Is This Bordeaux's Last Chance? | Episode 12

0:03Jonathan Stevenson:Welcome to Uncorked, a Cult Wines podcast where we take you behind the scenes of the fine wine market. I'm Tom Gearing, your host, and I'm joined as ever by our co-host, Jonathan Stevenson. How are you doing today, Joe? Very well. Very well. How are we doing? Yeah, good. Good to see you again. Nice to be back in the room. Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to it. Absolutely. And for this episode this month, we are joined by Aarash Ghatineh, Chief Revenue Officer at Cult Wines. and he normally comes in when we're talking big guns. When we're talking about the real meaty, more important things about the market, we need to bring in the big guns and Arash has joined us today.

0:35Jonathan Stevenson:Thank you for coming back onto the pod. Yeah, thanks for your instruction. Welcome back, AJ. Yeah, I'll describe myself. Happy with the intro? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm like the house wine, aren't I? But like, you don't have anyone else to bring in. You're kind of like, this is the table wine to talk table stakes. And what's a table wine? I'd have to disagree because I think today's podcast is an important one because it's the end of Q1. We are looking back on what happened in the first quarter of the wine market. Those regular listeners of the podcast will know that the wine market struggled last year and we started to see a bit of resurgence.

1:07Jonathan Stevenson:So I know a lot of people at home will be thinking, well, what's happened in the first quarter of the year? And it's been a really important time in the market. But more importantly, it is that time of year when Bordeaux and Primer rolls around. And so, you know, all eyes, all focus, all ears are now, you know, on the wine media, on everyone who's traveling to Bordeaux over the next week or so. So everyone will be looking to see what people's opinions are of the vintage. But there's so much to unpack there in terms of what's happening. So I think having you on the show is going to be very important to get our listeners really behind the scenes on the things that really matter when it comes to Bordeaux and Primer this year.

1:42Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, it's great to be here. Should we take it back to Q1? Start off with that? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think we ended the year on a high for Q4 2025. yeah I think versus where we had been I mean obviously the market had you know we've been calling out for some signs of recovery for most of last year and then it really started coming to being kind of back end of Q3 yeah I mean if I roll back to the last time I was on the pod it was around 12 months ago and that really did feel like the lowest ebb for the fine wine market it was like the doldrums wasn't it yeah EP 2024 was coming around like prices were still you know there's still a lot of downward volatility in prices.

2:25But then Q4, if we look at what happened in terms of the major market indices, the trading volumes, the bid offer ratio, action across all of the main platforms, including our own, things definitely picked up. And I think we've seen a continuation of that in Q1 as well.

2:41Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, without actually going into the actual numbers, anecdotally, what does the temperature feel like? Good. Yeah. I think things are stabilised for sure. I mean, if you think about where we were last year to where we are this year, Q1 has definitely provided a stable period for pricing. A lot more areas are gaining support at their current levels. People are buying a little bit more for stock. I mean, obviously, it's been an extremely volatile period in the macroeconomic environment, geopolitical situation, conflict in the Middle East. But I think during Q1, is this one of the first quarters where wine as an asset class has actually been a bit of a safe haven?

3:24It sounds weird to say that. Yeah. Because obviously we've been through such a deep correction. Yeah. And it's been an extremely demanding period for fine wine collectors, consumers and investors. But this period does feel like the calm whilst everywhere else has been extremely volatile.

3:42Jonathan Stevenson:I think last year, I think there was a lot of talk around when we went for that period of sort of September, October, we suddenly saw a little bit of a bounce, a little bit of stabilization about is this going to be a V-shaped recovery or what was expectations? I think we always, especially on this pod when we spoke about it, you know, we kind of tempered expectations a little bit in terms of thinking, you know, do you know what would be great for the wine market? It's just kind of six months of steady trading where we're not looking at prices dropping five, 10%. We're not seeing bids get hit really far below the market price.

4:11Jonathan Stevenson:We're not seeing a seller heavy market. And I think if I just look at that as a benchmark to judge Q1 by, I think that it's kind of met those expectations. I think if you actually look across the spectrum of wines, you know, and I think we were looking at earlier on Coltex where you can see transactional data. You know, there are just a lot of wines out there that you can see have been trading in and around the same price as Q4, if not trading up slightly. And yes, it's not mega sort of always gone up 10 % in a quarter Bitcoin sort of level of appreciation. But the wine market's never really been about that.

4:44Jonathan Stevenson:And I think after the two, three year period that we went through, you know, collectors and investors out there in the market have gone through. You know, I think this is a really welcome market cycle to be in versus where we were before, where I think genuinely you can feel pretty confident from one month to the next that there isn't going to suddenly be another shift in momentum downwards in terms of where Champagne's are trading out, where Bordeaux's are trading out, where Super Tuscans. And if anything, we are starting to see people snap up opportunities where, and we'll come on to this, of course, where there really looks like there's strong value.

5:19Just to touch on that, I think the last distressed sellers started exiting the market around Q3, Q4 last year. And what that's left behind is there's less speculation. in the market today people are buying based on just very true fundamentals yeah okay so you've got discerning buyers coming in and they're looking at picking up stuff for stock and inventory because the fundamentals of you know are very clear yeah if you just go back to it and always i think about this when i'm speaking to you know friends you know clients or just people are interested in like the the trends when it comes to to wine what are like the first principles of looking at allocating capital to wine or what the fundamentals okay are the wines age worthy yeah okay so can they age for 10 20 30 years okay are they well scored yeah okay and are they fair value and i think if you look at where the market's been for bordeaux burgundy may less so champagne will come on to that a sec like those three principles are very true yeah and then it comes down to do you like the wine are you going to drink it and then if you're more of a trader is there liquidity for that for that wine i think a lot of those principles a lot of those fundamentals are very true of the market today yeah can i tell you everything you've just said

6:38Jonathan Stevenson:i know we're jumping around a little bit but i think what is perfect illustration what you just said prime bordeaux is unbelievable value right now so let me just give you an example lafitte 2018 okay the last trade that we've seen that on the coltex marketplace was at 2700 yeah this time last year april 2025 you could buy that on the coltex platform at 2232 that was the average price yeah so that's a 21.4 percent gain in the last 12 months but that's not again just one spradic hit there and one spradic hit there it's probably 50 trades the reason that no well the reason the feet 2018 is even on this card is because we were looking at the top wines by value traded this quarter and Lafitte 2018 was the second most traded wine by value with 62 trades in the first quarter of this year yeah um so I think it's a great illustration what you just said right and actually look at the data okay it's a 98 point wine it's currently at 420 pounds per bottle I don't think it's actually the best illustration of your exact point because I think there's other prime vintages but I think it's a good example where if you start to look underneath the hood of the data and I think there's a lot of negativity around wines and asset class because of performance there's a lot of negativity because of the downtime we've been in we're transparent about that it's not like it hasn't gone through that but actually start looking at the last six nine twelve months and you'll find you'll start to find plenty of examples where if i'd bought this this time last year at two two and i was sitting on a 20 almost 25 percent gain in a 12 months i mean that's that's incredible return on on on your money for a wine which is let's say quite liquid right which you you don't necessarily see expect to see 20 faint gains on the really liquid wines it's obviously not not as common and i think it's also impossible really i mean we ever more as we develop through this age of being able to introduce more and more data more and more analysis of data it's it's so important not to just look at it and say wine fine wine right or just bordeaux in a region or just burgundy like there's so many nuances to where we're seeing these patterns in it and we're not sat here saying every single wine is now moving up in price because they're not because there are still wines moving off in price because they're not in focus but in the right positions in the right wines there are i think that's the thing that i always try and um present when talking about where is the market and and and discussing that point and it's like i think it's really the most important factor is that trade volume i think when you look at where we are now versus last year versus year prior you can see these shifts in in significant volumes of uptick in trade which is that's what's going to really carry things forward and it will take a bit of time but that's when you start to really see the momentum shift there was i think an example is like lafitte 2010 i think it's already traded more this year yeah i mean that was done all of last year yeah so i was gonna say outside of la feet 18 i think this is to arish's point um i mean so one thing that i think is a real common theme for this quarter to your point is the holy trinity of bordeaux is it back holy trinity so we're talking about like the top top vintages well no the holy trinity is the 05 09 2010 because we had that three year free vintage period especially with the parker era where obviously we know 09 and 10 got the record amount of 100 points from parker huge amount of attention on it as well as 05 being almost kind of that watershed moment where loads of money came into the wine market especially from an investor and collector perspective um you know you look through all the data we were looking at today and we've got available to us there's just 05s and 9s and 10s all over the place both getting bid up getting traded volumes up value up um and i think to arish's point let me just read out some stats here lafitte 2010 100 point wine so we're talking about what 15 years of age one of the greatest ever vintages for bordeaux yeah um if you're on the parker side of things you probably prefer 09 because riper richer vintage if you're on more on the kind of nil martin jances robinson side of things you're probably gonna be more 2010 yeah but regardless of that i think everyone without question would say 2010 is one of the greatest bordeaux vintages traded 53 times this year the average price per bottle 500 pound is it good value or not yeah at 500 pounds a bottle yeah for a wine of that pedigree with that um you know as you're saying with you know nit approaching like 20 years of aging potential well not quite yeah um so in a good spot for for for drinking you're probably looking at from a trading perspective and go okay 2009 versus some of the older vintages of of lafitte there's probably some upside potential there you know as well so whether you're buying to consume it whether you're buying to to hold it for long term then yeah I think it is good value at that price point put it into perspective it's so much cheaper than it's on from our price so yeah exactly I was about to say do we think there's like that almost that full circle now where collectors that have obviously just probably held their on-premise buying from 2010 to now not necessarily regretting it but appreciating perhaps that those two vintages back to back we're kind of in that sweet spot of the market where things were flying upwards prices were expensive and they're paying for a fantastic probably best ever vintage pair really um maybe 89 90 maybe the only other comparable but yeah like from that perspective do you think there may be our people just almost doubling down on what they purchased on from her now at the price point currently um yeah and then that will i mean we'll we'll feed that into some of our on-premise kind of commentary as well a bit later on but i think it's just interesting The point I think that listeners are interested in is that the discerning buyers, the collectors, consumers, the more sophisticated buyers are seeing these types of opportunities.

12:13And that's why we're seeing them trade more regularly. Because if you're someone that's buying for inventory, then of course you're going to be talking to your clients who love wine about the opportunities by Lafitte 2009 at£500 per bottle. Because that's what's going to be exciting to them.

12:30Jonathan Stevenson:And another great example of that is Moose 105. five oh five vintage epic vintage um 52 trades average price 440 pounds per bottle yeah still like 20 years of age yeah probably getting into its pomp now in terms of maturity over the next 10 years i just think like you put yourself in any person's shoes whether you're a wine buyer for a restaurant you're a collector you're an investor and you think well i'm about to deploy money into the wine market and you look at say a mouton rossard as a brand you're clearly just going to look at what's available to you and you go okay well if i'm going to spend 350 400 on the wine i'm going to have to lay down for the next five or six years there's good quality but maybe not peak quality or i can spend a 50 house extra per bottle and it's windows and go straight into the which is nailed on quality wise and you know 20 years of age i don't have to wait you know another five ten years before i can start really enjoying that wine i think every part of the sector whether you're a collector you're a drinker you're a buyer for a restaurant or whatever it might be you're all going to kind of coalesce on that same vintage because it's just it just screams value in whichever way you look at it yeah also i think with 05 there's a slightly different story here because the wines are finally starting to yeah you know approachable whereas like for the past decade you couldn't really say that for the top wines from from 05 i mean if you're opening first from 05s then yeah you know i think i opened latour 05 a couple of years ago and it was just like you know shut down yeah you know put a court back in come back in like i think that was a big thing you know 10 years time so you know but some of these do you think the 05s are starting to come around now yeah some of them are starting to come around now yeah and the same with like really 09 and 10 unless i mean yeah 09 a bit more approachable but i do think only really in the last few years have people really started looking at those and going you know what these are really now starting to come around for drinking and i think there's actually been that whole decade worth of a lot of those great wines from from 05 even 2000 you know nine and ten in particular um there's been a whole decade of like even if you're a discerning buyer a collector someone wanting to consume them you probably wouldn't really bother buying them during that last 10 year window because you still know you're gonna have to wait another five to ten years to probably pull the cork right yeah and you're also seeing the way it made sense i think i think it made sense when uh money was cheap right but now with the interest rates where that you know where they are with also the added inflationary pressures with what's what's happening currently i think particularly here in the uk i'm because i'm you know obviously we've got an international client base but particularly here in the uk i think people are so much more discerning about what they're spending their money on yeah so if you are buying wines to consume then of course you're going to gravitate towards your mouton 2005 because you know it's ready to drink you've got the pedigree as we as as we mentioned, and the price point is probably only£50 to£100 per bottle more than a younger vintage currently as well.

15:27I think that's what you're seeing, Tom, like you said. I mean, just going back to the feet, but the 18 trading significantly in Q1, the 10, we also have that consideration for how much the wines and the style of wines from Bordeaux are starting to evolve, which, again, we'll probably look at for the latest releases. But I think there's an interesting dynamic there as well, to be honest. I think like people just, it's just, it's not just value. I think it's also, like we said, the fact that those prime vintages coming into their drinking, but also newer vintages are more approachable. So when you can see that across multiple references of tasting notes, et cetera, that the 18 is going to be drinking far younger than the 10, for instance, then makes sense to be buying it now at those prices.

16:08Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, one of the other trends, I know jumped around a little bit. one of the trends was just looking at sort of trading volumes and value i mean quarter and quarter was pretty much flat i mean there was a little percentage point here or there but i think for for for this purpose it was you know it's pretty much flat which actually i think is a positive because obviously q4 was up so q4 was up quite quite significantly up on the previous quarter so again going back to what we said at the very beginning like what was expectation setting for the year and i think that what we wanted to see was at least a continuation of what we saw in q4 and i think again looking at the trading volumes and value that we've seen um it's it's mimicked that um i think if you look at the kind of month for month january was was hot much higher in december yeah february we had a little bit of a low on the market i say question is you know did the sort of middle eastern war that started have any impact on sort of buying in the market i'm not sure obviously when i had chinese new year in january obviously there's a couple of weeks off the golden week and or whatever they call it in in february yeah um so that normally has a bit of a sort of slowdown on the market we've seen march pick back up again so it looks like it's kind of you know doing what we would expect it to but the one question i have for both of you is why do people only want to buy burgundy because they listen to the pod and all you talk about is yeah i think we could throw that back to you yeah i mean it's i just always think it's fascinating when you speak to collectors whether they um they're just starting their journey or more often before you give your answer do you need to give you some context for the listeners why i said that yes so burgundy of all the regions quarter on quarter was the only one up significantly so burgundy trading in value terms was up 29.4 percent in q um one of this year versus q4 so you know not like statistically quite significant amount and we're talking about in the millions of traded value sorry carry on your answer but i just wanted to give that just before I think seasonality is key here because Q1, you have the Burgundy on promo release and the 2024s.

18:10Everyone knows 2024s.

18:11Jonathan Stevenson:But as you said earlier to me pre-Potter, this is secondary market trading. So it didn't actually count for any of the 2024s. But the 2024s, because they were so small, I think the market was focused very much on back vintages. Right. So I think we saw a lot of trading in back vintages. When I say back vintages... But what would be the consumer mindset there? what do you think's happened like what's happened for someone to get an offer for 24 and suddenly buy the 2017 because is that because that's kind of what you're saying has happened yeah because i i think that you look at it and go this is this is not speculative people coming into the market these are people that understand wine prices yeah i think are more discerning buyers you think burgundy buys more sophisticated yeah more sophisticated and they can clearly see the opportunity to acquire these wines not in massive volumes because there's never massive volumes but pick up you know a couple of like the wines that they want for their sellers when the market's less crowded number one yeah and there's less fanfare around you know you know ep so yeah i think it's a bum fight just to get anything to get your hands on anything that's available and and again there's just even for all the buyers out there there's never been more information available as to pricing and yeah you know what you can you can quite clearly view whether you have access to certain platforms or you do everything yourself via the internet you can find pretty easy references as to whether the price is good whether or not that is going to be drinking readily quickly or not and then go quite quickly back to finding what vintages might make more sense to purchase i mean that was kind of our view a lot with burgundy releases this year right it was yeah and i think i think what are said i think the last couple of inches have been very small you know so the production levels have been low volumes have been low available into the market um and actually that's during a market downturn where i think there has been probably clamor and a motivation to drop prices but there's just simply not been enough supply on the market to do that so you end up as a consumer in this weird situation of like do i continue to take my allocations of 23 then 24 at elevated prices where i'm getting smaller amounts when you know actually there's now value in like i think the other thing is if you look at the proximity vintages like 17 and 19 i know a number of collectors now that are saying wow the 17s are drinking phenomenal phenomenally well and 17 was never priced as a prime vintage but actually a lot of people now are saying i'd rather drink 17 than 16 and actually when 16 came out with prices of prime vintage 17 wasn't so you're now in a situation where you've got the 17 vintage with obviously eight seven eight years of age on it that's actually a pretty attractive pricing but actually qualitatively right now for drinking is probably the prime vintage that everyone's clamoring after and similarly you've got 19 which we've spoken about before which which is you know arguably going to be up there in one of the one of the top vintages but again pricing never really followed that level of qualitative confirmation from critics which i think very much across the board said it was an incredible vintage so i wonder whether that puts pressure on the newer vintage as well which is there's clearly so much value in these like 17s and these 19s where scores are high quality is high they're drinking early and yeah you're paying probably 30 or 40 percent less than you would pay for the 23 or 24 yeah yeah and you just and it goes back to that as as we said around buying a prime back vintage bordeaux um and to your point what i was going to kind of get to with the burgundy the question that tom raised was whenever you speak to people that do that are further along their journey of wine um invariably it's almost without exception that they end up by saying yeah my i'm just i'm just burgundy nuts you know and they've gone through that journey of as a collector they've probably been to bordeaux they've drunk some some clara they've they've perhaps explored us they might have explored some of the new world stuff but by and large they always end up on burgundy giving them those experiences which you know we're all familiar with of just like wow that is just something you can't find and it becomes that chasing of the dragon somewhat with burgundy which you perhaps don't get in the more you know bordeaux blends unless you're going to the really inaccessible back vintage prime vintages of bordeaux with the age they need to to be showing as well as they can do then you don't get that as immediately i think people then with burgundy buying they are more discerning buyers by that nature because they've been through that whole journey and got to burgundy right and then as a result of that they probably have just had a bit of a a bit of a breather really from the market and actually now they and assess it and go right well there's all these vintages available do i really need to take latest vintage at that price probably not yeah i also think there is a new wave of collector that has come into the coming to market in recent years yeah and again i would say this is more like speaking about international so okay like middle east or you know asia some of the younger generation whereby you know if you look at that 10 15 years ago it would have just been entering the market and buying you know you know bordeaux and the regular to usual suspects yeah to jay's point i think very much a lot of that buying that i've experienced over the last six or 12 months from that cohort has been very much focused on burgundy because you know those are those are the wines that are resonating with yeah that that younger generation that are coming in yeah yeah definitely um look i mean looking at the the data and and seeing what's happening q1 i mean obviously We looked at the most traded wines for the quarter.

23:39Jonathan Stevenson:You know, a lot of the usual names are in there. But there's one thing that has, for me, confirmed something I've always believed. And that is Ponte Canet is the most traded red wine in the world. Year after year, month after month, quarter after quarter, Ponte Canet just trades every day, every week, every month. Certain vintages trade a lot. But it's just incredible how much this wine is bought and sold around the world. Yeah. Are we surprised by that? Well, you tell me. if we're not why are we not why are we not surprised by that i think first start with the geography yeah okay for those that don't know ponte canna is pretty much sandwiched in between mouton rosschard and lafitte rosschard in priyac in bordeaux so you're already starting from a point where like location location like high quality terroir yeah secondly i think my point around longevity and ageability yeah you know even before parker gave the 09 and 10 the 100 points for for ponte cannae this is a wine where like if you open like a 1996 ponte cannae or even like an off prime like 01 or 04 yeah like pack like delivers so much yeah for you know for it for you know for its price point and probably benefits from not being those absolute powerhouses of Lafitte, you know, and approachable slightly younger.

25:01I mean, we've had the fortune of many vintages of Ponte and it always delivers, doesn't it? Yeah. And look, I think that, you know, there's your ageability. You've always got scores that are 95 plus from like, you know, apart from the controversial ones that we talked about before. But, you know, you've got like price over points is always attractive. Yeah. Longevity of the wine, you can store it for 20, 25 plus years. and now looking at it in terms of its price point, it's just like, you know, the close and jack of left bank order.

25:31Jonathan Stevenson:I mean, if you were building a wine portfolio of only the most traded wines in the world, what brands would you go for? So we've kind of confirmed that Ponte Canet is the most traded wine, red wine in the world. Should we go less obvious? Because, you know, of course... Well, I mean, they're all quite obvious for us. What's less obvious? No, go on, I'm interested now. I would say like a lot of people don't know like the Duran wines from Burgundy. Right. trade regularly. High liquidity, yeah. Le Fleuve. Yeah, but Le Fleuve's quite, I said, an obvious example. But yeah, Drouin from Burgundy, Clos d 'Etat from Burgundy trade regularly.

26:12Lynch Barge. Lynch Barge trades regularly. What else have we got? I mean,

26:16Jonathan Stevenson:there's three champagne brands that I just think, like you see it trading every day. Dom Perignon, and Cristal, and Dom Perignon, Cristal, and Tassinger. yeah comp de champagne yeah italians there's a couple of obvious ones yeah sasakai tignaniello um productory del barbaresco that always trades yeah it's an interesting one yeah all the time i mean that trades like you know regularly what one on uh the the other side of the atlantic uh dominus no opus one opus one opus one yeah yeah i mean you see a lot more opus one being consumed now in london now a lot of americans have come over before like if you think honestly like two three years ago you'd be in like wine clubs restaurants like no one was drinking opus one but a lot of americans have come over the last couple of years and now i'm like hang on a minute there's people actually drinking opus one but like if you had to come up with your five-a-side team of the most traded wines let's say you did one per region you've got ponte canais tianello i think yeah it has to be in there yeah i think champagne is either dp or cristal but i kind of i kind of think cristal trades more than dp for the perspective of like dp's got millions of bottles right each vintage Cristal doesn't have that production but like it trades so much it's crazy there's always a bid every day's a bid there's a bid there's a bid I think in that example it would be Compe de Champagne from Tétanger you go Tom Compt what would you go for you can be the deciding vote what do you think trades the most Cristal okay the question is who are we playing up front and who's in goal yeah and then Burgundy I think Clé d 'Etat trades a lot I don't know Because the thing about Burgundy is difficult to think of like a Grand Cru Burgundy that trades.

27:56Another good example.

27:57Jonathan Stevenson:Because which drawdown are you talking about? Montrachet, Bones, Claude Mouche or Claude Vigée? Do you think also it's important to kind of, for Burgundy in particular, it's important to reference how much of it there is available to trade, right? Because I do think Claude Attar, as far as access and availability, seems to be more prevalent than most. Just another shout, sorry, that William Feb, Chavez. trades a lot and I'm also seeing a lot of the like a lot more whites that are trading there's definitely a trend well it's interesting you say that yeah sorry to cut you off but I think for white burgundy for sure you see a lot more white wines that are trading now over the last well I mean we just pulled up because you asked beforehand like what the red and white versus stats were trading so across all regions some of these are coming off a small base so do take that into consideration but bordeaux white quarter on quarter up 14.5 % burgundy white quarter and quarter up 13 percent um italian whites quarter and quarter up 38 percent roan white uh up quarter and quarter 22 percent and u.s whites up 56 percent quarter of course that's coming off a very small base um but every single region the white category is up quarter and quarter in terms of trade value and volume um which i think talks to you know that whole current trend towards you know white wines and i think you know the high-end white wines becoming more appealing and collectible and people were really striving to have them in their collections yeah so look i think the last part of the data we want to look at from q1 is just kind of like where a bit of the momentum in the markets we look to kind of volume change in terms of trading as well as which wines have traded the most above market price because i think that's always a good indication of when market price will kind of catch up because trading is happening above you know the best offers in the market um i think the one thing out momentum wines that kind of stuck out to me was DRC Esherzo, which traded seven times in the first quarter.

29:49Jonathan Stevenson:That's massive, yeah. Which is a massive architect. And again, I think if you look at Momentum wines, almost, I think, four out of the top five are all Burgundy. You didn't get married again, did you? No. No? No.

30:02Jonathan Stevenson:I wish that was on the table. But yeah, I mean, to be expected? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think that when you've got some of the top wines in the world with age, I do think there is this elasticity when it comes to price. And if you just want to acquire them to get them delivered, you're not really bothered about paying the cheapest possible price. You're just happy to acquire them with the right provenance from a reputable merchant you're working with, and then that's boxed off. Then you overlay that with where prices are at for some of those labels, right? I mean, they're still off-peat.

30:41I think it comes back to the point of like... because if you look at all of the big ones we've discussed, it's, you know, the prime vintage, first growth, it's DRC. Who's buying those? It's not any random wine collector, right? It's the most discerning collectors that are going, that's a good price for that wine. Or newcomers, but also newcomers. Yeah, that's right. But it's someone either with very good advice or very good knowledge that are approaching those wines and going, that's just too good to make.

31:12Jonathan Stevenson:Yeah, look, I think older, mature wines are the hottest assets in the market right now, if you look at it. I mean, just looking at this list, just going to throw off a couple of examples for you guys. But just looking at wines, Petrosso 9's traded 11 times in the first quarter of the year, average per bottle price at$2 ,667. So not exactly a cheap wine, but obviously an absolutely epic wine from a great vintage. Petrosso 1's traded four times, an average of$32 ,000 per 12 pack. um you know if you go through the list there's you know Mouton 2000s traded here um quite a few times Harlan Estate 2011 Dom Pérez on Erna Tech 1996 there is a part of me there is a part of me that's like oversimplifying this a little bit and does everyone just think that like with everything that's going on in the world at the moment people are just thinking you know what sod it like it's just like yeah a bit like COVID time you know when COVID happened everyone I was like, do you know what?

32:05Life's too short. We're just going to drink our wines. There is something in me that thinks, are people actually thinking like that? Because if you are based in the Middle East, for instance, and you've had to experience what's going on over the last couple of months, I have had a couple of clients that are based in Dubai be like, I've actually been drinking a lot more of those wines in my cellar. Because they're in a war. They're on the front line. Yeah, I don't want to trivialize that part of it, but I do think there is something in there where people are a little bit just like...

32:34Jonathan Stevenson:It was something like COVID, COVID factor. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, Margot 2000s in there, Mouton. I've already mentioned that. I mean, Margot is one of those wines that I think tastes unbelievably well. I think it always disappoints a little bit from a pure kind of investment perspective. But I mean, to have those old mature... 2000s is black label, isn't it? 2000, no. 2015, 2015, yeah. But look, I think overall, if you look at the trades which have been above market, they're trending up where there's momentum. it does seem to point towards you know prime vintages it's not like off vintage like 04 or 02 it's kind of the 05s the 96s the 2000s and and we're not seeing people shy away from price tags as well you know these these wines are expensive yeah um yeah it kind of shows where the market is i i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that action is coming from the u.s interesting why do you say that just the profile of the wines the fact that you know i think u.s has been buying a lot more this quarter than previously.

33:32Yeah. Just like the profile of those types of wines you just mentioned is very much the US, Bordeaux, collector, consumer. And acceptance of the tariffs now probably as well because they're kind of baked into price, aren't they, really? Yeah.

33:44Jonathan Stevenson:And the complete opposite of mature prime Bordeaux is, of course. The en primeur, the new campaign, new vintage. Yeah. Should we jump in there? Time to... No, let's just tease it. No. Okay, that's it. so back to back to back to prime vintages no I mean early word I think around the the 25s is that it's going to be a very strong vintage I'm going out to taste it fortunately sending the big guns in with some of the team someone's got to do it right but yeah I'd be interested I mean I've not been are you podding from Bordeaux? well let's see don't rule it out live stream it's not Laplod it's Laplod I wanted to lead in to this with what I thought was quite a powerful quote from Edouard Muex, owner of Jean-Pierre Muex, one of the biggest distributors.

34:33They distribute wines to over 500 importers across 87 countries. He said, categorically, if Bordeaux 2025 isn't a success, then Empremere is dead. What do you both make of that?

34:46Jonathan Stevenson:The king is dead. Long live the king.

34:52Jonathan Stevenson:No one should ever buy Empremere again. unless they get the prices right. No, but look, I think it's definitely... Said everyone every year for the last 10 years. Yeah, I was going to say. No, but if I am a wine buyer right now, I'm thinking to myself, why would I buy Bordeaux en Primer? Especially when the prices are cheaper when it comes physically delivered to my door. Yeah, forget all the scenario-based analysis or pricing analysis. Every year ending in five has been good. Qualitative. Yeah, qualitatively. So you've got 45, 95, really clutching at straws here. 95, 05, 2015. Yeah, the five's good.

35:32Yeah, the five's good, yeah. So that's one. That's one thing. I don't know. I do feel like, I mean, that's obviously someone, you know, in Bordeaux. I mean, you know, that statement has been made, like you said, probably over the last five, ten years, probably, or more with Bordeaux. I think there has been that. Given what we've seen in the back vintage tradings, given the volumes that some of these more recent vintages, I think it's quite poignant around like the 18s trading, 19s, 20s, like not just the prime vintages. We've seen that volume coming from actually more of the younger vintages. So I think there's like hopefully a bit of a meeting in the middle between the two where it's like the modern vintages are becoming more approachable, right, in terms of like when you can drink them.

36:13We've seen that a lot. I mean, we've been drinking quite a bit of like 17 in the office, which on paper, not a great vintage, but really drinking quite nicely at the moment.

36:20Jonathan Stevenson:You always need those earlier, more approachable drinking vintages. Yeah, but I think that's just generally been a shift, right? I mean, I haven't tasted on Premier for some time, but I'm imagining that when I'm going to taste along the left and right bank, it's going to be a case where lots of these wines are actually much more approachable now. Well, look, I mean, I think, what are the facts? 2025 is a high quality vintage. Yeah. How high quality? We don't know until people taste it and we hear back on the reports. But it goes about saying 2025 is very high quality. So we know that for a fact.

36:50Jonathan Stevenson:We know that pricing is going to be pegged pretty close to 24. 24 prices came out very low. For some wines, especially like Lafitte Rothschild, First Growth, it's the cheapest vintage you can buy. There's a lot of wines that can be said it's the cheapest vintage you can buy of that wine, which I think is a good first starting place. So it's very high quality. We know price will be pegged to 25, maybe 5 % above, maybe lower higher for certain wineries. And look, I don't think that's a bad place to be starting with. And I think if that is the case, then look, 2022 came out, an incredible vintage.