First growths and grands crus have become status markers for the supremely wealthy. But outstanding value is still available – if you know where to look
There was a time, and it’s really not all that long ago, when the finest wines available to humanity were just about within reach of ordinary mortals. Sure, Bordeaux’s first growths and the great grand crus of Burgundy have always been more expensive than other bottles. But not that much more. Not never-in-your-wildest-dreams, four-or-five-figures-a-bottle more. Indeed, for those prepared to put in a little time and research, there was even a way of buying the very best at little or no expense.
Canny wine collectors always used to count on a calculus that involved buying two cases of 12 bottles: one for drinking, and one to sell to fund your drinking. Wait long enough, and you might even turn a small profit. Over the past few years, however, that genteel practice has, in the words of wine investment guru Ella Lister of fine-wine buying and investment guide wine-lister.com, become “the stuff of myth and legend”. The problem comes down to the mechanics of a system known as en primeur – effectively a kind of futures trading where customers commit to paying up front for a wine on the strength of tasting an unfinished sample, receiving the bottled wine a couple of years later. With only a small portion of the production made available in this way, the idea is that the en primeur system brings much-needed cash flow to the producer as they wait for their wines to mature for sale, while offering the consumer a discount for paying in advance. Since the hyped Bordeaux vintages of 2009 and 2010, the gap between en primeur and post-release prices has narrowed, and many en primeur customers are, Lister says, making vanishingly small returns or, worse, ending up with a depreciating asset on their hands.
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