Wine Lister uses data from our partner, Wine-Searcher, to examine wines with increasing online popularity on a monthly basis.
This month, Château Canon sees a 7% increase in search frequency for January-March 2018 from the previous period. As predicted by our Founding Members (c.50 key members of the fine wine trade), who voted Château Canon number one wine likely to gain the most brand recognition in the next two years in the 2017 Bordeaux Market study, Canon was one of the big successes of last year’s en primeur campaign. Its brand continues to go from strength to strength, with search frequency in 2017 rising 35% between January and October. It will be interesting to see whether this year’s en primeur release has the same impact on its online search frequency as the 2016 vintage.
Two cult Californian wines are among the top five for latest search frequency increases.
Scarecrow saw an increased search frequency of 52% for January-March 2018 compared to the previous period thanks to its latest release in February. The 2015 vintage is as yet unscored by Wine Lister partner critics, however the estate has seen consistent Quality scores between 996-987 since 2010.
Screaming Eagle also makes the top five wines with biggest search frequency increase this month. With 17,831 average monthly searches between January and March 2018, the increase is small relative to its already vast online popularity. Indeed, Screaming Eagle remains the number one most searched for Californian wine on Wine-Searcher.
Burgundy is represented in the top search increases by Marquis d’Angerville, whose Volnay Premier Cru Taillepieds saw double its average number of monthly searches in January-March 2018 compared with the previous period. Guillaume Angerville eschews the scrum of the January Burgundy en primeur tastings in London, preferring to showcase his new vintage each March with a small tasting and lunch – the Taillepieds obviously made an impression, and achieves its highest ever Quality score (969).
Finally, searches for Azienda Agricola Falletto’s Barolo Rocche Falletto Riserva continue to rise into March following the sad passing of Piedmont legend, Bruno Giacosa. The wine saw a bittersweet rise in popularity of 14% in December 2017-February 2018, which continues at a slightly slower pace (10%).
“Buzz Brands” is one of the four Wine Lister Indicators developed to help our users identify wines for different scenarios. A Buzz Brand is a wine with strong distribution in the world’s top restaurants, enjoying high levels of online search frequency or demonstrating a recent growth in popularity, and identified by the fine wine trade as trending or especially prestigious. As such, you wouldn’t expect them to come cheap, and the five most expensive dry whites definitely don’t, costing around £2,000 on average.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the miniscule production of its top wines, Burgundy fills four of the five spots (and two of these are from Coche-Dury). DRC Montrachet is the world’s second-most expensive dry white – behind Leflaive’s Montrachet which fails to achieve Buzz Brand status. It achieves the best Quality score of this week’s top five (976), just pipping Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne to the post (971). It also enjoys the highest Brand score of the group – or any dry white for that matter (960) – the result of appearing in considerably more of the word’s top restaurants than Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne, which comes second in that criterion (26% vs 19%), and also being nearly 50% more popular than any of the rest of the five.
Whilst Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne has to settle for second place in the Quality and Brand categories, it not only manages the group’s top Economics score (991), but also the highest of any dry white on Wine Lister. This is thanks to formidable price growth. It has recorded a three-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25%, and has added 14% to its price over the last six months alone.
It is to be expected that wines from two of Burgundy’s most hallowed grand cru vineyards command the group’s highest prices, but it might come as more of a surprise that two Meursaults from the premier cru Perrières vineyard feature. With over £1,000 separating the considerably more expensive offering from Coche-Dury and Roulot’s expression, it becomes clear that Brand score is a significant driver of price at this rarefied end of the scale, particularly within Burgundy.
Proving that expensive Buzz Brands are not only to be found in Burgundy, Haut-Brion Blanc makes an appearance in the top five. Whilst it is the most liquid of the group – its top five traded vintages have traded 49% more bottles than any other wine in the five – it has experienced by far the lowest growth rates, with a three-year CAGR of 9% compared to the Burgundy quartet’s remarkable average of 22%.
Château Latour has released a parcel of their 2006 this morning at €450 ex-negociant. It is being offered in the UK at c.£430 per bottle. The factsheet below summarises its key points.
You can download this slide here: Wine Lister Factsheet Latour 2006
Riesling is amongst the greatest grapes at communicating time and place. Top Riesling is not only one of the most ageworthy of all wines, it is also one of the most versatile grapes, delivering crisp lime-scented examples in South Australia, and heady, honied, petrol aromas in the Mosel. The top five Riesling brands are a good example of this. Despite all hailing from Alsace and the Mosel, they showcase at least some of the variety that can, at times, cause confusion (but don’t extend to the tonguetwisting trockenbeerenauslese or flummoxing fuder numbers).
Alsatian heavyweight Trimbach fills the top two spots with its flagship Clos Sainte Hune (939) and Frédéric Emile (884). Clos Sainte Hune is the only Riesling to crack the 900-point mark in the Brand category, thus ranking amongst the most elite Brands on Wine Lister’s database. Its lead is thanks to its popularity – it is searched for twice as frequently as the group’s second-most popular wine (Prüm’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese). It is in fact Trimbach’s Frédéric Emile that achieves the greatest level of restaurant presence of the group, appearing in 37% of the world’s top establishments, it just pips Clos Sainte Hune to the post (34%). Confirming Trimbach as darling of the trade, the next best wine in the criterion (Prüm’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese) appears in 22% of top restaurants.
Egon Müller fills the last two spots with wines from the famous Scharzhofberger vineyard – its Kabinett (850) and Auslese (848). It is interesting that it is the Kabinett that comes out on top in the Brand category, despite trailing its sweeter sibling by significant margins in the Quality category (820 vs 974) and Economics category (523 vs 806). It manages to do so thanks to a greater breadth of restaurant presence (21% vs 16%), despite the Auslese achieving greater depth with 3.6 vintages / formats offered on average (the best of the group).
It is worth comparing the performance of Riesling’s top brands to the grape’s top Quality scores. Whilst these five brands achieve an average of 880 in the Brand category, the top five Rieslings by Quality score manage a remarkable average of 990 in the qualitative category. It seems that it is in terms of consumer popularity that Riesling struggles. Trimbach’s Clos Sainte Hune – the most popular Riesling in the world – is only the 241st most popular wine on Wine Lister’s database.
Riesling seems doomed to be perennially underappreciated, perhaps due to its range of sugar levels, or maybe the complexity of the German classification system. Certainly its remarkable quality does not command the brand recognition it deserves. If we compare the average of the top five Brand and Quality scores of 100% Riesling, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc wines, it is clear to see that Riesling’s outstanding quality does not currently result in a corresponding level of brand strength.
Unintentionally coinciding with today’s International Women’s Day – really, it was a complete accident – this week our Listed section looks at “pink Champagne”, namely the five most expensive rosé Champagnes. We are a bit embarrassed that it looks like we are jumping on the bandwagon and touting the colour pink today. However, as these five contenders show, top rosé Champagne represents a serious vinous offering worthy of any day or occasion.
The world’s most expensive pink Champagne is Louis Roederer’s Cristal Rosé (£337 per bottle). It also achieves the highest Quality score of all rosé Champagnes (972). Whilst it receives excellent scores from each of Wine Lister’s partner critics, it is the outstanding average rating of 97/100 from Antonio Galloni’s Vinous that stands out. Cristal Rosé also pips its white counterpart to the post in the Quality category (972 vs 970), and is over twice as expensive (£337 vs £165 per bottle). However, despite its superior quality, Cristal Rosé trails its white counterpart in the Brand category by 56 points – it features on under half as many of the world’s top wine lists and is searched for 82% less frequently.
The second-most expensive rosé, Armand de Brignac’s offering, is a newcomer to the fine wine world, born in 2006. It experiences the group’s lowest Quality and Economics scores, and second-weakest Brand score. Its high price (£284) can therefore be attributed to its association with Jay-Z. The American rapper featured Armand de Brignac’s white Champagne in the video for “Show Me What You Got” in 2006 – before it even had a US importer – and eventually bought a significant portion of the house in 2014, further aligning the brand with his high-flying lifestyle.
In third place is Dom Pérignon’s rosé (£234). Whilst unable to match the peerless brand recognition of its white counterpart, it does enjoy the best Brand score of any pink Champagne (984). This is thanks to receiving on average 2.5 times as many online searches each month as the second-most popular wine of the five (Cristal Rosé).
The last two spots are filled by Krug’s rosé and Philipponnat Juste Rosé Clos des Goisses, each costing £179. The fact that the Krug enjoys a lead of 237 points in terms of overall Wine Lister score yet costs the same shows that when it comes to rosé Champagne, prices don’t always have a rational explanation. The chart below confirms a lack of correlation between price and overall Wine Lister score for these five wines.
Wine Lister uses search frequency data from our partner, Wine-Searcher, to examine wines with increasing online popularity on a monthly basis. Wines with the highest search frequency numbers tend to be consistent, with the Bordeaux left bank premiers crus classés generally taking the top spots.
This month’s biggest search frequency gainers also rank as some of the most searched-for wines on Wine-Searcher. Dom Pérignon Vintage Brut is the third most popular wine with over 84,000 searches after Lafite and Mouton, closely followed by Petrus in fourth place. Armand Rousseau’s Chambertin and Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage appear in the top 50, while Azienda Agricola Falletto’s Barolo Rocche Falletto Riserva comes lower down at number 148 out of the circa 5,000 wines on Wine Lister, but its search frequency has recently increased by 15%.
Our last post on online search frequency revealed Wine Lister’s first ever perfect Brand score. Moving on from the Christmas period, Champagne brands still show marked increases in search frequency, but this time they do not stand alone at the top.
Dom Pérignon Vintage Brut is the largest gainer in popularity for the second time running. Increasing at a slower rate than in December, its popularity nonetheless grew by 7,097 searches into January, maintaining its 1000-point Brand score. Dom Pérignon remains the only wine to achieve a perfect score from any of the Wine Lister score categories. The other Champagne still riding high on searches is Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage, which increased by 6%.
Bordeaux creeps back onto the map for online searches at the beginning of 2018, with the first growths having featured heavily in searches up to December 2017. Petrus is in second place after Dom Pérignon, with an 8% increase in search frequency. It will be interesting to see if search increases for Bordeaux follow the same pattern as last year as we approach the 2017 en primeur campaign.
Armand Rousseau’s Chambertin appears in third place. Armand Rousseau was only one of two producers to achieve a perfect confidence rating from our Founding Members in our recent Burgundy study.
In fifth place for increased popularity is a bittersweet entry. Searches for Barolo Rocche Falletto Riserva from Azienda Agricola Falletto increased as the wine world learned of the sad passing in January of Piedmont legend, Bruno Giacosa. You can read more on Bruno Giacosa’s legacy in a recent blog on Barbaresco, here.
After a distinctly Burgundian start to 2018, we are ringing the changes this week to look at some of our most improved Brand scores, with Champagne dominating.
Alongside presence in the world’s best restaurants, Wine Lister’s Brand score measures a wine’s online popularity – as indicated by the number of searches received on Wine Searcher – as a marker of real consumer demand.
The search frequency data for December is in, and it is no surprise that searches in Champagne increased significantly leading up to the Christmas period.
During arguably the busiest period of the year for searching and purchasing wines, these five wines gained between 20% and 77% increase in search frequency. The appearance of Dom Pérignon Vintage Brut at the top of search frequency lists is a shock to no one considering its position as one of the most searched-for wines of all time. Indeed, it consistently held the number one search spot from July to September last year. The Christmas influence still managed to add 16,659 online searches, allowing this almighty brand to achieve Wine Lister’s first ever perfect Brand score (1000)!
Next on the list is Bollinger Grande Année. Its impressive 77% increase in search frequency at the end of last year can also be attributed to the festive season, but may also have been boosted by the release of the 2007 vintage earlier in the year. Bollinger’s new Brand score is up 16 points on the previous quarter at 975.
Our next two appearances hail from the same owner as the first, Champagne divinity LVMH. Moët & Chandon, often considered the definitive Champagne brand holds not one, but two spots in the top five most searched for wines of the last three months. Moët & Chandon Grand Vintage is perhaps a classic Christmas choice, but the appearance of a non-vintage cuvee, the Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial is testament to the power of the Moët & Chandon brand. Each earned an increase in search frequency of 33%, bringing Brand scores to 987 and 938 respectively.
Last but not least, Louis Roederer Cristal takes fifth place with a search frequency increase of 20%. While achieving a fractional increase in searches (4,271) compared with Dom Pérignon, its presence in 54% of restaurants and consistent high quality (Quality score 970) makes Cristal an all-round achiever, and therefore a choice that’s not just for Christmas.
Champagne’s Brand prowess is clear, but these five are the shining stars of their region. It is interesting to note that the sixth most searched-for wine on our most recent list is in fact not a Champagne at all, but Château Margaux (Brand score 998).
With Burgundy having dominated our thoughts recently, we thought it was time for a change. So this week, our Listed section continues on its travels, this time stopping in the USA, to consider the country’s overall top five whites. However, whilst the landscape might be different to the Côte d’Or, the grape certainly is not. As might be expected, the USA’s top five whites are all Chardonnays – and all Californian.
Leading the pack is Marcassin Vineyard Chardonnay, with an excellent score of 918 – putting it amongst the very best on Wine Lister. Its score – 55 points above second-placed Kongsgaard Chardonnay – is the result of excellent consistency across Wine Lister’s three categories. Whilst it comes second in terms of Quality (927), it leads in the Economics category (968), and is well out in front in the Brand category (879). The dominance of its brand is the result of achieving the group’s best restaurant presence – both horizontal and vertical – and being the most popular of the five – it receives nearly twice as many searches each month on Wine-Searcher as the second-most popular wine in the group.
Next comes Kongsgaard Chardonnay (863). The cheapest of the five (£86 per bottle), it experiences the group’s second-weakest Economics score (873). However, it starts to climb back up the table with the group’s third-best Quality score (894), and cements its position with the second-best Brand score of the five (817).
The three final wines in the group are evenly matched, with just 27 points separating Kistler’s straight Chardonnay, Peter Michael’s Point Rouge Chardonnay, and Kistler’s Vine Hill Vineyard Chardonnay. The two Kistlers display contrasting profiles. Whilst the straight Chardonnay comfortably outperforms the Vine Hill Vineyard in the Quality category (892 vs 805), the roles are reversed in the Economics category, with the Vine Hill Vineyard’s very strong three-year CAGR (16.5%) helping it to an excellent score of 951, c.70 points ahead of the straight Chardonnay. In the Brand category, despite achieving very similar scores, again they display contrasting profiles. The straight Chardonnay is over twice as popular as the Vine Hill Vineyard, but features in half the number of the world’s top restaurants.
Peter Michael Point Rouge Chardonnay – the USA’s fourth-best white – has a somewhat topsy-turvy profile. It enjoys the group’s best Quality score (933), but the worst Brand and Economics scores (641 and 827 respectively). Thanks to an extraordinary three-year CAGR of 47.7% it is also by far the most-expensive of the five, with a three-month average price of £457.
With the latest online search frequency data in from Wine-Searcher, we can see which wines rose in popularity during November. Each month we look at the last three months’ worth of search data, measured against the previous period, to see which wines have grown most in popularity. With five of the world’s six most popular wines making the greatest gains during November, it appears that demand for the biggest brands shows no sign of diminishing, and that the public is quick to pick up on announcements regarding the most famous fine wine producers.
Mouton, the world’s second-most popular wine, made the greatest gains during November. This is likely thanks to the release of the label for the 2015 vintage. It features a witty juxtaposition of Gerhard Richter’s “Flux” with the reiteration of part of Mouton’s motto, “Mouton ne change” (Mouton never changes), in the context of a generational shift as Philippine de Rothschild’s three children take the helm after her death in 2014.
Snapping at Mouton’s heels was Margaux. It too announced during November that it will release its 2015 vintage in a commemorative bottle – the first time the château has done so – paying homage to Paul Pontallier who was winemaker at the property for almost 30 years. With Margaux 2015 achieving one the best Quality scores of the vintage, it seems a fitting tribute.
Lafite came next. In mid-November it was announced that in March 2018 Saskia de Rothschild will be taking over as chairwoman of the château and Jean-Guillaume Prats of Moët Hennessy will become President and CEO. With Lafite currently the most popular wine in the world, and one of just five wines on Wine Lister to achieve a Brand score of 999 – alongside Dom Pérignon Vintage Brut, Mouton, Latour, and Yquem (no wine scores 1,000) – the duo have a formidable reputation to maintain.
Latour was the fourth-biggest gainer, its search frequency increasing 8% (4,317 searches). Whilst the increased interest in the other Médoc first growths can be attributed to a significant announcement, the reason behind Latour’s surge in popularity is less obvious. Related news is of course the acquisition by Artemis Domaines – Latour owner François Pinault’s holding company – of Burgundian Grand Cru monopole Clos de Tart.
Breaking the Bordeaux first growths’ dominance on this month’s popularity stakes was Dom Pérignon, a brand whose online popularity has soared over the second half of the year. Early in November Moët Hennessy announced the launch of Clos19, an online shop selling its prestigious brands – one of which is Dom Pérignon. Cannily introduced before the festive season, during which Champagne’s popularity surges – it seems that the region’s strongest brand has further benefited from the new platform.
Bodegas Vega-Sicilia has today released a host of wines. Alongside the 2018 edition of Unico Reserva Especial (£240 per bottle / £720 per case of three) and Valbuena 2013 (£78 per bottle / £234 per case of three), comes Unico 2006 at £195 per bottle / £585 per case of three. Below we look at all the facts about Spain’s top wine.
You can download the slide here: Wine Liser Fact Sheet Vega-Sicilia Unico