Burgundy why bother ?

I pose the question because a glance at WSPro reveals that much of the Burgundy I have in my cellar ,is worth so much money that it would be insane to drink it. Rousseau Chambertin 99 now at £1500 a bottle and even Leflaive Chevalier 2008 at £400!!
Sure I did not pay these prices but I am still very reluctant to open a bottle now when I have so much fine Bordeaux and NRhone at much better value for money . When you take into account the pre mox risk with white and red Burgundy you wonder who is mad enough to buy at current prices ?
Personally,I rarely drink Burgundy now at home although do still at our regular fine wine lunches . Think if prices continue to rise ,even at these lunches the wine will become rare,at least at GC level
 
Last edited:
It is rather a mystery, Keith. I remember turning down Rousseau Chambertin 99 at £450 for 6 thinking it rather expensive, which was foolish of me.
There is a link between the cost of a wine and the pleasure it might provide but it is a very indirect one, and there are of course other choices than Rousseau or Leflaive which are at least as exciting. Discovering them is very much the business of the wine enthusiast, and it involves abandoning the assumption that burgundy is only about its rarest grand crus, magnificent as they can be. If you have a cellarful of such wines it makes sense to sell many of them and buy other things.
 
It is certainly clear that Wine Searcher drives Burgundy prices higher and higher. While in France, it was quite easy to find wines at 20 to 70% cheaper than on Wine Searcher, the small shops have tended to catch up with WS "secondary" prices.
However, these prices are asking prices for a very limited market (a fraction of very small productions in Burgundy) and the wines can sit still for a while.
As I was discussing with a French merchant about (for a looked after producer) his attractive price, he said to me "I know, these prices are crazy...but I want to sell, so I have more reasonable prices".
Anyway, you are right, even these "discounted" prices have become very hard to swallow...
 
Only as a sunk cost that I could bring myself to open Rousseau Chambertin or Beze. Hard to open these at market prices. I have a soft spot for Ruchottes Chambertin, so still open these every few months but my stocks are depleting fast!
 
Last edited:
Clearly a bit of a troll post, but I'll bite!
I agree with Odd.
Once wines hit my cellar, they are already amortised - or I shouldn't have bought them in the first place.
If I get a shit-storm over a tax bill I might think of selling something - or the vintage turns a direction I can't support (eg 2004) - to date those are my only reasons for having sold something.
I buy nothing with the concept of selling later and consider it lucky that I began buying with 93, because realistically, the 05 grand crus were the last that I could afford in any number. Good luck to all those that bought after me I say, but for people who can only see cash in their bottles, I think I'm (spiritually) in a much nicer place than them, and will continue to drink nicer wine than them - they lost twice :)
 
Happily I do Alex, and I probably have enough stashed away from earlier vintages to last me. Incidentally, and possibly contrary to the expectations of some, one place where these really expensive wines are opened and drunk, and by people who know what they are doing and understand what the wines are all about, is Hong Kong.
 
Luckily, I bought way more than I can ever drink over the last 20 years or so but prices this EP season may finally end my burgundy buying. I do occasionally feel like something has reached a price level where it's gotten silly (e.g. 99 Engel grands echezeaux a few years ago) but I plan to drink all the good stuff.
 
I can see Keith's point. Okay, I'm not in his shoes, but I do have bottles worth a few hundred quid or more, which I purchased long ago.

As with Bill, I buy to drink and one day the Rousseau, etc will be gone because I won't sell anything (hopefully it will be gone long before I need to pay for daycare too). My wife did suggest selling the Chave reds seven or eight years ago, but I'm sure she enjoyed drinking it as much as I did.

Where I do have a problem is the cost of wine today. Call me soft, but with all the people sleeping rough round here, and the food banks, I do feel uncomfortable spending a fortune on wine.

Okay, I'm not that soft/philanthropic because I do spend at least £150-200 a month on wine, despite having plenty of it, and I do dine out at least once a week where I often buy more. But I've noticed a severe drop off in purchasing bottles over £50 for home consumption, and it's not purely down to living mainly off a pension.
 
We talked about this yesterday (see the drinking thread) - how we 15-20 years ago could afford to buy these wines while establishing a family, paying down mortgages and supporting children, while we today - with a vastly increased budget for discretionary spending, couldn't be bothered anymore....

I think it partly boils down to value - are these wines (I'm not talking Rosseau specifically here) worth the prices they command? I don't think so in many cases, and don't want to be part of the silliness. So sad to see wine go the way of being status symbols.
 
True again Odd, the wines are not currently worth their asking prices - some wines. But that has two facets, my estimation of worth, and a long overdue market correction - though the latter won't realistically affect the top 2% of wines...
 
it was not intended to be a troll Bill as I genuinely cannot open a Rousseau Chambertin 90,95 or 99 because of the value now. AND I have been offered fairly close to the secondary market value by a contact in HK
Frankly,the wine is just not worth the money no matter what I paid for it in the past .
So I shall sell most and drink mainly Bordeaux and NRhone.
Burgundy somehow has lost its magic for me,in any event . Too many buggered bottles
 
Buggered bottles of red, Keith?
I have never considered selling a wine that I have brought home, no matter what its notional value, but I feel no guilt about selling things in storage. I still have far too much anyway, most particularly because I now find that if I drink wine, in particular really good wine, too often then it becomes a purely intellectual pleasure, and I wish it to be a predominantly sensual one.
 
Not sure I understand you Keith. I did a bit of data checking and looked at Lafite Rothschild 2000 price on wine searcher and it comes out at over 1000 £ a bottle in bond while the same search with Chambertin Rousseau 1999 gives me 1350£ in bond.
Given that Lafite produces up to 50000-100000 bottles a year while Chambertin Rousseau production must amount to 1000-5000 bottles (I am guessing) a year and that both wines are trophy wines for millionaires, I am not sure I see your point about Bordeaux being cheap and friendly while Burg is horrendously priced and cannot be drunk without feeling ashamed...
Disclaimer: never had any of both wines so cannot claim whether one is better or worse

Of course, at all levels, like everybody else, I am frustrated that Burgundy has become so expensive even en primeur. I have moved on from Grivot (the Vosnes 1er 2004 were 28€ in bond!...) and have found a few producers around 50€ for Vosne 1er for 2015... still a circa 100% increase...

Anyway, at my age, I buy less and less...

Other issue is Bordeaux now at 14 degrees (some Rhone at 15?) and even some Burgundies 2015 at this high level.
 
Last edited:
We talked about this yesterday (see the drinking thread) - how we 15-20 years ago could afford to buy these wines while establishing a family, paying down mortgages and supporting children, while we today - with a vastly increased budget for discretionary spending, couldn't be bothered anymore....

Well, I think it was Jancis Robinson who said how strange it was that, at a time when the difference in quality between top wines and more moderate wines has never been lower the price differential has never been higher. If I was lucky enough to have a £1,500 bottle of wine sitting around I'd happily sell it and buy case of £100 bottles instead.
 
Yes indeed Tom. A MW friend of mine maintains there are more pre moxed reds than whites Not in my experience but I do respect his opinion
I've heard this theory for a good ten years now and have been looking out for it but apart from cork failure(which seems more common now that TCA is less common, so I've had quite a few that have failed) I simply don't see it-though a mixed case of Beaune Tuvilains 10 and 11 from Herve Murat may be an exception, I wonder if it was made in far too natural a way.
 
On a rather less grand scale (than Keith) the rising prices have killed wine for me. I can't (or won't) replace the wines in the cellar that have rocketed in price. I feel uncomfortable drinking such valuable wines. Yet these are my favourite regions and so the fun has gone. While I can find super idiosyncratic flavours at fair prices, the days of 'fine' wine are over.

Fortunately I love beer and there's an industry stepping in to fill the gap.
 
I'm like many here in being priced-out of the bits of the Burgundy market I have dabbled in, and like others I too have plenty of the stuff to tide me over.

For me a £30 bottle will always be a £30 bottle - I'm just not economically competent enough to think about them any other way, whatever the market says.

I'm busy making sure the Piedmont section of my cellar is equally well-covered while there are still great wines for reasonable prices. It won't last...
 
Well, I think it was Jancis Robinson who said how strange it was that, at a time when the difference in quality between top wines and more moderate wines has never been lower the price differential has never been higher. If I was lucky enough to have a £1,500 bottle of wine sitting around I'd happily sell it and buy case of £100 bottles instead.
I'm with Keith & Barry.

Every wine in my cellar was originally purchased for eventual drinking. But as prices have got sillier and sillier, I no longer feel comfortable opening a bottle of GC worth several hundred pounds today, except on special occasions. So I now regard the most valuable part of the cellar as part of my pension.

But I have made some expensive mistakes along the way. When Rousseau Beze 1990 reached the dizzy heights of GBP 2000 a case, I sold mine. I have recently seen that Farr are selling a case for GBP 24,000.

So my solution has been exactly as Barry proposes. I have been buying up village wines from the best vintages and the best growers, because I still love red burgundy, and even today there is some lovely stuff around at well under GBP 100 a bottle. I have recently had a 99 bourgogne rouge which was a clear 93 pointer, and we opened a 95 Vosne lieu dit at an offline a year ago which was definitely a 95 pointer although not yet even fully ready. Admittedly these were from truly outstanding growers (Anne Gros and Leroy), but they only cost me well under GBP 40 on purchase.

I will in due course, and when I retire (if I ever do), sell much of my GC stock. The only risk is that the world goes haywire before I try to sell it, and the market collapses .......
 
Last edited:
Top