December is an expensive month, a time when many of us push the boat out, embracing the seasonal festivities as the days get ever shorter and the nights longer. But December has now been and gone, and January is here. Whilst it is a time for trying to tighten one’s belt – economically and physically – it needn’t be all doom and gloom.
This is where Wine Lister’s Value Picks come in to their own. One of Wine Lister’s four indicators (designed to highlight particularly noteworthy wines for our subscribers), Value Picks identify the wines and vintages that have the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus giving the finest wines a look-in). This week’s Listed section looks at Spain’s top five Value Picks. Each achieving Quality scores of at least 876, and costing under £40 per bottle, they are sure to brighten up these dark January days. Please note that the prices shown are excluding duty and VAT, and often reflect prices available only when purchasing a full case.
Leading the way is La Rioja Alta Rioja 904 Gran Reserva 2005. With an excellent Quality score of 909, this is a wine that is built to last – it is only now entering its drinking window, and will be drinking well until 2032. Not only does it qualify as a Value Pick, it is also one of Wine Lister’s Buzz Brands. Available for as little as £27 per bottle, it represents outstanding value.
Vega-Sicilia Pintia fills two spots, with the 2004 and 2002. They enjoy the group’s top two highest Quality scores (987 and 965 respectively), having received excellent ratings of 19/20 and 18/20 from Wine Lister partner critic Jancis Robinson. They need drinking up now, so why not start the year as you mean to go on and get your hands on one (or both!) of these.
Numanthia 2012, on the other hand, won’t be ready until 2022. The cheapest of the group – at as little as £26 per bottle – it might be wise to buy a case and forget about it for a few years. Achieving a Quality score of 876, you won’t regret finding a bottle of it tucked away in January 2028!
The last of Spain’s top five Value Picks is Aalto 2011. With a Quality score of 920, and right in the middle of its drinking window, it would be £28 of liquid Spanish sun to brighten up the month.
Christmas is a time of tradition. Whether we like it or not, we tend to spend each year doing, eating, and drinking the same as we did the year before. Whilst everybody’s idea of Christmas will be personal, usually based on childhood memories, there are clearly a shared set of rituals that most of tend to follow: mince pies, turkey or goose, crackers, Christmas pudding. There are also certain styles of wine that we associate with Christmas (though these associations are probably not based on childhood memories!). We decided to look a bit further into the online popularity of specific regions and styles of wine to determine whether in fact we do all drink the same things over the festive season.
Comparing the search frequency of each region’s 25 most popular wines on Wine-Searcher during December 2016 compared to the average of the previous three months, the results are conclusive. Champagne and Port both enjoyed a dramatic surge in popularity – receiving over a quarter more searches during December. Whilst Port’s dramatic increase in online search frequency was presumably because it is the classic accompaniment to another festive favourite – Stilton – Champagne’s seasonal rise in popularity must be because it is not just the tipple of choice at Christmas parties, but also at New Year’s celebrations.
It seems that we also tend to favour the sweet whites of Sauternes and Barsac over Christmas, their 25 most popular wines enjoying a 16% increase in online search frequency. When it comes to dry reds, we appear to gravitate towards hearty styles at this time of year, with Tuscany and the Rhône also experiencing noticeable boosts in online popularity (up 15% and 14% respectively).
If you haven’t yet stocked up on those perennial favourites, Wine Lister’s Value Pick search tool can help you effortlessly find top Quality at a reasonable price. Each of our Christmas Value Picks achieves an outstanding Quality score of at least 965, putting them amongst the very best on Wine Lister. With the most expensive – Warre’s Vintage Port 2000 – available for as little as £47, they represent remarkable value.
If you are after a really special bottle for New Year’s, then we also show the most expensive wine from each region. Each of these wines qualify as Wine Lister Buzz Brands, and is sure to help start 2018 with a bang.
Download a PDF version here.
First published in French in En Magnum.
Wines featured: Drappier Carte d’Or 1993; Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2004; Rieussec 2015; Fontodi Flaccianello della Pieve 2012; Krug Clos d’Ambonnay; Quinta do Noval Porto Nacional Vintage Port; Château d’Yquem; Jean-Louis Chave Hermitage Cuvée Cathelin; Masseto
Brands such as Sassicaia or Masseto are virtually household names. Known to most as ‘Super Tuscans’, the unofficial ‘Crus Classés’ of Tuscany’s IGT-elite have garnered a reputation for high quality and investment calibre over the last 20 years, and have a price tag to match.
Most would agree that the first Super Tuscan was Sassicaia, produced by Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, who planted Cabernet Sauvignon for his family’s own personal stock, before releasing it commercially from 1968.
The early Super Tuscan sought to by-pass the DOC system and rules banning international varieties. Labelled simply as ‘vino da tavola’, consumers were able to decide for themselves on the quality of the liquid in the bottle. Meanwhile, Sassicaia earnt its own DOCG in 2013, and has the strongest brand in Italy and one of the strongest in the world – but what of the rest?
Last month Wine Lister explored Italy’s top wines for Economics, and found that the economic profiles of Piedmont’s top wines (Barolo and Barbaresco), beat their Tuscan counterparts. So what can consumers expect from Tuscany, apart from an idyllic holiday destination?
The Tuscan crown for Brand scores still firmly sits on the heads of the big five (Sassicaia, Tignanello, Ornellaia, Masseto, and Solaia), but with a little more digging, exceptional quality can certainly be found beyond these few names. Indeed, eight of Wine Lister’s top 10 Italian Value Picks by Quality score come from the country’s central region:
Value Picks are defined as wines with the best quality-to-price ratio, with an emphasis on quality. Of the Tuscan entries, only one is a DOCG – the Chianti Classico Vigna del Sorbo Riserva 2010 from Fontodi. The others are IGT, or ‘Super Tuscan’, such as Castello dei Rampolla Sammarco 2006 and 2010, and San Giusto a Rentannano Percarlo 2010 and 2013.
On average, Super Tuscan Value Picks cost £26 per bottle, and achieve Quality scores of 864. Meanwhile Super Tuscan Buzz Brands cost six times as much for the for an average Quality score of 889.
Whether Tuscany’s classification system will be able to define a true quality hierarchy in time is not clear. In the meantime, Wine Lister’s scoring system sheds some light on where the real value of Tuscany lies.
Also featured: Isole e Olena Collezione de Marchi Cabernet Sauvignon; Domenico Clerico Barolo Ciabot Mentin; Galardi Terra di Lavoro
Less than 18 months on from its inaugural Showdown Dinner, last month Wine Lister returned to Hong Kong to host the city’s most experienced wine collectors at a fascinating follow-up dinner.
Attendees were asked to bring along an Investment Staple or a Value Pick which were served blind throughout the evening, along with an added ‘mystery wine’, and scored out of 10 for enjoyment. With just a 7% difference between the two Wine Lister Indicator categories, the Value Picks put up a good fight, though Investment Staples just managed to take the trophy (unsurprising at more than six times the price).
First place was awarded to the Krug 1995, but the biggest surprise of the evening was the revelation of the Chinese mystery wine, Ao Yun 2014, which came in second place.
Read the full press release here.
From left to right: Averardo Borghini Baldovinetti, Mimi Shun, Jonathan Leung, Cathy Anderson, Seok Hui Lim, Ella Lister (Wine Lister’s Founder & CEO), Agnes Hon, Antonio Koo, Brian Yim, George Tong, Alex Cheung.
For more images, please contact alice@wine-lister.com.
One of Wine Lister’s four Indicators, Value Picks identify the wines and vintages which have the best quality to price ratio, with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus giving the finest wines a look-in.
With the latest price data in, 28 new wines have recently qualified as Value Picks. While Value Picks are calculated using a three-month average bottle score for accuracy (in order to take into account any price fluctuations), we have shown the current price per bottle below for ease of comparison. Please note that the price shown is excluding duty and VAT, and often reflects prices available only when purchasing a full case:
Bordeaux dominates the new Value Picks, filling 11 of the 28 spots. Margaux’s Prieuré-Lichine seems a particularly keenly-priced brand at the moment, with both its 2015 and 2016 vintages now Value Picks. With Wine Lister Quality scores of 891 and 912 respectively – very strong and amongst the strongest on Wine Lister’s 1000 point scale – and both priced under £30, they represent excellent value buys. Within Bordeaux, Pessac-Léognan is home to the highest number of new Value Picks. Of those, two are white, with Château Carbonnieux Blanc 2014 and Château Olivier 2015 achieving very similar Quality scores (809 and 806 respectively), and each priced at just £20.
The other wine to feature twice in the latest update is Domaine de Cristia Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with its 2010 and 2007 vintages. The former, which achieves a Quality score of 763, is available at just £18 per bottle. With plenty of life left in it, it looks like a great buy.
Three Piedmontese wines recently qualified as Value Picks – M. Marengo Barolo Brunate 2010, Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba Cascina Francia 2010, and La Spinetta (Rivetti) Barbera d’Alba Gallina 2007. All three achieve powerful Wine Lister Quality scores of over 900 points. You might buy Giacomo Conterno’s wines to impress – the Barolo Cascina Francia is a Wine Lister Buzz Brand, but also averages £157 per bottle. If you’re looking for something more appropriate for a weeknight, the 2010 vintage of the same producer’s Barbera d’Alba, priced at just £30, would be an excellent Value Pick – a perfect example of how Wine Lister’s indicators can help you find the right wine for any situation.
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?
Like Buzz Brands, which we explored last week, Value Picks are one of the four Wine Lister indicators, designed to highlight particularly interesting wines for our subscribers by isolating sub-sets of data. The Value Pick indicator helpfully identifies the wines and vintages which have the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus allowing the finest wines a look-in).
This month, five of our eight new Value Picks are from France – but with a Sauternes, Riesling and left bank Bordeaux to choose from the options are still diverse. Most affordable is Domaine Cauhapé La Canopée Sec 2011, from Jurançon, at just £16 per bottle and with a Quality score of 733.
The most expensive wine – but still at only £34 per bottle – is one of the two Italians that feature this month: Elio Grasso Barolo Ginestra Vigna Casa Maté 2004, which has an exceptional Quality score of 971. The other wine in the table with a Quality score above 900 is Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Clos Windsbuhl Pinot Gris 2007, from Alsace, priced at under £30 and with a Quality score of 906.
Please see our previous Value Pick blog for a note on prices.
The latest price data is in, enabling Wine Lister’s algorithm to award new 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).
This month, the new Value Picks include a Champagne, a Port, and a sweet white Bordeaux, but it is Piedmont that dominates, with three of its wines achieving Value Pick status: Poderi Luigi Einaudi Barolo Costa Grimaldi 2008, Luigi Pira Barolo Marenca 2007 and Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba Cascina Francia 2010.
Each wine is priced at £44 per bottle or less – with half under £30 – and all have impressive Quality scores (based on ratings from our three partner critics) of 845 or above.
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. As lower retail prices are likely to sell first, the prices you see on Wine Lister may be below the Wine-Searcher average in some instances.
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.
The Wine Lister Indicators have been devised to tell you in one glance the particular characteristics of a wine. One of those is Value Picks: wines which represent exceptional quality for the price. Of all the fine wines in our database, Value Picks have the best quality-to-price ratio, where we have applied a coefficient to allow exceptional quality to be recognised, even for higher-priced wines.
In the image below, taken from our study “Bordeaux – Reasons to Hope”, we list the value picks among the 100 foremost wines of Bordeaux. On our site you can view a wider selection of Bordeaux Value Picks.
To read the complete Bordeaux study, follow this link, and if you are not a subscriber yet, why not try a 14-day free trial.
