Last week we introduced Wine Lister’s new toy, a dynamic guide to the ultimate wines any fine wine lover should consider for their cellar – WL MUST BUY. While the full list is approximately 1,800 recommendations strong, Wine Lister provides some useful segments to help cut into all that data, aside from the usual criteria that can be found in our advanced search function (region, price, colour, score etc).
Wine Lister Indicators are designed to provide suggestions for your specific buying purpose, whether it be to discover something new (Hidden Gems), impress at a dinner party (Buzz Brands), drink well without breaking the bank (Value Picks), or add to your investment portfolio (Investment Staples).
MUST BUYs and Indicators together provide a ready-made source list of the best wines to meet your needs. Below we look at the combination of our MUST BUY algorithm with Investment Staples.
Investment Staples are wines above a certain price, that are long-lived (but not too old), have proven wine price performance or represent good value compared to their peers, and are relatively stable and liquid, with recognition from our network of global fine wine trade members.
There are 18 MUST BUY Investment Staples that score 97 WL points or above. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bordeaux represents almost half of these, with eight MUST BUYs, including two first growths (2016 Mouton, and 2016 Lafite), and 1975 Petrus.
These eight Bordeaux have an average price of £511 per bottle, or just under an eighth of the average price of the three Burgundies to qualify as MUST BUY Investment Staples. However, as investments, some of them may require patience – the prices of those from 2016 have yet to increase any significant amount. By contrast, DRC’s La Tâche 2005, Richebourg 2005, and Comte Liger-Belair La Romanée 2012 are testament to Burgundy’s impressive upward price trajectory, having already achieved three-year CAGR (compound annual growth rates) of 21.8%, 23.4%, and 33.1% respectively.
Outside of Bordeaux and Burgundy, Italy holds court with MUST BUY Investment staples from Bartolo Mascarello, and the indomitable Soldera among others.
You can see the full list of MUST BUY Investment Staples here, or check out some other MUST BUY lists, such as MUST BUY Hidden Gems, or MUST BUY Value Picks.
Don’t forget that the MUST BUY list changes weekly. Revisit MUST BUY Investment Staples again next week to see new entries.
Wine Lister has a new toy.
From our user research over the three years since Wine Lister’s inception, it is clear that, even in the purchase of ultra high-end wines, wine buyers enjoy getting “maximum value”. Whether a bottle of wine costs £50, or £5,000, there is satisfaction in knowing that you have purchased “a good buy” – that the quality of your bottle relative to where (or when) it is from, and how much it costs, is worth every penny you spent.
Enter WL MUST BUY, Wine Lister’s new buy recommendation tool – a data-driven algorithm overlaid with human intelligence, and the answer(s) to this very question.
Wine Lister’s proprietary MUST BUY algorithm picks out wines of a predefined, minimum quality level presenting value within their respective vintages and appellations, and overlays the latest industry intelligence from key players in the global fine wine trade. The Wine Lister team then scours the results to identify must-buy wines based on our own tasting experience and market knowledge. This final list is dynamic, constantly changing as new data comes in and when the team reports back from our frequent travels and tastings.
There are currently just over 1,800 MUST BUYs out of the 30,000 + wine-vintages on Wine Lister. See the chart below for a breakdown of MUST BUYs by region.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Burgundy dominates the MUST BUY list, with more than double the number of MUST BUYs of any other region, taking up 31% of the complete list. Burgundian MUST BUYs range from the well-known, such as Comte Liger-Belair’s La Romanée (2007, 2012, 2013, 2014), or Marquis d’Angerville’s Clos des Ducs (2012, 2015, 2016), through to Hidden Gems such as Stéphane Magnien’s Clos Saint-Denis (2010, 2016), or David Duband’s Clos de la Roche (2013, 2014).
Bordeaux follows, encompassing a wide range from five vintages of Petrus down to two vintages of Château Marsau.
Piedmont, the Rhône and other Italian wines (from the likes of Campania, or Veneto for example) come closely behind in third, fourth, and fifth places. New world MUST BUYs are led by the USA, with 99 wines from California, and six from Oregon, while sparkling wines are represented exclusively by the 60 Champagnes to make the cut.
As well as a wide variety of regions covered, the MUST BUY list spans a huge range of prices – see MUST BUYs by price bracket in the chart below.
Though pricing is taken into account within the algorithm, the element of relativity means that high-priced wines are not necessarily disqualified. The most expensive MUST BUY wine is 2006 Romanée Conti, from the wine’s namesake Domaine, at £14,853 per bottle in-bond. The least expensive, is 2011 Condado de Haza, at £9 per bottle in-bond.
At the end of this year’s Bordeaux en primeur campaign we released our 24 Bordeaux 2018 MUST BUYs – revisit the blog on these here.
Over the coming weeks we will be releasing commentary on top MUST BUYs by segment (region, appellation, colour, price). In the meantime the full list is available for exploration and discovery here. Play to your heart’s content (MUST BUYs are accessible to all on Wine Lister’s new, free site).
Chloe Ashton
September 17, 2019
Wine Lister is excited to announce the arrival of its new consumer site, aimed at supporting fine wine lovers as they navigate the fine wine seas. All users now have unlimited, free access to the world’s most comprehensive fine wine data hub. Start learning how to buy wine like a pro now, or read on to find out more.
WL MUST BUYs
Wine Lister has created its own buy recommendation tool, which combines Wine Lister data with human intelligence (such as the opinion of key members of the global fine wine trade, plus insight from the Wine Lister team’s trips and tastings), to provide a dynamic list of wines any fine wine buyer should consider for their cellar. All MUST BUYs represent high quality, and value within their respective appellations and vintages.
Browse the full MUST BUY list here.
Aggregated, 100-point score
With a focus on quality, the new 100-point Wine Lister Score combines the ratings of five of the world’s most respected wine critics – Jancis Robinson, Antonio Galloni and Neal Martin (Vinous), Bettane+Desseauve, and Jeannie Cho Lee, together with a smaller weighting for the wine’s ageing potential. The score is as objective an indication of wine quality as possible, allowing users to make site-wide comparisons across the 30,000+ wine-vintages on Wine Lister.
See this comparison, or create your own here.
Further analysis tools
Dynamic charts give users the chance to explore wines they might consider buying or selling in more detail.
The Vintage Value Identifier gives users a clear visual of price to quality ratios across vintages of a given wine, applying a score to this measure of relative value. See the example below for Mouton Rothschild: while the 2016 vintage is higher quality than 2014, its accompanying high price means that both the 2016 and 2014 vintages present the same level of value (the joint-highest of all recent back vintages shown)
Wine Lister’s dynamic Vintage Value Identifier chart, showing price vs. quality (left) and Value Pick score (right).
See the chart for Mouton Rothschild, or search for another wine here.
The Price History chart tracks a wine’s price performance over time, relative to its peer group. This can be done at vintage level, helping collectors to see performance history of a specific wine they might own. See below the example of Domaine Hubert Lignier’s Clos de La Roche 2016, whose price growth over the last year is one of the most impressive of all wines on Wine Lister (57.8%).
Hubert Lignier Clos de la Roche 2016’s six-month price performance compared to performance of other Clos de la Roche Grand Cru 2016s
The same dynamic chart can be used at wine level (an average across vintages, with a stronger weighting for more recent vintages), to give a general indication of a wine’s price trajectory, and therefore whether or not the wine in question could be an investment buy. See below an example for Armand Rousseau’s Chambertin, which on average sees steady price growth, and a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 31.8% (though the price has flattened out this year).
Armand Rousseau’s average price performance over two years
On top of these tools, each wine page gives users further information about the wine in question, including whether the wine qualifies for one of Wine Lister’s four Indicators. Haut Brion, as shown in the example below, is a Buzz Brand. See more information on other segments – Hidden Gems, Value Picks, and Investment Staples, or start browsing here.
We hope that you find the new site informative and useful for developing your fine wine collection. Feedback from our users is always welcome – please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or comments here.