The Business of Bordeaux w/ William Kelley, The Wine Advocate

XChateau Wine Podcast

Continuing our two-part episode, William Kelley, Deputy Editor of The Wine Advocate, expounds on the evolution of the business elements of Bordeaux. From La Place de Bordeaux to wine critics' score compression, Williams shares his view on how these institutions are changing and evolving their place in Bordeaux and how that impacts big and small chateaux.

Detailed Show Notes:

La Place de Bordeaux

• Latour's leaving the en primeur system, but not La Place, did not have a meaningful impact, outside of when the wine is delivered, and did not tempt anyone else to leave en primeur or La Place
• Focused on the Top ~50-150 Bordeaux wines
• Now represents several non-Bordeaux wines, giving a bit more glamor for negociants to sell
• More consolidation is happening in the negociant space
• Negociants now do not have the time nor capital to care about "petite" chateaux
• Several business models emerging, including high margin or high turnover with less inventory kept
• Not a great way to build durable customers (e.g., may sell in Korea one year and Costco in Wisconsin the next)

Petite chateaux - need to differentiate and find direct distribution to be successful

Implications of health trends, consumers drinking less

• Wine with great personality continues to benefit
• Bulk wines, lower-end wines struggling (e.g., lower-end Bordeaux wines, petite chateaux)

Wine Critics

• Scores are getting inflated and compressed - lots of new critics are coming around and pushing scores up
• William believes a more credible review is more worthwhile than high scores on their own
• E.g., Burgundy doesn't get high scores, yet sells very well
• William publishes en primeur scores before the 1st release, therefore can't tell if they have any impact on pricing

Next for Bordeaux

• The 2019 vintage had lots of good deals with Covid impacts and price increases of Burgundy, making people interested in Bordeaux again
• The region needs to get people back to Bordeaux who have given up on it

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