Claude Boisset? These are certainly both red wines, but still…
I will help you a little. It is not a question of the contents but of the containers. Sealing the bottles, to be exact. The owners of these domaines decided to free themselves from the good old stopper made of cork or rather its occasional taste due to the presence of TCA (trichloroanisol) which would taint 6% (according to the cork producers) with 15% (according to the complainants) of the world’s viticultural production. That is to say an annual loss estimated at 540 million euros for 2004.

For André Lurton; “Moving to the screwcap was my road to Damascus. The domaine’s oenologist – without comment – carried out some tests, and ten years later, we tasted these wines blind. It was like having a photo”. I went searching in the cellar for scewcapped Swiss wines which I had brought back from a trip twenty years earlier – such beautiful freshness, they seemed to have been bottled only six months before, the fruit had been incredibly well preserved”. André Lurton is at a crossroads: he wants to convince the traders of the ‘place de Bordeaux’. “The market which resists most, is France…” It is not about selling “small bottles” or a poor dishwater of a wine that screwcaps should be reserved for, rather the crus – premier and grand.

Another summary comes from Christophe Juarez, director-general of Laroche: “In 2001, we decided to test the six existing techniques. Each year, we tasted – blind – the bottles sealed with synthetic, cork, or screwcap. Very quickly, we proposed a choice to our customers of cork or screwcap – today, 80% of our production is distributed with a screwcap. The market which resists most is France…”

Should we be conservative?

Let’s be clear, the screwcap is an old technique; the first prototypes go back to the 1960’s. Almost no sales in 1960 became 100 million closures twenty years later and 200 million by 1990. Poor quality cork accelerates this movement: 1 billion ‘collars’ in 2005, a figure which could be doubled in 2007. Alcan Packaging Capsules is at the forefront; an American company with a 6 billion dollar turnover, 31,000 employees and 132 sites – including 3 factories in France. The annual rise of the market corresponding to 70% of the production of Bordeaux (800 million collars). Yippee! The company has invested 25 million euros in two years to meet the French demand (+ 30%). The important tasters already crossed a line. The guru Robert Parker in the lead: “I believe”, he says, “that the wines closed with cork will be a minority from here by 2015! The trademark Stelvin is the screwcap of reference, and will become the standard vehicle… the synthetic stoppers do not work”. Better, the surveys show that consumers who have experimented (my God, what an adventure!) soon changed their opinion: the rate of acceptance of the screwcap moved from 41% (in 2003) to 74% (in 2006).

You still have a corkscrew? Throw it away!
Pascal BAUDOIN

As Maximiliano noted in his comment earlier today, it seems that Louis-Michel Liger-Belair rather likes Chile: full text of story here

Today at Decanter.com http://www.decanter.com/specials/104729.html

Before I make any complaints let us be clear: there is a lot of useful/good advice in “Decanter’s wine investment guide in association with Berry Bros. & Rudd” Now I’ve said that let me take one excerpt from this ‘advice’:

Investment grade wine is also an improving asset. As fine wines mature they become more desirable and therefore more valuable. At the same time, as the wine ages and comes into its drinking window, it begins to be consumed making it even more rare, which in turn adds yet more upward pressure on prices.

I suppose that on the positive side, it’s unlikely that those that cannot afford it will lose in this type of investment. In recent years the investment bubbles have been popping all around us, yet here we find sage advice on why we should invest in a product(s) that is trading at an all-time high and where entry prices of the latest vintages are already cutting off an old (drinking) clientelle. It sounds like another bubble – and I’m not talking Champagne!

Few and far between are the people that annually have access to case quantities of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Petrus, Le Pin, de Vogüé etc. – and they don’t need the money – perhaps ‘investors’ might be offered timeshares in a case? Given the non-availability of these ‘blue chip’ cases what will you actually be allowed to invest in then? Overpriced Figeac or overvalued Vosne?

The only way to get a positive return is if you invest in a cellar with your intended return being years of drinking pleasure. If some of your well-chosen bottles appreciate in value – lucky them, lucky you!

On a last note, let us consider one of the cornerstones of investment – impartial advice. Who here is providing the advice for us? A wine magazine and a merchant – I guess there are parallels to brokers – they make money if the prices go up or down! Though on reflection, perhaps I should have bought that case of 1999 Romanée-Conti from Berry Bros a few years back – it was only £25,000…

One thing’s for sure; I’m not alone, and there’s also that saying about ‘pissing into the wind’ too, but having been bitten more than once this year in the ‘allocations game’ I cannot but help the cathartic tap of the keyboard.

I suppose it’s my demographic – basically I’m too democratic – multiple merchants for multiple bottles; maximimum 6-packs, more typically 3 bottles of each – oh and I only (95%) buy burgundy. No merchant racks up (many) ‘thousands’ in sales despite that (probably – we none of us want to look too closely do we?) being the year-end total. I can also be my own worst enemy, feeling slighted? – no problem, send them all back – a salesperson once told me that they had never seen an allocation of DRC (02) refused before – they might yet see it over the 2004 allocation too! I was probably also silly rejecting 6 bottles of Fourrier’s doubtlessly stunning 2005 Clos St.Jacques (amongst several other cuvées in that parcel), simply because I didn’t get 1 measly bottle of Griotte after buying it consistently for years, but we’re all different. Also, don’t get me wrong, I would have rejected the parcel if I’d got no CSJ too – it’s a principle thing, not a Griotte thing.

How do you win in the allocations game? Buying everything the merchant has in every vintage is probably the only way – despite some merchants saying that they have an eye for bringing on younger buyers (for the future) this is frankly BS; given consistent buying (each vintage) you will still be muscled out by the ‘money-players’ in a sought-after vintage – at least if your demographic matches mine.

Wine from Burgundy is finite, and if more people want it, what’s to be done? Allocations will slowly reduce – it’s inevitable – but why should a consistent buyer be told ‘sorry, but there’s nothing for you this year’. It happens and that’s life – I can live with it – though it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Still there’s always wine to buy and I’m sure I won’t be missed.

I had this mail exchange yesterday – I thought it might be good to include it here:

Hi Bill,
In the Côte d’Or, is it true that the most famous wines are known only by their vineyard names (for example, Richebourg)?

Thanks for any help/information you can offer.
All the best,

Exactly right – but there’s a twist, or two!

With a few rare exceptions called Monopoles – which have only a single owner – the most important vineyards, which are called Grand Crus, will have several, sometimes dozens of owners, each with xyz % of the vineyard – sometimes it’s just a couple of rows of vines..

Taking your example of Richebourg;
1. there may be 10 or 11 owners of vines in that vineyard and each one will make wine and put it in a bottle with their own label – so 10 or 11 slightly different Richebourgs each year.
2. some of those owners might also sell grapes or barrels of wine to merchants (the technical name for these buyers is a négociant – or simply a trader) who will (naturally) have their own labels – so maybe we now have a total of (possibly) 20+ slightly different bottles/wines called Richebourg – each year!
An extreme example of this is the Grand Cru called Clos de Vougeot, a 50 hectare vineyard enclosed by walls (a Clos) – 80+ owners who each make wine and/or sell grapes – potentially there are at least 150 different bottlings of Clos de Vougeot every year. Here is the first lesson in Burgundy – usually the name of the producer on the label is as important as the name of the vineyard – both to look for and to avoid – some people are only looking to make money, not a quality wine, others might simply be not very good at making wine!

The interesting thing about vineyard names is that the shorter the name, usually the bigger your credit card bill;

eg. Chambolle-Musigny is a very nice ‘village appellation’ ie the (almost all red) grapes must come from areas designated for their quality close to the village of Chambolle-Musigny. There is a higher quality of wine, called Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru, this is made from even better vineyards in the area of Chambolle-Musigny and each individual vineyard has it’s own name which may or may-not be on the label eg Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cu Les Amoureuses – a lovely name and a lovely wine – of course more than one producer makes it though 😉

Now it’s time to learn that Chambolle-Musigny – the village name – is all about marketing, back in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s (no time to check exactly right now) the village was simply called Chambolle. It added the name of the most important local vineyard (Musigny) to increase its sense of self importance and add a little gloss to those village and 1er Cru wines. There are examples of this happening throughout the Côte d’Or; Gevrey-CHAMBERTIN, Vosne-ROMANÉE, Aloxe-CORTON, Puligny-MONTRACHET etc., etc. So Chambertin, Romanée, Corton and Montrachet are/were examples of these ‘most important’ Grand Cru vineyards – oh, and did I mention expensive? 😉

Hope that’s enough and sorry if I waffled!

Wow. Thanks for the explanation…. So, in a nutshell, you’d want to know who was producing that Richebourg before you put your money down. Is that right?

Diploma achieved with distinction!
The producer is often more important than the vintage – certainly with the Clos de Vougeot example – but most of the owners in Richebourg are worthy producers, though so they should be for $250-1,000 per bottle!
Nice weekend

Cork to blame for premature Burgundy oxidation says Coates
February 21, 2007

Poorly-performing corks are the main culprits behind prematurely aged white Burgundy, says Perry Mason MW.

Writing in a forthcoming feature for Decanter magazine, the Burgundy guru says that changes in the way corks are produced have led to poorer wine isolation and oxidisation. To backup his findings, Mason points to top Chablis producer Raveneau, which covers the cork and bottle neck with sealing wax (and lots of fancy stuff), and is one of the few domaines which did not experience oxidation problems (unless you look here – Ed). […]

I addressed this observation to all the winemakers I met last week and culled the following information:

• Winemaker 1. “Yes I know exactly what you mean – it’s also there in some whites. We see this to a lower extent in many vintages, but I have to admit it’s on a much higher level since we bottled. I’m keeping my eye on it but fully expect it to fade – though for this vintage maybe not entirely – actually, there’s a good chance that this may give a very interesting component to those wines 5 years down the line.”
• Winemaker 2. Him: “Really? No I’m not aware of that”, me: “Well it’s kind of like we are tasting right now…” Hmmm – change of subject…
• Winemaker 3. Okay – to be fair this was a marketing guy: “Really! that’s very interesting, of course today we have much more control because we…”
• Winemaker 4. ” Yes we’ve seen exactly what you describe, thing is, it’s in this cuvée and that cuvée, but not in the others. I checked the analysis and I don’t see any meaningful differences. Just now I’ve no explanation, but given that it came from nowhere I’m hoping it will just be a phase.”

So, no insight, in the main some acceptance and the interesting observation that it could also be in the whites – I haven’t seen this.

That’s all for now.