Wine Lister has produced its second in-depth regional study, this time on Tuscany – a many-faceted fine wine region that is fast-building its position on the global fine wine stage. We will be revealing some of the findings on the blog in the next few weeks, but the full 35-page report is available for subscribers on the Analysis page.
The study focuses on 50 top Tuscan wines, which we have compared below with 50 wines from Piedmont, Bordeaux, Burgundy, and California. Using the three categories that comprise an overall Wine Lister score – Quality, Brand, and Economics – we can put the region’s global positioning in context.
Although Tuscany comes fourth overall – just ahead of Piedmont – its Quality score is bettered only by Burgundy, scoring 883 points to Burgundy’s 917. Quality scores are derived from Wine Lister’s partner critics’ scores and a wine’s ageing potential, and Tuscany’s excellence in this category may be one explanation for its rising appeal.
Tuscany’s Brand score is the fourth best of the group, suggesting that after a handful of top brands such as the Super Tuscans, the rest of the top 50 do not confer the same level of prestige as wines in Bordeaux, Burgundy, or even California. Meanwhile, the region’s commercial clout is the weakest of the group, scoring one point less than Piedmont in the Economics category.
In upcoming posts, we will delve into the trade’s view on Tuscany’s foremost appellations and which are the wines to watch.
“Which producers will see the largest gain in brand recognition in the next two years?” That was one of the questions Wine Lister asked its Founding Members, in its latest survey of 49 of the world’s key wine trade players, between them representing well over one third of global fine wine revenues.
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This morning sees the ex-château release of Latour 2005, along with second wine, Les Forts de Latour 2011. We have put together two factsheets bringing together all the most important information about these two formidable wines, both approaching their drinking windows.
The 2005 Grand Vin has the third-highest Wine Lister Quality score of the last three decades, and looks reasonable value next to the 2009 and 2010:
The 2011 vintage of Château Latour’s second wine, Les Forts de Latour, is an economic powerhouse, with impressive price growth since its release:
You can download the slides here: Wine Lister Factsheet Latour 2005 / Wine Lister Factsheet Les Forts de Latour 2011
Measuring the number of searches on the world’s most visited wine site, Wine-Searcher, provides a unique insight into an individual wine’s overall popularity. Following on from last week’s blog on wine searches we have aggregated two years’ worth of this data at region level, to put popularity in perspective and map fine wine market trends over time.
Above, we have taken the 50 most searched-for wines from the leading fine wine regions in France and Italy and tracked their changes in search frequency over two years. Despite natural peaks and troughs – including large spikes for Champagne during the festive season – the last six months show an acceleration in searches for wines of every region.
Several wine regions have seen searches more than double in the last two years, with Tuscany, Piedmont and Burgundy as the stand-out performers. Meanwhile, Bordeaux – the most searched-for region in real terms – has struggled to engage new audiences at the same rate as its counterparts. For more on Tuscany’s rising global clout, see our in-depth regional study, available to subscribers on the Analysis page.
To view the popularity of individual wines, simply search for your wine of choice on Wine Lister and explore the Brand score sub-criteria.
The latest Wine-Searcher search frequency data is in, allowing us to update our Brand scores with changes to each wine’s popularity (one of the two criteria contributing to the Wine Lister Brand score, the other being a wine’s presence in the world’s top restaurants).
This month we’ve taken a look at the biggest movers in terms of incremental search increases (rather than percentage changes), comparing average monthly searches in the three-month period up to the end of January with those up to the end of February. While no region dominates, Bordeaux boasts two wines in the month’s top five: Ausone and Calon Ségur. It may be no coincidence that the latter attracted considerable attention in February: the heart adorning its label ensures that Calon Ségur regularly finds a place in St Valentine’s Day wine lists.
Bordeaux is not the only region whose top wines are on the rise. Two of the leading lights from Spain and California also make this month’s top five. In February, Screaming Eagle featured in Sotheby’s first Finest and Rarest New York wine auction of 2017 – a sale that brought $3.3 million. Vega Sicilia Unico has also made headlines recently with the long-awaited release of its 2005 in December, scored 18/20 by our partner critic Jancis Robinson. With an impressive overall score of 971/1000 from Wine Lister, Vega Sicilia Unico is the table’s highest-scoring wine.
Gaining most in terms of online searches is Emmanuel Rouget Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Cros Parantoux, which has seen average monthly searches increase from 3,114 to 5,121. In January, the wines changed US importer for the first time in 30 years.
The latest development on wine-lister.com enables you to see the four most interesting nuggets of information about more than 2,000 of the world’s finest wines at a single glance. Simply search for and click on the wine you want to explore, such as Yquem or Ornellaia, and scroll down to Data Driven Analytics.
An algorithm sifts through Wine Lister’s vast database, asking 37 different types of question for each wine in order to identify its most remarkable facts. These are split into four groups: first production data, and then each of the three Wine Lister rating categories – Quality, Brand, and Economics.
The range of questions asked produces different data nuggets for each wine. For example, the Quality analytics for Château d’Yquem references its longevity, whereas for Tenuta dell’Ornellaia the result relates to the average critics’ score.
Explore this feature at wine-lister.com (and look up the most remarkable facts on one of your favourite wines, or see if you can find the top three most sought-after wines, for example).
Trading volumes are a key measure of a wine’s success in the marketplace. To evaluate these, Wine Lister uses figures collated by Wine Market Journal from sales at the world’s major auction houses, looking at the total number of bottles sold of the top five vintages traded for each wine over the past four quarters.
A change in trading volumes impacts a wine’s Economics score. The chart below pulls out the biggest gainers in the last quarter of 2016, comparing auction data from the 12 months leading up to the end of Q3 2016 to data for the calendar year.
Wines from a variety of regions saw their Economics scores boosted by auction sales in the final quarter of 2016, suggesting a healthy broadening of interest in addition to the usual suspects.
Gaining most was Artadi Rioja Viñas de Gain, which saw trading volumes from January-December 2016 increase tenfold. Its Economics score remains relatively low, at 420/1000.
Australia and the Loire also made an appearance. Domaine Huet Cuvée Constance enjoys a very strong Economics score of 796/1000, and also excels in terms of Quality and Brand, leaving it with a very strong overall Wine Lister rating of 856/1000.
Burgundy is still on the rise at auction, and was the only region to feature twice, with Maison Louis Jadot Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru Lavaux Saint-Jacques and Domaine Hudelot-Noëllat Chambolle-Musigny.
Wouldn’t it be brilliant if there was a tool to help you work out which wines represent the best value for money? Well look no further; our Value Pick indicator algorithm puts that knowledge at your fingertips.
Analysing the very latest price data and reviews from our partner critics, Wine Lister’s algorithm awards Value Pick status to those wines that achieve the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus allowing the finest wines a look-in). Crucially, Value Picks are awarded at vintage not wine level.
Here are Wine Lister’s newest Value Picks:
Wine Lister’s prices per bottle are provided by our price partner, Wine Owners, whose own proprietary algorithms process millions of rows of incoming price data from Wine-Searcher to calculate a more realistic Market Level price – the price at which a wine is likely to find a ready buyer – based on market supply and spread models. Wine Owners believe lower retail prices will sell first, hence their price may be below the Wine-Searcher average in some instances. As you can see, using this method, each of the new Value Picks is priced at £25 or under, with the cheapest costing just £11 (excluding tax).
Furthermore, other than William Fèvre Chablis (64/100), all of these wines have an average critic score of 74-77/100 on Wine Lister’s rebased, calibrated scale (where any score above the average of 40-60/100 is strong). Underlining their appellations’ reputation for excellent value, two sweet white Bordeaux feature in the list: Coutet Premier Cru 2007, from Barsac, and Rayne-Vigneau Premier Cru 2013, from Sauternes. Each earning an average critic score of 77 and with plenty of life still in them, these represent remarkable value for money.
Yesterday saw the release of Pol Roger 2008. Heralded as “admirably long” and “really exciting” by Wine Lister’s partner critic Jancis Robinson, here we look at all the key data:
You can download the slide here: wine-lister-factsheet-pol-roger-2008
Yesterday saw the release of the latest vintage of Sassicaia, the challenging 2014 vintage. None of our partner critics has yet tasted scored the wine in bottle, but Vinous’s Antonio Galloni found the wine “promising” from barrel (read more here).
Wine Lister’s CEO, Ella Lister, recently attended a 44-vintage tasting of Sassicaia in Rome, beginning with its first commercial release, 1968. “This once-in-a-lifetime tasting proved the amazing consistency of the wines’ quality as well as their extraordinary ageing capacity”, she reported.
In the context of this release, we explore the whole gamut of vital facts about Sassicaia, a formidable wine regardless of the vintage:
You can download the slide here: wine-lister-factsheet-sassicaia-2014