Bucking the Trend: Burgundy’s Secret | Episode 3

27:39Jonathan Stevenson:Was that from the Daily Mail by any chance? I would have probably guessed so, yes. But as I say, I don't think we need to give too much. For those of you looking for a 2023 Napa Valet Rosé, Meg and Markle's made one. Can I make one point? Please do. I actually think celebrity-endorsed wines can save the wine industry. Interesting. is that for this week or everyone says that Gen Z and the next generation are not interested in wine we talked about on podcast one what is the one thing that celebrities and influence can do now whether the wine is good value whether it represents terroir whether it can engage the audience around the quality of the wines and the sum of the things that Paul's talking about is slightly different but in an era where the wine industry as a whole isn't coming together to try and put forward a united front about wine and combat some of this negativity i actually think celebrities and celebrity endorsed wine when done well is an incredible and incredibly powerful way for the wine industry to re-engage new audiences yeah you're making me wish that i'd kept in my higher or lower game now of uh of various wineries endorsed by celebrities we'll save that for next time um do you understand what yeah i do 100 i think i mean even just you know the recent space of, you know, you know, you've seen it even in very good top labels, you know, Domaine Dujac, prime example, becoming synonymous with, you know, DJ Khaled and a host of top basketball players.

29:13Well, I was thinking of Snoop Dogg's 19 Crimes. That was on the list. Most highest volume sold, one of the top three most highest volume sold wines in the world.

29:20Jonathan Stevenson:I think the most successful line of products for Treasury Wine Estates by margin and volume And accessible like everywhere. To everyone. Oh, there's actually... Here we go. Yeah. Snoop Dogg 19 crimes. Yeah, we go. Was that number one? What was the question? Price point. I mean, this is sort of the bare bones of the game. Perhaps we could just still save it for next. I mean, Post Malone's got his own rosé from Provence. Obviously, Meghan Markle's new rosé from California. Brad Pitt. John Legend. The all-mig rosé. The all-mig rosé. Less well-known. But yeah, obviously, now that they've... I think it's...

29:56And is it Brad that's kept the estate? Probably, yeah. In the separation, but... I mean, that's actually incredibly good wine.

30:02Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, Miraval. Ernie Els, the Big Easy. Andrea Bocelli. Okay. He's got his own Chianti. So yeah, I mean, it's definitely a new place. I mean, not just wine, obviously Spirits as well. Thanks. I actually think I saw something the other day saying Lionel Messi's put his name to a wine. I'm not sure about that, but another example. I think engaging young audiences around wine, this is a great opportunity and a lever that can be used by industry, for sure. Yeah, definitely. And I think we're in a time where it's weird because we're going to come on obviously to white burgundy particularly. And I think there's a balancing act between the estates that are so revered that they don't really need to do any of that.

30:53but then also estates like Dujac I think you'd again use that example because they're quite at the forefront of wanting to they could do like a collaboration they could do

31:01Jonathan Stevenson:like a special cuvee one DJ Colin they could call it the one I don't know they call it the one they release like a special track and you have to scan a QR code at the end of the track to get access to the release and it's sold as an NFT and if you buy it another one that's the next vintage they don't call them after each year and another one he is going to do another vintage it's impossible for him not to know yeah what do they call it Dujac and DJ Khaled what's their have we got a name for it I don't think they're going to consult us on how they're going to take this process forward but what I would say is that even though D-O-O-J-A you've gone off on one but I think a bit like DJ Khaled yeah another one no I think Dujac as a label though it's obviously it doesn't need DJ Khaled no it doesn't but it could do with him but they are you know they are an estate that are trying to bring their ways forward I think it's evident that they're trying to engage with the younger audience and I don't think they're even aware perhaps of DJ Khaled and what access he's getting I think the allocation came from Jay-Z I think Jay-Z gave his Chambaton allocation sorry how do you say it properly no I was just going to say there's a bar in France who is it's a wine bar who's selling exclusively celebrities wines okay this is perfect yeah what's the name of it if anyone's interested in stocks and wines you can easily google it but I where in France I actually don't know I think it's in the south of France in the Rhone Valley I think so so if you google it and put what celebrity owned wine bar yeah pretty much yeah I think so international wines we'll find it for you and put a link yeah exactly but there is a bar that yeah it exists there are other bars available as well in the world we should say that but yeah I think let's get on more pressingly to a much bigger story which is consume not just our market but you know the global macro picture currently and the Trump tariffs and his very nicely written letters that he sent round you know last week honing in on you know our market and the EU specific tariff or that's I guess now been threatened or delayed until August 1st, 30%.

33:28I don't think it takes a genius to kind of recognise that that would be quite a damning tariff for all you know.

33:35Jonathan Stevenson:Sorry, just to summarise, what's the state of play here at the moment? State of play, so rewinding slightly, so the current tariff is 10 % across all European goods, wine included and And that's, well, the sort of, I guess, the deadline for negotiations was, I think, June or July 8th, July 9th. It's been moved back to August 1st now, as have all of the other tariffs. But with that new date is a deadline and a fixed number, which for EU goods has been set at 30%. So it's basically a two and a half week. So wine's been lumped in with all EU goods at the moment. There's no specific treatment of any particular good.

34:13No, there are some key exemptions under negotiation. Well, the exemption stuff that Trump likes. It's wine spirits and aircraft pots. Oh, they are exempted? Well, that's part of the negotiations. I believe the head negotiator is actually currently in Washington negotiating. But the hope is that everything should settle, the noise around it, the fear of just what damage it could do to not just this market, but others I think is enough for hopefully them to get to a point in these negotiations over the coming weeks before August 1st to try and get to a solution that is favourable. But I think it's one of those where we can kind of suggest and give indications as to what might happen.

34:58I think it's fair to say it's pretty damning. What do you think, Paul, if 30 % tariffs come August 1st are imparted on European goods and by proxy on wine, how do you think that will pan out for the fine wine market? The thing is, we've seen these tariffs before. They were in place between 2017 and 2021. Only for a short window, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A matter of months. They have only 25 % between when Biden came in. He abolished them about only three months after, no? In 2021, I think, yeah. But the truth is they have almost not impacted the French wines. So the French and the Italian wines, the US market only represents about 20 % of the export, which is already obviously a significant amount, but it's not the biggest part.

35:51And also that share has been reduced by 14 % only over the period when he was in power last time. and I don't think it's going to change much really the market. It's not going to have a drastic effect.

36:08Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, I believe any tariffs between 10 % and 20 % will have no impact on the demand for fine wine in the US. I agree with that. I think it might result in a little bit more direct acquisition or direct buying from US consumers from Europe and potentially trying to buy tariff-free and storing wines in Europe until they want to bring them back. but the way you got to think about it is a$500 bottle of wine the people in America that have that amount of money and there's there is a huge number of people that are high net worth in the US if that goes from$500 to$600 that doesn't impact your demand or interest in acquiring or buying or consuming that wine and that's a simple fact just economics there's quite a lot of price in elasticity at the top end of the fine wine market in the much broader consumer large volume based wines this could be a massive death knell to consumer choice and it could have a big impact on demand but i think at the top end of the spectrum it's not going to have any impact and added to that there is very little depth in the market in the us for back vintage collectible wines so they're either just not going to drink them or they're just going to drink them at a slightly higher price that's the difficulty though i do think that what when you look at it more closely it's i understand your point but i think you have to also have consideration for you know there's there's just swathes of really small um i mean a lot of them are clients of ours that i speak to regularly and like they have these small boutique distribution type you know wine shops and and businesses and and they're they're really going to suffer because their biggest market is for giving people access to otherwise very difficult to access you know relatively affordable wines from europe and obviously if they have to pass on that extra 20 % margin do you think that's going to dissuade the customer no no not 10 % I think 30 % is is is game over for like lots of those companies but then I but then I think actually is it a is it is it sort of long term maybe going to be a way to slightly break down what feels to me like quite a a rigid and an archaic system of distribution of wines in the US and to your point will people start trying to circumnavigate that slightly start thinking about storing wines in in the UK and Europe for longer periods.

38:19Jonathan Stevenson:Well, not to dwell on this too much, but if you do think about the hyper-localized retailer that you describe, that hyper-localized retailer supply chain is currently winery, distributor, importer, retailer, consumer. So effectively, there's four legs to that table, right? So those four legs to the table with an extra 20 % added on is obviously going to, you know, constantine it to a much, much higher price to the consumer. So to your point, we all know that because of the way the system works that consumer could go directly to the distributor in europe and cut out two legs of that table and even if they do have to pay an extra 20 that's probably still going to be less than the importer and also the retailer's margin they were already putting on the wines that would be my point that probably starts to change behavior which is what i was trying to say which is kind of i don't think it's going to stop people buying these wines it might change the behavior and where they buy these wines in these channels I think yeah that would be back of napkin my summary for the sort of more mass market of wine collectors in the US.

39:17They are almost mollycoddled into the system as it stands but the big collectors and the people that access the Lois the you know the PYCMs are the ones that actually already circumnavigate the system anyway. They have their collections held half in Europe.

39:32Jonathan Stevenson:They buy direct from source. I think it will just hopefully push quite a lot of that, potentially that market into a more closer alignment with how the UK and Europe wine collectors exist. So it won't be the worst thing. I was actually going to say, I think it's a fantastic time to be buying North American and South American wines. They are cheap at the moment. And in the last four years when Trump was president, their performances were actually fantastic. so it's a great time to be buying you know the top names out there really the Screaming Eagle, the Opposwine this type of names really it's a fantastic time to be buying these.

40:07Jonathan Stevenson:Because you would assume that we've increased tariffs on imported wine that local domestic wines will have increased demand and therefore prices will go up. Yeah which is what kind of I think in Trump said that's what he thinks as well which you know in that example is probably true. Well I thought Trump was doing it for all the champagne producers in the US there's no champagne producer in the us i know that's the can i just say you just mentioned pycm and uh that's what we've got in our in our glass we've got any thoughts on this wine paul what do you think i i i love the the lime flavor it's incredible and also the lens on the palate is incredible it's it's a beautiful wine it's a really really really good wine um yeah to your point i think it's just got that really nice amalgamation of kind of zesty citric fruit, but not to the point where they're over sharp because then it just sort of comes back in with like the balance, the, as you say, like the sort of bit of minerality there.

41:08Typical of Merceau. Did you know that Merceau have the deepest cellars in Burgundy? And as a result, they can store more wine at deeper levels.

41:17Jonathan Stevenson:Did you know that? No. That's what he comes to the podcast for. Absolutely. Jay's snippets. And by the way, PYCM stands for Pierre-Yves Collin-Mouret yeah so I mean this is this is almost and that's how you pronounce it that's how you say segwayed us perfectly on to I bet you all can't wait for me and Jay to butcher that our main topic yeah why not I mean whilst we're talking about Pierre-Yves Collin-Mouret because how was that was that okay yeah we're having okay yeah we get a little nod of approval pretty good actually yeah I mean he's obviously been one of the standout producers in in Burgundy over the last 5-10 years become increasingly popular family backgrounds actually the son of Mark Collin another well-known family another well-known producer of white burgundy married to Caroline Maury who is against another top producer husband and wife team but actually produced their wines on the separate labels I think what's really interesting about Pierre-Yves Conor Moray is he kind of represents for me this kind of modern interpretation of white burgundy which is kind of grounded in the traditional elements but obviously with this sort of leaning towards reductive winemaking for those of you that don't know reductive winemaking essentially it is the winemaking process whereby you try and avoid any exposure to well not any exposure but you try and limit the exposure to oxygen so the opposite of you know oxidative winemaking processes which you'd probably become more familiar with you know sherry for example has oxidative notes to it as a as a as a wine um so reductive in in burgundy has become like the kind of the vogue thing i mean over the last like five ten years it was like really the the the popular style of winemaking preserves freshness preserves fruit but you get this beautiful and this is probably something we both enjoyed when we had the mercer 02 cautionary oh yeah you get this like matchstick um you know kind of gunpowder note or flavor like flintiness on on the nose and that's what is really really synonymous and that's when you have a top winemaker who really knows what they're doing they manage to capture this beautiful kind of sulfuric note on the nose and of course when it goes badly and it's overly reductive only overly reduced they limit too much exposure obviously that can go wrong and obviously become something that's too funky um so for those listening who haven't really had exposure and understand the difference between reductive and oxidative wine you know we'd really recommend trying to source and find some chardonnay made with reductive style because as i said it it has become very very popular pierre-yve collin-marie is one of the big proponents of it but it it just gives a complexity that paul was talking about earlier in his um you know wine assessment um approach you know the complexity because chardonnay is quite a neutral grape you know in itself and so that's where the winemaking can have quite a big influence on the interpretation of Chardonnay.

44:16Jonathan Stevenson:And the Toile, yeah. And I think the other thing that's interesting about Chardonnay, and I think this all kind of distills back into our main topics, don't worry if I'm going off on a tangent, but the thing about Chardonnay, and a lot of people say it's the king of white grape varietals, because it is neutral, I think it does enable so many different interpretations. And I think for a negative perspective, you have people that say anything but Chardonnay because they're used to kind of this American-style, overly oaked buttery Australian style of you know you know Chardonnay but then you have something like this which is linear it's focused it's tense it's complex it has depth you know it's it's got a long finish but you've also got you know this reductive style at the beginning which for me you know I absolutely love that sort of gunpowder struck match you know it's like the closest into a blank canvas isn't it as far as grapes flavour on the nose wow it takes everything in that's put into it right so it can as you say it can be i mean we will come on to it i think um well i mean obviously the topic you want to talk about is white burgundy right we do i just before we got there though i was just going to quickly rewind back because as well as uh paul um producing this uh this new way of tasting wine obviously i just know that it was worth maybe you giving us a quick insight i know you've been beavering away this past week uh on a rating system of your own um Thought you might want to quickly give us a quick sort of insight to that.

45:43Yeah, I mean, using Burgundy perhaps.

45:46Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, at Cult Wines, you know, obviously our main purpose is trying to kind of, you know, identify opportunities that exist within the wine market. And obviously we can sit here and taste this wine and think it tastes brilliant, but there's obviously a quantitative way to evaluate wine. And there isn't really a single system. You know, a lot of people use different techniques. And I think something we've been working on over the last few weeks and months around leveraging all the data we have to kind of really drive an outcome in terms of can we really give a singular rating for every single wine based upon a certain number of characteristics so the five characteristics that we look at for each wine is vintage quality because obviously every different vintage obviously we're talking about the 2018 here has obviously a different level of rating you know within kind of the the wine industry um we then look at a critic score what's interesting is we've used a lot of data science modeling techniques to actually look at the distribution of scores so you know what's been really interesting when you look at the data is you look at u.s wines especially when it comes to collectible u.s wines you know there's such a big distribution of scores at the higher end of the spectrum like 98 99 100 points if you look at burgundy it's almost impossible to get 100 points if you look at the distribution of scores across the thousands of wines they are almost very very few score 100 very few score 99 98 so then when start trying to compare apples and pears you need to find a way to do that so we built like a normalization model that's based upon the distribution of scores for each region so in effects anything that's scored in burgundy we actually score up based upon the normalization so we do that and obviously in some regions like us we actually downscore the wines because of the normalization score um that's not to downscore and say they're not good wines but it's just because of the distribution and to actually make it a fair assessment across um different wines different regions um we then look at fair value so fair value for us is if you look at a particular wine so we've got pierre yves connor maury merceau 2018 we look at all the vintages of 28 of sorry all the vintages of this particular wine and we say if this 2018 is worth 100 pounds versus the 2017 16 15 14 based upon the age of that wine and also the quality which is derived by the score what do we assess it should be and you know if you have a very high scoring uh vintage this one is very young and we have a version of that that's 20 years old, based upon our model, we would assess and say the old one should be worth more because it's been older, it's more mature, it's ready to drink and it's been in the market for longer.

48:07Jonathan Stevenson:So we do a fair value assessment, which says, okay, if it's a hundred pounds today and we assess and think the fair value is 150, then we think it's undervalued. The next criteria that we look at is we look at performance. So how has this wine appreciated or depreciated in value of last six months, three months, five years? We weight it slightly higher towards the longer term performance rather than a shorter term performance. And we give that a weighted score and then give that a score out of 100. And then finally, we look at liquidity. And liquidity is a really kind of game-changing metric that we've built and I don't think exists anywhere else.

48:38Jonathan Stevenson:So we've actually gathered and analysed over£280 million worth of transactions in the fine wine market over the last 10 years. And that's across over 11 ,000 Elwins, which for people listening at home, an Elwin is a unique skew for a wine. So a wine in a vintage is one Elwin. So 10 ,000 different wines of vintages have traded over the last 10 years. We've accumulated all those transactions about, as I said, 280 million pounds worth of transactions. And we effectively built a liquidity model. So what we do is first of all, we look at a producer level. So what we do is we look at the volume in centilitres that that producer sold within its region.

49:11Jonathan Stevenson:And then we rank every producer within its region. So Pierre-Yves Colomori, I think, comes in probably top 10, if I can remember correctly, for Burgundy in terms of volume of wine sold. Then we look at the particular Elwin 7, which is effectively the wine in the vintage. We look at Merceau, Pierre-Yves Colomori. But instead of looking at volume or value, we look at frequency of transactions. And the reason we look at frequency of transactions is because every time a transaction happens, regardless of the volume or the value, it's basically saying that there is a buyer and a seller in the market that's willing to agree a price.

49:40Jonathan Stevenson:So that means that their price is more discoverable. So therefore, something with higher frequency over the period of time it's been available means it's more discoverable and more predictable. So then we give it a ranking based on the frequency of trades. And then finally, we look at the value of transactions. So we just purely look at how much of the PAE of Columary 2018 from the transactional database that we have, do we know has traded in the market in the last 10 years? And obviously that's only been around for the last three or four years in terms of being on the market. And then we aggregate that and give everything a score per year rather than the total.

50:13Jonathan Stevenson:And we combine those. So we weight it 20 % towards producer, 30 % towards the wine, and 50 % towards the wine in the vintage. because at the end of the day, it's still most important around the actual wine and vintage and give that a score. So those five characteristics come to give it to give a single wine rating. But you know at that point that your single wine rating is going to suggest, well, the wines that are scored the highest are going to be, they've performed really well, they trade a lot in the market, they're undervalued currently, they've got a really high critic score, and they come from a good vintage.

50:45Jonathan Stevenson:So in a way, a wine with a high score kind of meets all the criteria you'd ever want in terms of wanting to assess and buy and invest in a wine. Now, there could be many scenarios, depending on your situation, that you might want to buy or invest or collect a wine that may have a lower score because actually you may be more interested in something that has really high liquidity and really high fair value. Or maybe you're really interested in something that has really high critic scores, or maybe you're not bothered about critic scores. Maybe say, look, vintage and critical, I don't care about.

51:12Jonathan Stevenson:All I care about is liquidity and performance. I want to know the wines that trade a lot and have the best performance because even if it's got an 89 point score, it's going to be something that I know has a potentially high track record or opportunity to deliver performance. And I bet you didn't expect that answer when you asked me the question. No, I mean, the detail is incredible. I think it's just two really interesting parts of the great market that is wine. I mean, this end of things with Paul's much more simplistic way of explaining how to taste wine. but that i mean there's obviously so many places that can go so excited to see more about that um and obviously use it more but also for people to to be aware of that level of detail and have access to it and it's something that we're gonna start making available and talk about more but yes it's been really exciting even for myself in an industry for 15 years to work on a project like this and have the data that we have and get the outcomes and the insights we're getting is exciting so yeah something that's been a really interesting project to work on very excited about that um Right, let's get on to the main topic, which is white burgundy.

52:22It's almost as if we planned drinking this wine today to marry with the main topic of discussion. Look, I think it's fair to say we currently as a business and as analysers of the market, we see an opportunity in white burgundy. I think it's fair to say that it's one of many parts of the market that's undervalued at the moment. I mean, you know, let's just run away with it. I mean, you know, there's so much to talk about. I think, first of all, this expression here we've had today is fantastic. I think the first thing that I think of when I think of white burgundy is just high, super high quality, married with obviously, you know, really low yields and difficult access.

53:09um two kind of key things you've just kind of mentioned as being probably quite useful to be looking out for when it comes to you know what wines to be to be looking at for opportunity i

53:19Jonathan Stevenson:think um let me ask you a broad question do it to both of you statistically we know the wine market has generally declined in value over the last two or three years the one portion of the market that has bucked that trend when i say buck the trend prices have fallen a little bit but i'd say there is a significant differential between the performance of the white burgundy index versus the rest of the market why do we think that is paul i mean for me it's pretty simple i was on the phone again with a client yesterday who told me and and keep in mind this man is a multi millionaire his favorite wine guess what white burgundy so and and this is the truth for so many wealthy people around the world they some of them have not yet discovered white burgundy and when they do, they're like, wow, this is absolutely incredible.

54:12That's what I want to drink for the rest of my life. And I think this is a trend that is never going to stop the day people discover fine wine from white Burgundy.

54:22Jonathan Stevenson:Just to go a little bit further than that, in the fine wine market, the top of the market, the top 1%, how would you describe the landscape for white wine versus the landscape for red wine? Oh, I know where you're taking me there. It's minuscule. right you have bordeaux but you're saying i don't know how many bottles every year are incredibly good quality wine but they're all red right right in in the top white wines you have so little you have so little and i think people are actually but how many even subcategories of white wine at the top end of the spectrum are there oh there are very very very few comparatively I would say 0.01 % compared to the red wines, really.

55:06But the only other white wines that are incredibly, I was going to say, delicious and expensive is the white Bordeaux. But there are so few producers producing them. And obviously you have a few like, I'm talking about French wines, obviously. but in France you have the Puy Fissé you have the Didier D 'Aguenot and this type of producers that are famous for their delicious white expensive wines but again the production is minuscule

55:35Jonathan Stevenson:absolutely Rhone Valley Rhone Valley Rhone Valley very few but mostly dominated by red completely Italy Chateauneuf-du-Pape white is incredible and I highly encourage everyone to try it I was going to just simply say that the only reason I'm just going down that route is does the structural nature of white wine versus red wine and where burgundy and white burgundy and chardonnay sits give it that downside protection in the the trend over the last two and a half three years is that all luxury assets have gone down in value significantly in a wine market a lot of big brands have come absolutely massively down in value but it just hasn't really happened as much in white like does that give it some sort of like bubble of protection for sure i think a little bit And I think it's just that it's a bit like, it's the same for Burgundy in general, but I think it's more so, far more so with the whites that it's the access, it's how much is produced.

56:30I think, obviously, Tom, you can perhaps give us a quick insight as to what Premox is. I think that didn't probably help in what was a journey for Burgundian whites. I think it was kind of, it stuttered quite badly when the Premox era sort of came about. It's not completely gone, but it's effectively, you can give a perhaps better summary, but over-oxidization of 80s, 90s vintages of white Burgundy, which really kind of put people off. I think a common misconception might be that does white wine age as well as red wine? En masse, no, but for the very top vintages of Chardonnay, then of course it does.

57:10It can age for decades. But it's as complex as any part of the wine market, right? So I think it's that complexity as well, maybe, that also gives it that sort of shelter from as much. Have you been to a fine wine dinner?

57:26Jonathan Stevenson:Yes. Paul, have you been to a fine wine dinner? No, once or twice. Have you been to a red fine wine dinner? Yes. At the red fine wine dinner, do they serve white wine? Occasionally. And what wine do they serve occasionally? Always, almost always. Burgundy. White Burgundy? White Burgundy. Absolutely. Yeah. which is like and it's not it's not white burgundy a producer the case it's not even just like every now and again it's like almost universally the case that if you're a red wine tasting that it's focused on that red wine and you'd go well we're going to have a white there's a little starter a little palate cleanser it's almost always unless that winery makes a white unless that winery makes a white it's almost universally white burgundy yeah which again I just think says something right about the whole market it's just interesting it's fascinating and and again in in the top most expensive wines the only other one is going to be Aubrey en Blanc in in Bordeaux but it's it's all about white burgundy really that dominates the the fine wine white market um so yeah it's fascinating but I mean when you try wines like this you really understand why this wine is delicious so yeah I think interesting thing as well for me i think it is one of the reasons why i think grower champagne has also been a big growth category and i think why it will continue to be because i think what grower champagne can do even though it's obviously a sparkling uh wine is that actually the top grower champagnes why are they why are they popular why are they successful well firstly instead of the grand marks and the big house champagnes they're focusing on terroir specific so quite often they're site specific they're vineyard specific they're parcel specific and quite a lot they are um you know single varietal so blanc de blanc for example 100 chardonnay so you have this trend in the champaign region where undeniably they have incredible terroir from these vineyards that have been around for a long time so we know they can make great fruit um and you've now got winemakers that are applying in my mind a white burgundian style of winemaking to single site parcels in champagne yeah and i mean i've even heard of um cedric bouchard who makes rose de jean and he was actually interviewed saying he actually doesn't really like sparkling wine and actually that kind of says so much about him you know one of the top producers of grower champagne one of the most expensive grower champagnes you can buy today even within the context of all champagnes one of the most expensive and here's a winemaker saying that actually he's not that bothered about sparkling wine and actually what he's really bothered about is the wine the underlying base wine that he's producing that generates the sparkling wine that you have in your glass he's solely dedicated and focused on making that as high a quality as possible and in a way i think that as we've seen the prices of white burgundy increase stratospherically in some instances we're seeing a gravitation for the top collectors to go to grow a champagne as a way to kind of scratch that itch.

1:00:29Jonathan Stevenson:And I think in a way, sometimes when I've had some of the best grower champagnes, it does feel like you're having like a top Pouligny Mont Rocher. It does feel like a Premier Cru, Chastanet Mont Rocher or a Merceau. And actually, you know, when you're tasting, you're like, wow, that underlying wine is like, that wine is amazing, regardless of the fact that it's then obviously got the effervescence and the balance of the bubbles and the mousse that comes with it, which is also phenomenal and gives it this, you know, je ne sais quoi. But actually, the underlying wine that kind of, constructs it in my in my mind it kind of is the closest comparison to white burgundy so trying to flesh that out a little bit more then so okay just direct question paul you know you manage a number of collections of fine wine um what percentage of those collections currently are exposed to white burgundy?

1:01:24I mean, the investment-grade wines, and I think it goes back to Tom's point, the investment-grade wines that are white are minuscule. They are so few. And they are almost exclusively from burgundy. So, yeah, of course, my clients... But it's like 1-2%, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. My clients are exposed to white burgundy as an investment, but it will not represent the majority of their holdings, obviously. I was discussing it earlier today, and I just think it's almost like in a market which has very few kind of best-kept secrets. I just think it's like the most obvious part of the market.

1:02:06The most obvious best-kept secret. Basically. Just because it's like you said, it's served at every dinner. It's almost exclusively known as being the best. Every restaurant in the world has one. And I think almost by, if you think about it in the context of like red wines and how great some of the very best Burgundy is, and not just exclusively Burgundy, but of course it's that age old question, oh, can you tell the difference? Yes, you can. When you experience like the very, very best, it's life changing. But with white wine, I think by proxy and like, almost like if you look at how much white wine is in the market and also how much people drink white wine.

1:02:38I mean, going back like centuries, you know, there was a time when I was reading that, you know, white wine was actually more favoured than red wine. When water was less, you know, easy to come by, like white wine was the go to.

1:02:51Jonathan Stevenson:Or when water could potentially make you ill, they drank wine instead. Yeah, exactly. But like white wine was actually, white wine was consumed. I prefer to drink white wine rather than red wine. And I think if you speak to a lot of people, they'll say, oh, and this is less experienced wine, you know, drinkers. But they'd say, I don't like Chardonnay. and when you drill down like you said you've probably just been exposed to like mass volume over oak shard from you know wherever like Australia maybe which littered the shelves in like the 80s but then you give them something like this and they'll be like oh my god that was life changing and I think that is actually more stark of a difference in terms of quality to even some of the best reds versus the more generic reds if that makes sense there's nothing I love more when someone tells me they don't like shard no yeah because I know I'm going to change that opinion exactly exactly And it's not that difficult.

1:03:37Jonathan Stevenson:It's not that difficult. They've just been scarred. Absolutely. And as you said, very often they are Americans. Given, Paul, your book that's about to come out, do you have any top tips for anyone listening when it comes to white burgundy? Like, you know, little different areas to buy from. If you don't know the names, if you don't know the vineyards, is there like an approach you can take to... Because it is quite confusing, burgundy, especially if you don't have a lot of knowledge around it. Burgundy is the most difficult region. Do you have top tips in terms of like value for money when you're looking at a restaurant wine list?

1:04:12This is a very difficult question to answer because, okay, I am convinced that usually quality goes up with the price, right? And it is like, it's very rare to find a very expensive wine that is not good. And it is very rare to find a very cheap wine that is delicious, right? There are exceptions, but... So it's sadly... By and large, it's been through a filtration process of being acquired by the restaurant and all that. Yeah. But in the end, it's all about trying wines. And sadly, but it's true, very often, you need to spend a bit of money in order to get access to these fantastic wines. One thing I would say as a kind of counter to that, or I guess almost an extension to that, is if you look at the last two decades of critic scores as we said, generally speaking, Burgundian scores slightly lower.

1:05:11It's evident that the last decade has been better scoring for white wines than the one prior. And I think that's kind of the case in quite a few regions in terms of just general levels of production, better techniques, more technology, all of these things coming into the wine market. But I think the base is rising as well as the top. The very top stuff is getting better and better. but like the bottom of the market is coming with it and then you've touched on some of the sort of neighbouring regions you know you can go down the route of you know exploring I was at a venue in London recently and we had the Bourgogne Blanc from Hubert Lamy and in actual fact the first bottle was caught but the second bottle was fantastic which again I think is another thing maybe people have a bit of a back of mind you know sort of concern with white burgundy it maybe with that whole you know era of primox and that concern that bottles can be maybe bad depending on how they've been kept but just on that point yeah because i think it actually could be quite

1:06:15Jonathan Stevenson:a good framework for a more novice or beginner coming into white burgundy is obviously so just to explain it bourgogne blanc what jay mentioned effectively means grapes can come from anywhere in the whole of Burgundy and be blended together to make a wine. So not village specific, not vineyard specific. So the grapes can be grown from anywhere, you know, from the highest quality to the lowest quality. Obviously, they don't generally use the highest quality grapes. It's generally lower quality grapes. Then you have village wines. The minimum requirement for a village wine is it has to come from vineyards within the village designated vineyards from that particular village.

1:06:51Jonathan Stevenson:So a Merceau comes from vineyards within the Merceau Appalachian. then you have premier crew um so the premier crews can be can be labeled as like merceau premier crew merceau premier queue with the vineyard name which is called lier d if it has the lier d which is the vineyard name it means it those greats have to have come from that vineyard if it just says merceau premier crew it can come from any of the vineyards that are designated as premier crew so merceau village anything from the whole of the merceau village area merceau premier has to be premier crew and of course then you have the grand crews which lose the Lier D so you lose the Merceau well actually Merceau doesn't have a Grand Cru but you lose the Plinnie Montrachet for example where most of the Grand Cru's are but anyway to Jay's point I think which he made a really good one is my recommendation to people always would be try and buy either for your money depending on your budget try and buy either the best producer you can for your budget in terms of you know I would like your point if you've got£50 to spend or£100 to spend go for a Bourgogne Blanc from a Joubert Lamy which is one of the top 5-10 producers of white wine today in Burgundy and try and just get any of his wines if you can afford any of his wines within your budget regardless if it's Bourgogne Blanc or the Village and a bit like today we've had the Pierre-Yves Colomori Merceau not a Premier Cru not a Grand Cru but if your money could stretch that if your budget could stretch to that go for the best producers you can and try whatever you can access at that price point and similarly the other way around is you know go for the highest level of classification if it's a producer that isn't well known someone you don't recognize maybe someone that isn't as highly respected because i'm not saying highly respected i was almost gonna say because if you look at like louis jadeau right or you look at like some of the bigger negotiant names people will shy away from like buying their like merceau perrier or that their batard monrochette but actually they're pretty good value in the spectrum of white burgundy so if you've only got two three hundred pounds and you really wanted to try like a batard monrochette then go and try like the Louis Jadot version of it because I can almost guarantee it's going to be absolutely superb.

1:09:02I was going to say if you're thinking of drinking white burgundy or burgundy full stop and you're skinning said cat there are more than one way to do it and I think your way is one but I would almost say that I've tried to combine that with like you say just approaching each village finding your feet as to which ones you prefer because there's quite distinct differences right? I mean, you know, Meersault, for instance, versus... Well, the style of the winemaking, right? Exactly, like Mont Rocher versus... You know, they're all going to have a lot of different nuance. The same grape, obviously, different techniques and approaches to making them.

1:09:37But you either go, as best you can, familiarise yourself with the top names and then go as far down as you can to afford and try them as many times as possible. But then within the different opportunities to access the different styles from Burgundy, do that as well because then you can start to cross compare find your favourites in those villages go up and down but okay

1:09:58Jonathan Stevenson:so just jump in there like we've obviously produced a report on white burgundy recently so if you have if you bookmark that webpage next time you're a wine list next time you're a shop we produce a list of top tier like high conviction producers that will basically very well established names like Pierre-Yves Colomori then we've done the ones to watch which are much less well known probably names you haven't seen or heard of before maybe names have only started making wines in the last one or two vintages just bookmark that page because there's probably well 30 or 40 producers on that on that list and that's what i'm saying like if you just have that list and go i'm in a okay i'm in a wine shop or i'm in a restaurant who out of this list can i get for my budget and i don't really care if it's bourguin blanc or mercer or premier crew i'm just gonna go for that one what do you think paul no i agree and i was also going to say there is one thing you should always try is a very old white burgundy like that costurie i had a few years a few weeks ago at the 2002 merceau by costurie it smelled like caramel almost like popcorn sweet popcorn flavor now you cannot or was it up here oh it was it was on the table it's funny how quickly the smell changed in the glass like within 20 minutes that caramel flavor popcorn flavor was bursting through my nose it was incredible and you called me up to check whether it should taste like that you you you like i just opened this wine it tastes like this is that is that right and i was like yeah that's what it should be like it it like you need to try this one that's exactly what you're after absolutely no it's it's it's you know it's important for any wine lover to discover an old white burgundy in their life well that's the thing i think again i think we mentioned it maybe on the first pod but white wines in general has a general like consumer perception that they don't age because obviously you anticipate aged wines to be red always but actually with white burgundy again you know i've been fortunate to have some white burgundy's from like 70s and 80s and 90s as well you know when you get a good one it's sure as you said it's phenomenal because of that complexity that you talk about the levels there's been that big big like shift into people doing the same with old champagne right vintage like yeah whereas actually people hadn't they've almost like shut shut the door on it and it's like well first of all it means there's loads there's there's more opportunity around to pick stuff up because if people aren't it's like anything if people aren't doing it you can you can probably find your bargains find at least a chance to try and also coupled with you know pools um it's just a bit of fun i think if you if you're someone with friends that love wine it's you know in in a world where you know going out for dinner etc is quite expensive thing to do just go and buy and budget between you you know whatever you can afford together on a really old bottle of Whiteberg and you'll just have a great time doing it because it's just a unique experience more than anything yeah I mean look to your point in an age where going out for dinner now is going to be especially in London like minimum £100 a head plus depending on what you buy for wine yeah you know you take that budget between four or five of you that are really kind of get a pizza you know and then don't bother with the budget on the wine don't bother with the food at all

1:13:08no I mean yeah I don't even think we've given enough time really to the full depth of white burgundy I think you know we would obviously just for those interested has everyone got

1:13:18Jonathan Stevenson:their favourite just to finish I mean we could round it off each with our favourite white burgundy we've ever tried if we've got one yeah what was yours for me for me it's that Gosturi Mercer 2002 yeah for sure from far it's hard not to go with a more recent experience with Pierre Girard dance Mont Rocher from Magnum. Which he had at the Le Paulet. Yeah. Very good. Brilliant. He was at the table and that was brilliant. I mean, yeah, again, for anyone that hasn't or even if you've not done it for a while and thought, actually, I haven't pulled any of my recent, you know, you know, Chardonnay, Burgundy from the cellar, then I'd urge you to do it this weekend.

1:13:59It's good weather for it as well.

1:14:00Jonathan Stevenson:Mine would be, I was very fortunate to be at Le Tour d 'Argent. Have you been, do you know Le Tour d 'Argent in Paris? Yeah, the restaurant in Paris, yeah. With one of the biggest wine lists in the world? Yeah. Another recommendation for those listening, if you're in Paris, make sure you go to Le Tour d 'Argent. The wine list is absolutely exceptional. You get a little tour downstairs, there's like 30 ,000 bottles. And the wine list is like a tome. Have you been? I've never been actually. It is a tome. And I think I was with a friend and we probably spent about an hour flicking through this tome trying to decide what to have.

1:14:29Jonathan Stevenson:But anyway, long story short, they've landed on. They've got incredible back vintages. We bought a few different things. But anyway, we hit Merceau Perrier from Coche Dory, 1992. 1902, one of the greatest vintages ever of white Burgundy. Coche Dory, in my opinion, the greatest proponent of white Burgundy. And Merceau Perrier, I think, is probably one of the two or three vineyards in Burgundy that should be Grand Cru, if you're wondering what they were. Chevrolet Chambers and Claude Saint-Jacques should be a Grand Cru. Nuit Saint-Georges, Les Saint-Georges should be a Grand Cru. and Merceau Perrier sorry should also be a Grand Cru in my opinion Merceau doesn't have any Grand Cru I'm not quite sure how that's possible anyway 92 Cocheterie Merceau Perrier one of the greatest white wine experiences I've ever had in my life phenomenal yeah hands down best white I've ever had amazing amazing final thoughts on the wine we've had today I mean I thought we've kind of covered it but I think it was exceptional obviously a fantastic producer you know to Tom's point not gonna completely blow your wallet apart.

1:15:32So yeah, if you do see that around, then well worth giving that a go. A final question for our guest, Paul, you've been great today. We look forward to reading your book and making use of your

1:15:43Jonathan Stevenson:What was the website again? Just for anyone at home? How to appreciate wine.com. Okay. How to appreciate wine.com. If you could open any bottle tonight, no rules, no budget, potentially no trousers. What would you, what would you pick and who's at the table with you? You can keep your trousers. Okay, thank you. No, no, 100%. Hedonism, the wine shop in London, has, in Mayfair, has one bottle of Echem 1829 that is nearly 200 years old wine and I would like to try that in my lifetime. Amazing. That is what I would drink. And who would be at the table with you enjoying that? probably my uncle apart from us obviously like my uncle the winemaker and if we allow dead people then my grandfather as well okay and not your dad because he'd just say I either like it or I don't and the risk would be 50-50 from saying I don't like it the truth is yes I would love to have my dad around it's just he's not part of this winemaking background of wine so obviously it's quite snuggling you're not here amazing yeah Tom do you want to wrap us up we can wrap up thank you so much for joining us Paul we've really enjoyed it my pleasure thank you this has been the third episode of Uncorked the podcast the Cult Wines podcast we really hope you've enjoyed watching and listening at home we would like to recommend you following us subscribing us we haven't really had many comments or inbound in terms of questions or things you'd like to discuss so we would encourage if you have any questions or anything you'd like to follow us up on please do leave a comment but the most important thing is to subscribe keep listening and thank you very much for joining us