2007 Burgundies

I received an email this morning from one of my local shops. It included this interesting tidbit:

Due to the strong value of the Euro and the weak value of the dollar, I have elected to pass on this year's crop of wines from Burgundy. The wines were good, but they are not any better than the 2004's, 2005's, or the 2006's, and the prices are up 38% from last year. These prices are just plain too high. My recommendation is to buy the current vintages we have in stock. The 2005's that are rolling in are fantastic! Some of the 2004 Meursaults are the best I have ever tasted.

Thoughts?

--Michael

[David M. Bueker]

Good call.

Depends on the shop. How important is Burgundy to their selection?

Thoughts?

Darrell Corti would be proud.
To quote a country song,''a man's got to stand for something or he'll fall for anything."
Best, Jim

I expect Burgundy to be expensive but still I'm shocked by some of the 2005 prices; I've read that 2006 if anything will be even more expensive, so the thought that 2007 will be up on even those prices (+38% ?!!?) is just about impossible to comprehend. Are there that many investment bankers out there?

It is one of the big 3 shops in the city. Not a Burgundy specialist, but to completely pass on a vintage is rather bold.

[James Roscoe]

It sounds as if the producers in Burgundy are biting the hand that feeds, or are Russia and China that wealthy that they can afford to diss the American market? My suspicion is that this will come back to bite the Burgundians in the a##. The farmers, who have the least control over the situation, will be the biggest losers.

It sounds as if the producers in Burgundy are biting the hand that feeds, or are Russia and China that wealthy that they can afford to diss the American market? My suspicion is that this will come back to bite the Burgundians in the a##. The farmers, who have the least control over the situation, will be the biggest losers.

James,
While I wouldn' totally discount greed playing a role someplace along the supply chain, I suspect that the largest culprit is the dollar, which 5 short years ago was roughly at parity with the Euro. Today that same dollar is worth less than 0.68 Euro and heading south daily.
Bill

[James Roscoe]

It sounds as if the producers in Burgundy are biting the hand that feeds, or are Russia and China that wealthy that they can afford to diss the American market? My suspicion is that this will come back to bite the Burgundians in the a##. The farmers, who have the least control over the situation, will be the biggest losers.

James,
While I wouldn' totally discount greed playing a role someplace along the supply chain, I suspect that the largest culprit is the dollar, which 5 short years ago was roughly at parity with the Euro. Today that same dollar is worth less than 0.68 Euro and heading south daily.
Bill

Bill, I don't think any other area in Europe has seen a rise in prises like Burgundy, not even Bordeaux. They have had a string of good vintages and a the Chinese and Russian economies are creating a lot of wealth and demand for their product. While there is NO doubt the dollar is a major problem here, I think more is at play than that.

Bill, I don't think any other area in Europe has seen a rise in prises like Burgundy, not even Bordeaux. They have had a string of good vintages and a the Chinese and Russian economies are creating a lot of wealth and demand for their product. While there is NO doubt the dollar is a major problem here, I think more is at play than that.

Could it be yet another manifestation of the Sideways phenomenon? Perhaps consumers have (finally) clued in to the fact that red Burgundy is in fact Pinot Noir...

Mark Lipton

This sounds more like a marketing ploy to sell through the stock of '05s. As in "I know the '05s are expensive, but you might as well buy them now because the '06s and '07s are going to be more expensive."

I doubt many of the '07 prices are fixed yet. Luckily I bought most of my '05s before the run up in prices. I've bought a few '06s and the prices were less than '05. So I'm planning to take a wait and see approach for the rest of the '06s and '07s.

It sounds as if the producers in Burgundy are biting the hand that feeds... My suspicion is that this will come back to bite the Burgundians in the a##.

According to my wine friends who visit there frequently (one of whom writes a newsletter), many premium producers are as surprised as you are about their 2005 products' retail prices (these producers are not the ones getting those high prices). They might also be surprised to hear about customers thinking they are setting those prices.

What's happened in 2005 Burgundy pricing -- I follow this somewhat, taste a good number of them every year, sometimes buy some -- is that wines already fashionable, or touted specifically by critics in '05, have seen big retail price rises (in Euros), but large parts of Burgundy haven't risen much at all. In another thread I mentioned a couple of 2005s recently found (via tastings) as very solid wines and decent values, one retailing US $22 (an unclassified lieu-dit vineyard), another a village Volnay circa $40, both from the Côte de Beaune. I've encountered others along those lines in recent months. So it's not a universal price rise, but centered on flagship wines often talked about anyway, creating a general impression of inflation. Some of which has hit producers long esteemed by regular Burg fans, but not previously the talk of the online wine fora (former successes d'estime, you could say); now they've ceased to be good values.

This situation demonstrates even more dramatically than usual the value of finding good wines by ways other than reading the same wine-critic recommendations everyone else reads. (Does anyone care to take a bet on how widely that lesson will be learned??)

[James Roscoe]

Good points Max. It's a complex situation to be sure.