Listed: top five white Burgundies by Wine Lister score

Wine Lister’s founder, Ella Lister, was in Burgundy last week and gained insight into how the 2018 vintage is shaping up. Benjamin Leroux explained that Burgundy is “getting used to picking in August”. He says that grapes picked early enough in 2018 are “showing amazingly”.

With the potential of another superb vintage under Burgundian belts, this week’s top five examines the region’s best whites by Wine Lister score. Unsurprisingly, the quality of these five wines is extremely high, their brand strength is well-established (all five are Wine Lister Buzz Brands), and the prices are eye-watering (with an average per-bottle price of over £2,500).

In first place of this week’s top five with a score of 976 is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s Montrachet. Sweeping up the top spots across all three Wine Lister score categories, Quality (978), Brand (964), and Economics (992), it is hard to fault the top white offering from arguably the world’s most famous, and exclusive, wine estate.

Next is Domaine Leflaive’s Chevalier-Montrachet. It stands out amongst this week’s top five with a market price of £547, or just 17% of the average of the remaining wines in the group. While the all-white-producing domaine earns Buzz Brand status for its Chevalier-Montrachet, its highest-scoring wine for quality is actually the Montrachet, with a Quality score of 985. Sitting 18 points above the Chevalier-Montrachet, it also comes with a much larger price tag of c.£6,500 per bottle in-bond.

Third and fourth places in this week’s top five are occupied by the same producer – Jean-François Coche-Dury. The domaine’s Corton-Charlemagne actually comes in second of the group for quality, with a Quality score of 971, just six points behind Romanée-Conti’s Montrachet.

Coche-Dury’s Meursault Perrières is very close behind, sporting a Quality score of 959. The only Meursault to feature in this week’s top five, Wine Lister partner critic Antonio Galloni names the 2009 vintage – its highest-scoring in the last 10 years – “pure seduction” and “insanely beautiful”. The Meursault Perrières does not live up to these surrounding grands crus in quality alone – it also comes at a four-figure sum per bottle (of almost £2,000 in-bond).

Finally, in fifth place is Ramonet’s Montrachet, with an overall score of 931. Despite earning this week’s least-strong Quality score of 958, it wins the number one spot for long-term ageing, with an average wine life of 19 years – seven years longer than the average of the remaining four wines of the group. A wine to lay down then, and it also has impressive long-term price performance – the second best of the group after DRC’s Montrachet, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.7%.


Listed: the five most expensive dry white Buzz Brands

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%.

 


Listed – top 5 Corton-Charlemagnes by Brand score

As the temperature drops, the natural reaction can be to reach for structured reds and hearty meals. The great Chardonnays of Corton-Charlemagne also warm the cockles, and belong in pride of place on any Christmas table. Here we look at the appellation’s top five brands.

Wine Lister’s Brand score measures a wine’s prestige – as indicated by its visibility in the world’s top restaurants – and popularity – as shown by the number of searches it receives each month on Wine-Searcher. Corton-Charlemagne’s top brand is Bonneau du Martray’s offering (947). This outstanding Brand score is the result of achieving by far the greatest level of restaurant presence of the group – it is visible in nearly twice as many of the world’s top establishments as the next-best of the five (Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne) – coupled with being comfortably the most popular of the group, receiving 24% more searches each month than the runner-up. No wonder it is one of the group’s three Buzz Brands.

Listed - 5 best Corton-Charlemagne Brands image_30_11_17

In second place is Coche-Dury’s offering with a score of 912 for Brand, in fact its weakest category – perhaps unsurprising given its formidable Economics and Quality scores (985 – the highest of any white Burgundy – and 969 respectively). Its economic might is the result of its extraordinary price (£2,474), which is over 15 times higher than the second-most expensive wine of the group (the Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey (£154).

Almost 50 points further behind is Maison Louis Latour’s Corton Charlemagne (863). Unlike the Coche-Dury, its Brand score is its best facet. This is thanks to very strong performance across both brand criteria – it features in 13% of top restaurants and receives 2,500 searches each month on average.

Trailing over 130 points further behind, Corton-Charlemagne’s next-strongest brands are separated by just six points – Bouchard Père et Fils (732) and Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey (726). Whilst strong, their Brand scores are no match for their excellent quality scores (917 and 950 respectively). In fact, it seems that quality doesn’t play an obvious role in establishing brand strength within Corton-Charlemagne:

Corton-Charlemagne Brand vs Quality image_29_11_17

Whilst Corton-Charlemagnes’s top five Brands display no correlation between quality and brand recognition, as indicated by the flat trendline, quality is much more of a factor for the top brands of another of Burgundy’s most prestigious appellations, Montrachet:

Montrachet Brand vs Quality image_29_11_17

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 recent Top 5s, giving you an insight into the wealth of tools at our subscribers’ disposal.