Stretching from the Atlantic coast in the West to Pouilly-sur-Loire in the East, the Loire Valley extends half way across France, and is home to some of the country’s great white wines. Reflecting the diversity of the region, the Loire’s top five whites comprise two dry Sauvignon Blancs, two sweet Chenin Blancs, and a dry Chenin Blanc. However, whilst these wines are diverse in style, they share several key characteristics – they are all produced biodynamically, in small quantities, and by cult winemakers.
Leading the way are two Pouilly-Fumés from Domaine Didier Dagueneau – Silex and Pur Sang. One of Wine Lister’s Buzz Brands, Silex achieves excellent scores in each of Wine Lister’s three categories. However, it enjoys particularly strong brand recognition, present in 39% of the world’s best restaurants and receiving on average over 4,000 searches each month on Wine-Searcher. Pur Sang achieves its best score in the Economics category, thanks to strong price performance – with a three year CAGR of 14% and a six month growth rate of 13%.
Moving West to Vouvray, Domaine Huet Cuvée Constance comes next. Produced only in great vintages, this botrytised Chenin Blanc has the best Quality score of the group (981), and the 14th highest of all white wines on Wine Lister.
Continuing further down the valley, Clos Rougeard Brézé is in fourth place. The most expensive wine of the group, it has a remarkable three year CAGR of 33%, confirming that it is a wine on a strong upward trajectory. The fifth wine is Nicolas Joly’s Coulée de Serrant. Produced in the most westerly appellation of the group – Savennières Coulée de Serrant – Brand is its strongest category, present in 31% of top establishments.
Don’t forget – if you’re not yet a subscriber to Wine Lister, you can still fully explore this week’s five Listed wines, and those for the previous four weeks, via the homepage.
This week’s Listed section focuses on the five Burgundy Grands Crus with the highest Quality scores. As previous analysis has shown, Burgundy’s greatest wines display better quality than those of any other major fine wine region. These five – all rare wines from some of the world’s most famous domaines – enjoy uniformly outstanding Quality scores. Unsurprisingly, they are also some of the most expensive wines in the world.
Leading the way is Domaine d’Auvenay Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru, the only white. The first of three wines in the top five overseen by Lalou Bize-Leroy, only 500 bottles of this rare wine leave the estate each year. Its wine level Quality score of 991 is the third-highest in Wine Lister’s database, behind two sweet Rieslings, while its average price per bottle of £2,523 is actually one of the more affordable in this list.
Moving up to the Côte de Nuits, next come Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti Grand Cru and Domaine Leroy Chambertin Grand Cru, each with a Quality score of 990. Once again, low yields command high prices, with the former costing on average £11,267 per bottle. Proving that the reputations of two of the world’s most prominent fine wine producers are built upon firm foundations, these wines achieve the highest Quality scores of any red wine on Wine Lister.
The “Queen of Burgundy” continues her dominance with fourth-placed Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru, which achieves a Quality score of 985 points. With Henri Jayer Echezeaux Grand Cru just two points behind, these Burgundy brands comprise four of the six top red wines for Quality Score on Wine Lister.
This week’s Listed section features the five Italian white wines with the strongest brands. They comprise two Langhes from Gaja (Gaia & Rey and Rossj Bass), two of Italy’s cult whites (Valentini Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and Gravner Anfora Ribolla Gialla), and Cervaro della Sala (from the Antinori stable).
Whilst these wines all enjoy strong or very strong Brand scores, they do not command the same level of brand recognition as the top five Italian red wine brands, trailing them by c.90-250 points in the Brand category. Tuscan powerhouses Sassicaia, Tignanello, Ornellaia, Solaia, and Gaja’s Barbaresco all achieve Brand scores of over 975 points, with Sassicaia’s outstanding 997 points putting it ahead of the likes of Cheval Blanc and DRC La Tâche.
Wine Lister’s Brand scores comprise restaurant presence and consumer popularity. It is in the latter category that the whites have the most ground to make up. For example Gaja Langhe Gaia & Rey, which featured in our latest blog on new Investment Staples, is present in well over half the number of restaurants of its close relative Gaja Barbaresco, but it receives under a quarter of the number of searches each month on Wine-Searcher. If sommeliers are convinced that these top Italian whites can grace the tables of the finest establishments, they still fly well under the radar of most consumers.
Certain wines are a safer store of value than others. One of our four Wine Lister Indicators – Investment Staples – enables you to spot these instantly. The bespoke algorithm identifies wines of a high quality level, long-lived and not too old, above a certain price (therefore soaking up the frictional costs of collecting wine), with proven price performance, stability, and liquidity.
This last criterion is measured using the number of bottles traded at wine auctions globally. With the latest quarterly data in from Wine Market Journal, 16 new wine and vintage combinations (across nine producers) have recently become Investment Staples. These wines are all over £50 a bottle, with the majority falling under £400, but the most expensive – Roumier’s 2013 Musigny – costing £4,851.
Several of the new Investment Staples have displayed an upward price trend over the last six months, in particular Leroy’s Vosne-Romanée Aux Brûlées 2013 and Roumier’s 2008 Musigny, both of which have seen increases upwards of 30%.
Wine investment is not often associated with white wines, but six of the new Investment Staples are just that. All possess staying power, and are young enough to have room for improvement. What is more, they are made by some of the finest wine producers there are, allowing them to challenge some of their red neighbours in terms of investment fundamentals. Of these, Roulot’s Meursault Charmes 2012 has the best six-month price performance, plus one of the longest drinking windows based on the average assessment of our partner critics. Jean-Marc Roulot has been a rising star for several years now, but his wines are still in the ascendancy.
The new Investment Staples nearly all hail from Burgundy, with just a handful of entries from Piedmont and the Rhône. Those seeking something a bit different that still possesses the criteria of a solid investment might look to Italian white, Gaia & Rey 2012 from Gaja, which has a drinking window of 2015-2025, 6.3% six-month price performance, and price tag of £124.
To search for more Investment Staples, subscribers can click here, filtering by country, region, type, style, price, and score, to drill down exactly into what wine you’re after.
This week’s listed section looks at the five most expensive Californian wines. Unsurprisingly, the list comprises five cult Napa reds, all with small annual productions helping to fuel a healthy supply and demand ratio that keeps consumers thirsty and wanting more.
Leading the way is Screaming Eagle, averaging c.7,800 bottles per year. At £2,450 per bottle, it is the 12th most expensive wine in Wine Lister’s database, just £27 below DRC La Tâche.
Harlan, the third highest-rated Californian wine overall, has an average annual production of c.21,600 bottles, and is the region’s second most expensive wine. At £638, it is available at nearly a quarter of the price of Screaming Eagle.
The next three wines all have lower production volumes than Harlan. At £509, Scarecrow has a similar price point to the likes of Lafite (£522) and Masseto (£524). Fourth-placed Grace Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon achieves a Wine Lister score of 712, considerably lower than the others, but again low production volumes (c.6,000 bottles a year) help it to achieve its hefty price tag of £474. Bryant Family Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon fills the fifth spot at £460 per bottle.
Produced on far greater scales than these five, Dominus and Ridge Monte Bello, Wine Lister’s two overall top-scoring Californian wines, do not make the top five most expensive. The trendline on the chart below confirms the negative correlation between price and production:
Remember that even if you don’t currently have a Wine Lister subscription you can access all the underlying data behind these five wines as well as those featured in other Top 5s, giving you an insight into the wealth of tools at our subscribers’ disposal.
You may have noticed a subtle re-design today on the Wine Lister homepage. This includes moving up and expanding the scope of the “Listed” section: a changing Top 5 of wines from around the world, updated each week.
You can now explore the five most recent Top 5s, even if you’re not yet a subscriber to Wine Lister. For as long as the list is live, this includes access to all the underlying vintage-level data that feeds into one of our Listed wines, including critic scores, restaurant presence, search frequency, and price performance. Simply click on the Listed wine that takes your interest, then select from the drop-down of vintages at the top right of the wine page. What’s more, this allows you to play with tools such as interactive price history and vintage value identifier charts.
Our Listed section addresses a variety of tastes and priorities – some weeks you will see our best Value Picks from a particular region, other weeks will focus specifically on wines with top Brand or Economics scores, or wines of the highest quality from a specific vintage.
To access independent wine ratings, tools, and analysis for all of the thousands of wines and vintages in our database you’ll need to subscribe – or why not try a free 14-day trial?
Bordeaux en primeur analysis of Canon 2016, which has been released this afternoon with a UK RRP of £73.35:
You can download the slide here: Wine Lister Factsheet Canon 2016
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).
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.
We’re always adding new features to Wine Lister, and in direct response to your feedback, we are pleased to introduce our new wine comparison tool. Released late in 2016 (it wasn’t all bad!), this is a valuable, visual device for comparing up to three wines of your choice.
Whether you want to look at three vintages of the same iconic wine, three cuvées from the same producer or three completely different wines, our comparison tool allows for an instant side-by-side analysis of each of the 11 criteria (across three main categories) that make up Wine Lister’s overall score.
Let’s look at it in practice. Below you will see Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair’s Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Les Suchots:
By simply clicking “Compare“, you can add up to two more wines to the analysis:
In this instance, we have chosen to analyse three different producers’ wines from the lieu-dit of Les Suchots in Vosne-Romanée, at wine-level rather than in a specific vintage. We can quickly see that these three Les Suchots wines score similarly well in Quality, but in Brand and Economics there are greater differences. Grivot’s Les Suchots scores highest in Brand, while that from Bouchard scores lowest. It is the outstanding Economics score from Comte Liger-Belair’s example that brings it out on top in the overall Wine Lister score.
In-depth wine comparison has never been quicker or easier! Try it for yourself (subscription or free trial required).