Bordeaux Wine Prices Spike After 2016 Vintage Declared ‘Best Since 2010’

I remember when the 2005 Bordeaux was being celebrated as the best year for the designer wine since 1982. Having some disposable income, I became an energetic collector — buying up first growth vintages and then storing them, like an animal, in a non climate controlled make shift cellar. After later finding out that my investments were spoiling because I hadn’t stored them properly, I quickly them all and promised to never collect again, until I was outfitted with a proper cellar.

According to experts, the 2016 vintage is the best since 2010. It doesn’t mean all that much, aside from the fact that degenerated wine traders will get to buy up cases of the stuff, for their rich clients, attempting to arb the wine from futures market to actual delivery.

The world of Bordeaux, namely first growth estate wine, is a sordid market, replete with hucksters and counterfeiters trying to rip off eager Chinese investors and collectors. In China, there is an obsession with Latour and Lafite-Rothschild wines. If you do a cursory search, you’ll learn the Chinese are buying up all the vinyards in Bordeaux and have been growing plenty of their own wine at home.

Prices are climbing again,  a long awaited lift after years of a do nothing market.

Barrels of the 2016 vintage will be available for international trade over the next few weeks. What this means, essentially, is that wine trading houses will buy up millions of dollars worth of wine, never take delivery, and merely trade the stuff like stocks. I’m not shitting you.

Prices had peaked in 2011, dropping more than 40% in the next five years, after a horrendous 2012 vintage. I recall watching a documentary of a Chinese woman bidding over a million dollars for some Latour barrels, way above market price, simply because she wanted it. The 2012 vintage broke Bordeaux fags to pieces, but have, unfortunately, survived to bid up 2016 to record levels.

“It has the structure of 2010 but the elegance of 2015, 2009,” according to Veronique Sanders of Chateau Haut Bailly in Pessac-Leognan. “The tannins are very round.”

The reason for the great outcome for the 2016 vintage? Weather.

August temperatures were 5 degrees Celsius more than normal while the month had 30 percent more sunshine than average, according to a study by Laurence Geny and Axel Marchal of the University of Bordeaux. The first 13 days of September were the hottest since 1950, followed by brief rain and then more sun which gave renewed impetus to ripening.

“It’s rare to have such balance,” Philippe Dhalluin of Chateau Mouton Rothschild in Pauillac said. “It’s due to the summer. Maturity came very slowly.”

If you should happen to get your hands on a first growth 2016 Bordeaux, be sure to store it for at least 10 years in a climate controlled cellar, no more than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Other plebeian Bordeueax worth collecting should be priced anywhere from $80-$400 per bottle, left bank preferred. The ‘Grand Cru’ designation is often misinterpreted by normies to mean great wine. That designation was given to Napoleaon’s favorite vineyards during his reign. At the time, those were the best and the Grand Cru label meant something. Since then, many estate went bankrupt and the designation was merely pawned off to new winefags, hoping that the label could garner more business.

I prefer Bordeaux over all other wines. I enjoy the earthiness to them. But they’re way overpriced, just like California wine. I haven’t been drinking much wine of late, as I’ve been more into cocktails made with gin or vodka, but many of the Spaniard or South American wines are just as good. Even Washington and Oregon have wines approaching the level of quality of some of the better Californian wines.

But from an investment standpoint, nothing beats Bordeaux.

NOTE: The only publicly traded wine companies here in the US are $VCO, $THST and $CWGL.

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