The Unicorn You Can’t Catch

Collectors, land values and climate conditions conspire to keep this holy grail of wine out of reach for many.

I know this comes as a shocker (a little unfair while you’re still reeling from that Will Smith smackdown at the Oscars, right?), but here’s some news: Burgundy ain’t getting any cheaper and, in all likelihood, the situation is not going to improve, even if you’re not buying unicorn bottles.

A few things are driving this dire state of drinking. Well, dire for those of us unable to regularly (or at all) plunk down a few Benjamins for a bottle. One is money—and gads of it.

Though Bourgogne, as the French call it, is comprised of five distinct regions—many with well-priced bottles—many wine consumers have heard of only the two most famous at the heart: Côte de Nuits and its southern neighbor, Côte de Beaune (côte means hill). Both are renowned for their Premier and Grand Cru wines and the prestigious communes that are brand names unto themselves—Gevrey-Chambertin, Grands Echézeaux and Echézeaux and Jayer in the Nuits and Pommard, Volnay, Pulginy-Montrachet in the Beaune, for example. And within those, of course, are the uber-brands so coveted by collectors—names like Domaine Leroy Musigny, Romanee-Conti, Roumier, Leflaive. The scores and the prices are at the highest pinnacles, with some selling at an average price of $39,789, according to wine-searcher.com.

But across the board, Burgundy wines have become less approachable, with prices doubling in the past 20 years, reports idealwine.info, an online fine-wine auction site. And, neither pricing nor demand seems to be slowing down. Last year, Knight Frank’s luxury investment index ranked wine as the No. 1 object of desire, with Burgundy experiencing a 25% increase in investment. This year’s sales Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges wine auction, sales were 30% over last year’s event, with individual pricing on 228-liter barrels, called pièces, up 35% over last year.

What does that mean for us 98 percenters? Well, we have to look to “wine halos” to find good wines at good values.

Say, what? Stay with me, here. The idea of a wine halo is based on a cognitive bias phenomenon called the “halo effect,” in which the positive perception of a single trait can similarly influence the perception of other traits in the same person (again, stay with me). A popular example in psychology explains that people perceived as physically attractive often are perceived to have other positive traits—intelligence, good character, so on. It works this way with consumer brands: Maybe a basic Toyota car becomes more attractive when you learn the manufacturer also makes the luxury-level Lexus.

And it works this way with wine and wine regions, and especially so in Bourgogne. If you think about those two high-value côtes in the heart of everything and imagine concentric circles around them in which everything is valuable by association, you’ve got a wine-region halo. I suggest if you want to buy your Burgundy without breaking the bank, look for the halos or even beyond.

Cecile Mathiaud, head of public relations at the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne, the regional wine bureau, confirms this. “If you want to taste good Bourgogne at good value, look north and south.” She said the agency, established in 1975, at first promoted only Premier and Grand Cru villages, but “as quality improved in other regions,” it expanded to include “hidden gem” appellations such at Côte Chalonnaise and Bouzeron, which lie to the south of the Côte d’Or.

A few years ago, I interviewed Daniel Johnnes, founder of La Paulée, the Burgundy festival, and he introduced me to a few under-the-radar regions, including Côte Chalonnaise. When I asked him if the appellation was a good “Plan B” for Burgundy, he laughed and said, “I think it should be a Plan A!”

Land value is a player, too

In tandem with keeping an eye on bottle prices, keep an eye on land prices, too: They are sky-rocketing in the prestige regions, which means, that, too will have a price halo.

Safer, a French land agency that monitors agricultural lands and publishes valuations via its “le Prix des Terres” data, reported last summer, on average, a single hectare of grand cru vines in the Côte d’Or was valued at 6.765 million euros in 2020— a 4% increase over 2019.

“Nothing seems to be able to slow down this phenomenon of price evolution, which has been gradual and constant for 10 years,” an analyst wrote in the report. In its current “Wealth Report,” Knight Franks noted “Vineyards are of interest, with the French wine market seeing a healthy rise in exports.” The pursuit of vineyards is further amplified when billionaires dive in. Such transactions include the 2018 purchase of Clos de Tart for €280 million in by François Pinault and the 2017 majority-stake investment in Domaine Bonneau du Martray by American sports magnate Stanley Kroenke (owner of Screaming Eagle) for an undisclosed price.

Even at the commune level, prices are on the increase, reports Safer. In both Côtes de Beaune and Nuits, prices for parcels in less prestigious were up 3%, averaging 602,500 euros per hectare. Safer doesn’t drill down its land-value data to the appellation, but even this cursory look gives you and idea. (You can see how Bourgogne compares with other French regions on this nifty interactive map.)

And, not to be a Will Smith delivering another bitch slap, but there’s a factor at play even greater than the market that will affect prices now and (sorry) forever: Mother Nature and the unpredictable climate conditions that threaten to further limit an already tenuous production and supply. Pinot Noir is a notoriously tender and fickle grape. All it takes are a few weather events to affect production, supple and pricing for the long haul.

Even though it sounds gloomy, cheer up. In this first of a recurring miniseries (or in Netflix parlance, “limited series”) on Bourgogne, you’ll see how the region can tell its own [affordable] story anew.

Next in the series: where to look for the values