by Wine Owners
Posted on 2013-06-11
The Wine Owners team had a BYO dinner at Cafe Anglais last month where we tasted some great wines. Here's the order of fare:
Les Plantiers de Haut-Brion Blanc Pessac Leognan 2007
Les Plantiers is a very limited production white from the young vines of Haut Brion and La Mission Haut Brion. It offers more than a hint of the style and quality of the Grand Vin, with a zesty and lively fruit appeal supported by good depth and minerality. Pure and balanced, long in the mouth, it will drink well on arrival but could also take five year's cellaring.
(90 points RP)
WO team view: White wine of the night. Taut, really long and pure, with at least a decade of life ahead.
Domaine Remi Jobard Meursault Charmes Premier Cru 2001
The superb, white flower-scented 2001 Meursault-Charmes splendidly combines breadth, depth, density, and concentration with focus, balance, and elegance. This intensely flavored wine is crammed with creamed minerals, limestone, chalk, and juicy spiced pears whose flavors can be experienced throughout its magisterial finish. (93-95 points WA)
WO team view: Showing why 2001 is such an extraordinary white burgundy vintage. The WA note reflects current reality perfectly.
Domaine Georges Roumier Morey-Saint-Denis Clos de la Bussiere Premier Cru 1997
Bright and scintillating if a little more backward than Roumier Chambolles. Gripping dark cherry and cherry stone fruit with touches of bramble and cassis wrapped in firm, defining fruit tannins. There is also a savoury mineral, stone and herb dimension, making this a very complex, complete Morey.
WO team view: Top of its game, and would have been a candidate for wine of the night were it not for..
Domaine Ghislaine Barthod Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes Premier Cru 1999
The stunning 1999 Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes is medium to dark ruby-colored and has an explosive blackberry, raspberry, and super-ripe cherry-scented nose. Medium to full-bodied, broad, and satin-textured, this is a superb wine that coats the palate with loads of cherries, violets, and candied black raspberries. Its perfumed, harmonious personality is feminine, expansive, and concentrated. Additionally, it reveals an exceptionally long, juicy, and delineated finish. It is the finest wine I have ever tasted from Mme. Barthod. Projected maturity: 2005-2014. (93-95 points WA)
WO team view: Not quite as boisterous as the deep, intense Morey. More to come in the coming few years.
Domaine du Pegau Cuvee Reservee Chateauneuf du Pape 1995
The 1995 Cuvee Reservee exhibits an opaque black/purple color, and extraordinary rich, intense aromas of smoke, black raspberries, kirsch, and spice. Exceptionally full-bodied, with an unctuous texture, and a thick, rich, expansive mid-palate, this superbly concentrated wine appears to be a worthy rival to this estate's phenomenal 1989 and 1990. This is a blockbuster Chateauneuf du Pape. Anticipated maturity: 2001-2020. (94 points Robert Parker)
WO team view: Perfectly mature, gamey and uniquely complex. Rich, sappy, utterly beguiling and moorish.
Chateau Grand Puy Lacoste Pauillac 5eme Cru Classe 1989
I absolutely love the nose on this wine, with amazing aromas of currant, tar, spices and berries that jump out of the glass. Loads of flowers, too. So complex. Delivers a full-bodied palate, with racy tannins and lots of flavor, from tar to spices to leather. A little tight, and so enjoyable now, but better in a few years still.’ (2010) (95 points, James Suckling)
WO team view: Wine of the night. Extraordinarily complex; it kept evolving in the decanter throughout dinner. GPL simply stomped all over Hosanna. No context, embarrassing really...
Chateau Hosanna Pomerol 2000
Dense ruby/purple, with a glorious nose of blackberries, cassis, white flowers, licorice, and a hint of sweet oak, this seamless wine is a classic example of purity and symmetry. A singular style reminiscent of a hypothetical blend of Cheval Blanc and L'Evangile.
(96 points, Robert Parker)
WO team view: Yeah it's good. Rich, deep, quite lingering, but made to look very ordinary by GPL 1989.
Domaine Huet Cuvee Constance Moelleux Vouvray 1993
The 1993 Cuvée Constance has a remarkably rich colour for any wine from Vouvray, belying the intensity of this nectar. The nose is remarkable, marked by aromas of rich golden syrup, with a whispering seam of botrytis which has a curiously dry suggestion, as does the nutty, caramel nuances that follow on. This is deep, complex and multi-faceted. Chris Kissack
WO team view: Lovely end to an amazing dinner, and not a single duff bottle. A sign of good fortune with which to toast the success of Wine Owners perhaps?
By the way, did you want to know the food that accompanied the wines? Thought not...
by Wine Owners
Posted on 2013-04-05
With updated prices released on Wine Owners' - the world's first full service, independent asset management and trading exchange - it's an opportune time to check on the market price of Chateau Latour 1995.
Why? Because having withdrawn from the en primeur release system in April 2012, Latour director Frederic Engerer had announced that each year a vintage of Chateau Latour and the second wine, Les Forts de Latour, would be released at the start of their perfect drinking window.On March 19th 2013 the first of the 'library' releases, 1995, was offered at a UK retail price of (GBP) £4,950.Each bottle comes with a prooftag (a security product guaranteeing traceability and authenticity) and sports a back label stating the date of shipment from the chateau.1995 was a great vintage for Latour, as evidenced by the following wine critic reviews:
Robert Parker 96 points (June 2000)
A beauty, the opaque dense purple-coloured 1995 exhibits jammy cassis, vanillin, and minerals in its fragrant but still youthful aromatics. Medium to full-bodied, with exceptional purity, superb concentration, and a long, intense, ripe, 40-second finish, this is a magnificent example of Latour. As the wine sat in the glass, scents of roasted espresso and toasty new oak emerged. This classic will require considerable cellaring. Anticipated maturity: to 2050.
Jancis Robinson 18.5 points (2011)
Lustrous deep crimson almost right out to the rim still. Hint of mint on the nose – quite aromatic. Pretty. Charming for a Latour grand vin! Though there is a strong undertow of graphite. More intense than 1996. Drink to 2035
Lisa Perrotti-Brown 96 points (Nov 2012)
Deep garnet-brick in colour, the nose is well developed, displaying dried berry, leather, vanilla pod and anise notes with a faint whiff of potpourri. The palate is wonderfully fleshy and opulent with velvety, approachable tannins and a long finish.
Latour took criticism for their release price from some quarters arguing that that it was too high compared to market prices for previously released-en-primeur bottles of 1995.
Our analysis (Wine Owners Market Level calculation: base data sourced from Wine Searcher) shows the current market price per bottle is £351, or the rounded equivalent of £4,200 for a 12x75cl case.
As the chart shows this is down from £433 per bottle in April 2012, or the rounded equivalent of £5,200 for a 12x75cl case, showing the prolonged tough time first growths have endured since hitting their giddy heights in the summer of 2011.
So is a £700 case market premium for an ex chateau release with perfect provenance and a prooftag worth it?
Yes, according to Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW who believes a 15% premium is worth paying to source that perfectly stored and shipped wine.
And that, funnily enough, is precisely the premium that Latour decided to place on the 1995 library release.
by Wine Owners
Posted on 2013-02-17
We're being asked increasingly how Wine Owners arrives at its Market Level pricing, helping to provide a benchmark for real-world valuation of wine collections for its private client users.
So here's how we process millions of data points to give our users pricing insight on their fine wine collections that they can translate into estimates of realisable current market value, less sales commissions.
The source of data comes from WineSearcher, the world's pre-eminent search engine for fine wine, helping wine enthusiasts everywhere to source wines they wish to buy from retailers.
Retail pricing is collected from over 34,000 wine merchants and traders around the world, and this data can be analysed by country and region.
WineSearcher's scope of work is huge, processing millions of data points on wines that are for sale or just sold every day.
How does Wine Owners work with this primary data source?
Our proprietary algorithms process this data to eliminate the inevitable anomalies that such large data sets present. We focus on pricing for the world's top 250,000 fine wines.
For our private client members who appreciate, collect and invest in the fine wine top end of the market, our focus on a specific strata of fine wine pricing enables us to structure, standardise, format, analyse and process these wines in great depth.
How does Wine Owners calculate the Market Level?
We first exclude possible outliers from the source data.
Next we recognise the different liquidity characteristics of the fine wine market and assign a liquisity score to each wine in our database.
Rare wines, old vintages and other wines with limited liquidity are treated differently to incoming streams for top Bordeaux where there is substantial relative market availability and demand.
We then analyse the spread between market low and mid point for each wine and calculate the point between the two, depending on liquidity scores, that constitutes the Market Level.
Our proprietary algorithms are designed to give you the most consistent approach to pricing a market in wine.
Of course, wine is a collectable asset very unlike stocks and shares or gold, and therefore market prices reflect differences in geographical availability and tax status, not to mention condition and history (the essential elements of 'provenance'. What that means is that pricing fine wine is not a wholly scientific process, and a consistent approach such as ours will not capture every market discontinuity. Nevertheless Wine Owners offers users a rigorous approach to calculating Market Level pricing, being a likely pricing level at which your wines can sell without undue delay.
The following price graph, a new version of the existing functionality on https://www.wineowners.com , illustrates the pricing information and interactive site tools you can use to manage your wine collection.
We value based on the market retail value, and therefore you can expect to deduct selling commissions from this price.
by Wine Owners
Posted on 2013-01-07
We're absolutely delighted to welcome Jonathan Picchi to the team!
Jonathan takes on responsibility for our market-leading referential database of fine wine, with a long-term development brief on the top of current processing.
A french national, Jonathan has recently moved to London from his native Paris, having completed a masters in statistics and information analysis from the highly regarded ENSAI school in Rennes.
His expertise in data modelling will be invaluable as we deepen our analysis and interpretation of market data to help fine wine collectors understand the true value of their collections.
Jonathan is pictured in our Old Street offices in London's Shoreditch, EC1.
