Bordeaux gets friendly
The world’s most aloof wine region is trying to lose its stuffy image which is great news for mid-ranking wine writers. Plus affordable claret for paid subscribers.
When I met Anthony Barton from Chateau Leoville-Barton a few years ago, I asked him whether Bordeaux should get to know its customers better: open up to visitors, sell direct, like Californian wineries do. That sort of thing. He looked a bit shocked. It wasn’t quite a Bateman-esque moment but nearly. When he’d regained his composure he said he liked things the way they are, letting merchants deal with customers while he got on with making wine.
That was in 2015 and a lot has changed since then. The world economy is shaky, alcohol consumption is falling and, worst of all, wine lovers have fallen out of love with Bordeaux. One very well-known expert I spoke to last year reckoned that all the wines, including the most expensive ones, were overvalued by at least a third. The 2024 vintage was such a disaster that many wine merchants simply advised their customers not to buy. This would have been unthinkable ten years ago when they would have risked losing their allocation. It will be interesting to see how customers respond to the 2025 vintage. “Bordeaux has never produced such fine wines,” said François-Xavier Maroteaux, President of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux. Yeah, we haven’t heard that one before. At the moment, however, it’s a buyer’s market.
Which is why at the recent Keeling Andrew (the dynamic duo behind Noble Rot) tasting, Cheval Blanc winemaker Pierre-Olivier Clouet (above) was standing by a barrel in a crowded room wearing a French vigneron jacket pouring 2012 and 1999. And not just reluctantly dribbling tiny amounts to those who knew the password - like Haut-Brion at another tasting this spring. They were pouring generous measures, left, right and centre, as if it was Beaujolais. With not a starched tablecloth or red trouser in sight.
I have been writing about wine for 15 years now and until two years ago, my experiences with the first growths of Bordeaux, Latour, Haut-Brion, Mouton, and Lafite plus Cheval Blanc, Ausone and others in St Emilion was limited. Only wine writing’s first growths1 like Jancis Robinson, Jane Anson, Neil Martin etc got to taste these wines. There was simply no need for the press or sommeliers to taste them as demand outstripped supply. There were occasional old tastings of vintages but you had to be pretty high status to be invited. I wasn’t.
But in the past year, I have tasted (almost) all the finest clarets multiple times. And not young vintages either. As I was typing this, an invite dropped into my in-box from Wine Lister inviting me to taste ‘Bordeaux’s Giants in London’. Either I have become much more important, or these legendary names aren’t finding selling their wines quite so easy. I suspect it is a bit of both. The telling name missing from this banquet of Bordeaux is Petrus. It functions much more like a Burgundy in that it is a genuinely rare wine. Production is around 30,000 bottles a year. In contrast Lafite makes over ten times that.
Bordeaux first growths may be wonderful, Lafite is genuinely jaw-dropping, but they are not particularly rare. There’s masses of stock out there slowly maturing in cellars such as Octavian - a former mine and later munitions dump deep beneath the Wiltshire countryside. The problem is nobody is drinking. Most of it was bought for investment. I chatted with a chap this week who used to work for one of the big brokerage firms and he told me that when they were selling wine, they weren’t meant to talk about drinking it. It was strictly for investment. Now as Sara Danese has totted up on her excellent Substack, once you take storage fees and other costs into account there’s no way anyone is making a return on their investment. She writes:
“A £3,426 case of Lafite 2024 is not just a £3,426 purchase. By the time you sell it or drink it, the real cost is closer to £6,500.”
So both merchants and the chateaux themselves now realise that they are going to have to get people to drink the wines or what’s the point? I know, crazy stuff. Berry Bros & Rudd put on a tasting of 2005 first growths and other leading wines last year for private customers and press (and not just the first growths of the media). It was a noisy, jolly affair. One of the ladies from Berry Bros told me that the point was to remind their customers to drink the stuff so that they can buy some more. The wines were as good as you’d expect - Lafite, Palmer and Leoville Las Cases were particular highlights - though some were still a bit young!
Hallgarten, another wine merchant, is putting on events with a similar aim called the Cellar Series. MD Michael Saunders wants “to show how well these wines age and to get people drinking the bloody stuff”. It consists of wines, mainly Bordeaux but also other wines from around the world, that have come straight from the producers. Saunders described it as “a passion project.”
Just as at the Keeling Andrew event, representatives of the chateaux were there chatting to press and sommeliers and, in the evening, customers about the wines. Véronique Dausse from Phelan Segur wants to get people drinking Bordeaux rather than “always ageing a bit more and you have missed the right moment.” The idea was to build a relationship with restaurants as well as private customers who might not know Bordeaux and suggest that they serve the wines by the glass. Upmarket pub The Blue Stoops in London is serving magnums of aged wines at the weekend by the glass.
The investment market now looks like a dead end. Treating a wasting asset as a commodity like gold was always a strange thing to do. One of the big questions is what is going to happen when those ‘iconic’ vintages like 1961 or 1982 are well and truly over the hill. Will people keep paying for a wine that’s probably undrinkable? A few years ago, you would have said yes. Now, I’m not so sure.
Mark Andrew said that Bordeaux “needs to build a link with the wine lover” but he was a little sceptical about some chateau’s attempts to appear more outgoing. “They’re losing their aloofness because it’s a commercial imperative”, he said. Most owners would probably be happier back in the Medoc rather than having to get into the messy business of talking to customers and journalists. In contrast, he thinks Cheval Blanc sits comfortably next to the more organic/ natural-type wines in his portfolio. Though I still couldn’t quite get over seeing it poured quite so generously.
Let’s not get too carried away; these are still luxury wines that most people will never try. Cheval Blanc 2012 is still going to cost you at least £500 a bottle if you can find it. Still it’s nice to see people drinking these rare bottles instead of hoarding them. Especially if I’m invited.
For paid subscribers here are some excellent Bordeaux wines that won’t break the bank.
