On the 3rd September we visited Juan Carlos Lopez de Lacalle, founder of Artadi, one of the groundbreaking winemakers currently making waves in Rioja. His premises in Laguardia are state of the art, ultra clean and attention is paid to every detail. Even the small trays used to bring in the harvest so that there is not too much weight on each grape, are uniform white in colour stamped with the red of Artadi.Touring the cellars, you can see that there is a fanatical fastidiousness at work here. However, Juan Carlos is modest, humble even, when it comes to his wines.

Transport at El Pison

We move to his home to taste the new 2009 vintage, 2008 and 2007, which has just been bottled. As Jim states “2007 & 2008 are good wines, but 2009 puts them in their place”. The 09s are a delight: balance, power and freshness all come together. We have not tasted many young wines that are as compelling as El Pison, Artadi’s single vineyard wine, which is also the site for our homely lunch with Juan Carlos and his family. El Pison 1995 and barbequed lamb - a real treat and the perfect conclusion to a fantastic visit.

Artadi 2009

This year sees the gradual release of the 2009 vintage from Bordeaux. This vintage is reputed to be the finest since 1982, the legendary vintage that got Bordeaux back on its feet after a terrible few decades and barely a decent vintage in the 1970s. 1982 was the beginning of Bordeaux crafting wines from fully ripe grapes and saw movement away from the thin, acidic, herbaceous wines that were the standard issue for so many years. Major advances in diversity of wine consumption have both benefitted and caused problems in this fine vintage.

We spent a week in Bordeaux at the end of March tasting the wines, and were struck by the fact that so many winemakers had managed to get hard tannins in their wines. This should not be the case in a year that saw plenty of warm weather and sunshine enabling the grapes to fully ripen, which ought to have produced high levels of soft tannins that are integrated into the wine and not intrusive, but give the wine structure and define the wine on the palate.

After remarking on this to many winemakers we seemed to get the most frank and honest answer from Francois Mitjavile, the iconic owner and winemaker of Le Tertre Roteboeuf in Saint Emilion. Francois developed techniques and systems to produce exceptional wine that at times left other vignerons scratching their heads. His very late picking for example at Roc de Cambes, his property in the Cotes du Bourg, was viewed as madness initially, but this property is now viewed as the finest in the appellation. Francois told us that the current trend of consumers wanting lower alcohol levels in their wine has caused panic in many growers as the heat and sunshine in the summer of 2009 produced high levels of sugar, and therefore high potential alcohols levels. In an attempt to reduce the final levels of alcohol these growers had picked the grapes too early, and so not fully ripe - thus resulting in the hard tannins we were tasting. It’s a shame really, as 2009 had the potential to produce some of the finest wines seen in the last 30 years. For many estates that is exactly what they have made, if they didn’t panic.

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There is a lot of interest in wine investment at the moment. With banks offering low interest rates on savings and uncertainty in the world markets, people are looking to find alternative places to put their money. Wine has preformed especially well in recent years and even with experiencing a correction in late 2008, it has shown good growth since then, with many wines higher now than before. Much of this has been driven by new wine-consuming markets, with China leading the charge. Demand has increased but the supply has remained constant.

The Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index is the industry’s leading benchmark. It represents the price movement of 100 of the most sought-after fine wines for which there is a strong secondary market and is calculated monthly. The majority of the index consists of Bordeaux wines – a reflection of the overall market – although wines from Burgundy, the Rhone, Champagne and Italy are also included. The index is calculated using Liv-ex Mid Prices and is then weighted to account for original production levels and increasing scarcity as the wine ages. As such, the index is designed to give each wine a weighting that corresponds with its impact on the overall market. The value of the index as of 31st May 2010 was 293.55, a rise of 4.4% on the previous month. The index is up 37.15% year-on-year and 23.8% year-to-date.

(taken from www.liv-ex.com).

Wine investments are exposed to risk like any other investment, with the value potentially going up or down, but the single greatest attraction for wine investment is the fact that Fine Wine profits are exempt from Capital Gain Tax - up to a point. If you are fortunate enough to have a rather large cellar and the value of it exceeds £250,000 you will have to pay Capital Gain Tax. However, it would be my recommendation that attention is paid to the law on this as the parameters may change.

However, caution must be exercised when purchasing wine for investment purposes. Only a tiny proportion of the wines available have the longevity to show growth and have a strong resale market. Usually the wines must be in case quantity and remain in their original case. Provenance is key; wines that have been stored anywhere but a recognised storage facility, usually a wine merchant’s cellars, is ultimately going to be less attractive to the purchaser and therefore command a lower price. Also, any fine wine should be stored under bond - paying your vat and duty only restricts the resale possibilities. Vigilance must be applied as the wine industry is not exempt from fraud and unscrupulous merchants. Recently we were singled out as one of Jancis Robinson’s recommended merchants for the purchase of wine futures, the best way to obtain value in fine wine.

http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a201004162.html
Browse our Bordeaux 2009 allocations
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Pretty much every vintage of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, one of the original First Growths in the 1855 classification of Bordeaux, has increased hugely in price in the past couple of years. This has been driven primarily by huge demand from the Far East, and China in particular. The annual production of the Chateau wine is 15,000 to 25,000 cases depending on the vintage. They also produce 20,000 to 30,000 cases of a second wine Carruades de Lafite. This number has not changed much in the past few decades, but the demand, on a global scale has vastly increased. Basically there is the same amount to be shared out between many more people.

In the first week of each April the previous year’s wine is tasted in an unfinished form (it requires another couple of years in oak cask to properly mature) in many tastings organised in Bordeaux after which the wines are released for sale as futures. This is the best way to get hold of rare wines at probably the most reasonable prices. However, the catch is that you have to wait two years until the wine is bottled and then a few more before it reaches maturity. Though the prices are not instantly available, the Chateaux of Bordeaux release prices from the middle of April into June, and sometimes July. The protocol is usually that the lesser estates release first with the top properties at the end.

This year the system was turned on its head by a new, potentially inevitable development. Liv-ex (London International Vintners Exchange) is a fine wine trading platform set up in 1999 on which private collectors and merchants can offer their wines for sale and set bids for prices which they would like to pay for wines. It recorded the trade of a case of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2009 at £10,000 before the chateau had released the wine onto the market. This has several implications. First, the business men at Lafite were aware that there are people who are prepared to pay £10,000 for a case of their wine that has never released over £4000. Many vintages of Lafite are currently trading in excess of £10,000, but certainly not all. Taking influential American wine critic,Robert Parker’s score of 98-100, which puts the 2009 in the bracket of potentially being a perfect wine, into account, it is a reasonable assumption that at some stage in its life the 2009 will exceed £10,000 per case.

With that in mind, will these trades determine future release prices? Secondly, someone is assuming that the release price will be lower than £10,000 and is intending to take a quick return once the wine is available for sale. The problem with this is being sure that the contract of the trade is completed by actually getting some of the wine. Allocations have been extremely small this year with many merchants unable to get sufficient stock to fill all orders for certain wines. Lafite will be rarer than usual this year; let’s hope the seller can deliver to the buyer. The third aspect of this trade is the increasing price of fine wine as an investment and the fact that this trade illustrates how distant from the normal wine lover these top wines are getting. The world of wine is changing, and when we start to see futures of futures, it is not really just fermented grape juice any more.

Bordeaux 2009 Allocations