NEWS: Girardin selling off his wine business

[David M. Bueker]

If/when I rotate back to the states I would like very much to drink some German Pinot Noir with you fellows (I'm buyin'!) I am confident that the wine will speak for itself.

Cheers,
Bill

Sounds great. I'll bring Burgundy and Oregon to compare.

My experience with Spatburgunder is very limited. What is available to me tends to be over $50, and in very limited quantities. Doesn't encourage investigating. I do see Ziereisen from Baden at a store I admire for under $20, will add to my next order.

Several random points re. German Spatburgunder in the US...

1. I'm certainly not doubting that there's high quality German Pinot Noir out there. But a lot of it is pricey, and for something that right now has limited, niche appeal and low production, steep pricing (well above the US $60 mark, in some cases well into the 100s) is not the way to sell it in the US.

Right now it seems as if people trying to sell Spatburgunder in the US have aimed at the German geek market, which is a ridiculous approach as you're dealing with a very niche audience, and a lot of people who also have a serious enough interest in top Burgundy that there are a whole lot of similarly priced wines from elsewhere that are competitive in terms of price. I.E. a lot of serious geeks might not go out and spend $90 for Keller's Spatburgunder GG (or might buy one bottle at most for interest) when Chevillon Vaucrains, Jadot Clos St. Jacques or Fourrier Cherbaudes exist at the same price point with a much better track record.

Bill - you may be right when you suggest that Diel, Christmann or Koehler-Ruprecht (to take a few from your list) make wines every bit the equal of what I mentioned. For the rare person with that degree of knowledge about both markets, that great.
For most consumers though - whether we're talking average buyers to whom 'Burgundy' or 'OR/NZ Pinot' is more recognizable than German Pinot, or most old world wine geeks who may be reasonably familiar with the likes of Jadot/etc but wouldn't have heard of the German PN equivalents - there's a serious information asymmetry there that'll keep them from spending the same amounts on unheard-of high end German wines.

The best approach when marketing a new good/concept is to introduce it to as many people as possible, and bringing in/emphasizing ultra-niche Spatburgunder for the geek market isn't the way to do it.

2. There's too much quality inconsistency at the lower end. Becker's one example - Crush is selling their mid range Limestone ($40), high end Kammerberg GG ($140) and a low end Estate Pinot ($20). I've heard very good things about the former two, tried the Estate and found it quite poor - after that, I'm certainly not spending the bigger bucks for their top bottlings. Same with Rebholz, where I've had hit and miss experiences with their basic Spatburgunder Tradition (mid 30s/low 40s pricing), enough that I don't feel comfortable going after their red GGs.

If there's going to be a push to better inform US consumers to German Pinot Noir and push them to buy the stuff, there needs to be a better selection of the wines domestically at those sorts of prices. Taking Crush as an example (as one of the stores that really champions German wines) - 8 bottles of German Pinot Noir in inventory (out of almost 200 items from Germany); the Becker Estate is priced around $20 and the Becker 'Limestone' is $40. Everything else is over the $50 range. Not a great way to make the product accessible.

Although in some respects German pinot noir might be easier because it's red wine and not sweet!

The challenge here is not on the demand side, but on the supply side: when people like Terry were shouting from the rooftops several years ago about German Rieslings, a lot of the top stuff was inexpensive, and the vast majority of items across styles and producers cost under $25. Even now you can get a whole lot from the likes of Donnhoff, Selbach, Prum, Merkelbach, Leitz, Spreitzer, etc at incredibly reasonable prices. Not the case w/ Spatburgunder where there seem to be maybe 3-4 choices total in a low price range, and the rest are pretty expensive.

3.

Yet I believe that pinot noir is a more popular variety than riesling overall, which would suggest that German pinot noir might fill a need that German riesling doesn't. In addition, if people never tried to introduce something new, we wouldn't have had the Lynch Dressner et al. revolutions of the past 20-30 years.

German Pinot Noir certainly fills a different need than German Riesling - but:
- there's really no other good that can substitute for German Riesling. For that style of low alcohol and incredibly refreshing white, German Riesling is almost entirely without competition. (Perhaps Muscadet is the only name that comes to mind for dry wines, but there's really nothing for sweeter whites that comes to mind)
- there's a lot of supply of other goods that meet the same needs as German Pinot Noir. Burgundy's the obvious one, but even for more niche/geeky items, there are a lot of interesting things already coming out of Austria (with much more choice at the low end in Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch than what exists at the same price points for Spatburgunder). Not to mention domestic Pinot Noir, and then other refreshing, lower alc reds along the likes of what LDM are bringing in.

I think it'll be some time before German Pinot Noir takes off in the US - at the demand end, there are incredibly few informed consumers, and those who may have more interest still have very little information to guide them through a region with a lot of stylistic and qualitative diversity (though interestingly enough, I notice that David Schildknecht is talking about doing a feature on Spatburgunder in one of the coming TWA issues). At the supply end, it's still being marketed as a really niche product with the few places that sell those wines putting a lot of emphasis on the rare top bottlings such as Keller's Cuvee Felix or Diel's Cuvee Caroline, and really little consumer choice at a lower end price point that can introduce them to the wines. That'll have to change considerably if people want Spatburgunder to become anything more serious in the US wine market.

Although in some respects German pinot noir might be easier because it's red wine and not sweet!

The challenge here is not on the demand side, but on the supply side: when people like Terry were shouting from the rooftops several years ago about German Rieslings, a lot of the top stuff was inexpensive, and the vast majority of items across styles and producers cost under $25. Even now you can get a whole lot from the likes of Donnhoff, Selbach, Prum, Merkelbach, Leitz, Spreitzer, etc at incredibly reasonable prices. Not the case w/ Spatburgunder where there seem to be maybe 3-4 choices total in a low price range, and the rest are pretty expensive.

But again, that's just a function of what is imported now. Whereas the point that Bill and I are trying to make is that there is plenty of delicious if not profound low priced German spatburgunder waiting for the next intrepid importer to make his/her name. In my own buying I get most excited by German spatburgunder that fills many of the same needs as good Beaujolais, rather than upper-tier Burgundy premier cru, if we're drawing cross-regional analogies.

That said...

- there's a lot of supply of other goods that meet the same needs as German Pinot Noir. Burgundy's the obvious one, but even for more niche/geeky items, there are a lot of interesting things already coming out of Austria (with much more choice at the low end in Zweigelt and Blaufrankisch than what exists at the same price points for Spatburgunder). Not to mention domestic Pinot Noir, and then other refreshing, lower alc reds along the likes of what LDM are bringing in.

I agree wholeheartedly.

[David M. Bueker]

The problem Rahsaan is that good Beaujolais can still be had for well under $20, where even for the inexpensive (and spotty as Salil mentions) Spatburgunders, $20 is barely the starting point. Then we can get into the discussions about whether a Pinot should "Beaujolais" in its expression (sort of the reverse Oswaldo complaint).

Wow, I know threads develop their own life and hijacks aren't uncommon, but, geez....!

Anyway, thanks for the heads up, Jenise, I hadn't heard that about Girardin. I'm surprised that he owns (owned?) so much vineyard land; I'd thought that the vast majority of what he did was as a negociant.

I enjoyed the hijack, maybe the discussion can continue elsewhere. I plan to open the Mayer-Nakel GG, even if it might not be ready, just to refresh my memory on the style. I tasted their basic bottling five or six years ago, was rather more more impressed Koehler-Ruprecht. Well, maybe not impressed so much as appreciative of its unique character. I regret not having bought some.

I like Vincent Girardin. Every time someone opens one of their reds, it's always with an implicit - sometimes explicit - caveat emptor that Girardin is a white specialist, but if anything, I was always more impressed by the reds.

My 2cents worth on German Pinot Noir. We don't carry a single bottle of German red in our store and nobody working the floor has had a customer ask for one. People will start with a Cotes du Rhone and a certain percentage of customers will work their way up to Chat du Pape. Actually some get to Cote Rotie and Hermitage etc. You have to have a plan to sell a new product.

[Jenise]

Wow, I know threads develop their own life and hijacks aren't uncommon, but, geez....!

Anyway, thanks for the heads up, Jenise, I hadn't heard that about Girardin. I'm surprised that he owns (owned?) so much vineyard land; I'd thought that the vast majority of what he did was as a negociant.

I am not allergic to hijacking, and certainly not when it gets so interesting. But I too was surprised, thought him pretty strictly negociant and only learned recently that he owned any when researching the Bojo mentioned in the article, which I purchased a few bottles of.

[David M. Bueker]

My 2cents worth on German Pinot Noir. We don't carry a single bottle of German red in our store and nobody working the floor has had a customer ask for one. People will start with a Cotes du Rhone and a certain percentage of customers will work their way up to Chat du Pape. Actually some get to Cote Rotie and Hermitage etc. You have to have a plan to sell a new product.

Customer: "Hi. I am wondering if you could help me. I am looking for a bottle of Pinot Noir.

Merchant: "Well we have this lovely bottle of Spatburgunder that I think you might really like."

Customer: "What did you call me?"