FT on BDX trade

[AKR]

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Jancis Robinson JANUARY 11, 2019 Print this page3
The Bordeaux wine trade is exceedingly tight-knit. The négociants who run the big trading houses tend to be nth-generation wine merchants, dealing with members of other longstanding families who either own châteaux or represent other links in the long commercial chain that delivers the wines to their eventual consumers or, frequently, investors.

Most of the négociants happily court the media. Some of them even offer special tailor-made tastings to journalists during the all-important primeurs season, when the latest vintage is assessed, scored and put on the market. But one of them has always fascinated me for his combination of power and almost obsessive discretion.

I once glimpsed Jean-François Moueix at Tupina, the insider’s restaurant in Bordeaux. And I was briefly once in the same room as his son and heir-apparent Jean Moueix — namely, the tasting chamber at Pétrus, the Pomerol estate whose wines command the highest prices of all Bordeaux. Inheriting Pétrus on the death of his illustrious wine merchant and art collector father Jean-Pierre Moueix, and taking over management from his engaging brother Christian, brought Jean-François very, very slightly out into the limelight.

Yet selling Pétrus wine is the commercial equivalent of falling off a log. It is Moueix’s peerless ability to spin top-quality Bordeaux into gold as a négociant that has won him admiration and envy among his peers.

He owns Duclot, a particularly high-end merchant business that sells wine around the world. He also has minority shares in smart Châteaux Calon Ségur and Montrose, and in Maison Descaves — a négociant with unparalleled stocks of ancient vintages built up by the indomitable Madame Jeanne Descaves.

In the spirit of Madame D, Descaves was run by two more women after she died in 1999. Marie-France Chauvin was succeeded by Ariane Khaida, who moved to the important position of running Duclot for the Moueix father and son in 2014, when Champagne Louis Roederer acquired most of Descaves.

A refreshingly communicative 43-year-old Champenoise, she professes delight to be working for two such different but complementary generations of Moueixes. Jean-François, conversant with every nuance of the Bordeaux wine business, provides the specialist expertise, while his long-haired, jeans-wearing son Jean offers a more lateral, global vision.

It was Jean, for instance, who ensured that the company moved into combating Bordeaux’s stuffy image by courting trend-conscious sommeliers directly via La Vinicole studios in Paris, New York and, more recently, Los Angeles. He once told an interviewer for Les Echos that he had tried finance but dismissed it as not “cool”. Since then he has been busy launching various spirits and hospitality ventures.

Presumably, Jean was involved with the recent decision to sell 20 per cent of Pétrus, the crown jewel of the family holding company Videlot, to the Santo Domingo family, a big shareholder in AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer. The Moueixes hinted to their importers that this was a prelude to “investments in other vineyards in Europe”, although none have been announced so far.

Just before Christmas I met up with Ariane Khaida in Duclot’s new offices. Over green tea, she insists that Bordeaux’s négociants have become infinitely more professional since she arrived there in 2002.

She also talks of a revolution in how the wines, which she describes as brands (unthinkable a decade or two ago), are positioned and sold. Traceability and forklift trucks are the order of the day, while temperature-controlled warehouses on the fringes of the city have replaced quayside cellars.

The Bordeaux wine trade was notable for its naked scramble for Asian business at the turn of the century; nearly all the houses set up offices in Hong Kong, the hugely important wine hub. Yet Duclot moved into Hong Kong just 18 months ago, selling exclusively Bordeaux wine to the Chinese and Japanese markets. “When Chinese demand peaked between 2010 and 2012, we were busy setting up in New York,” Khaida explains.

She is clearly frustrated by the volatility of the vital Chinese market, which had recovered from the slump six years ago caused by President Xi’s ban on excessive gifting. Last summer, however, Chinese demand cooled and has been pretty frigid since September.

The fine wine trade is a bit like the antiques business with lots of broking between traders, but Duclot is playing the provenance card hard. Any whiff of fake wine plays into the hands of a merchant who can prove its stock comes straight from the château. “We buy very little from the secondary market,” says Khaida, “and if we do, it’s marked on the invoice.”

Duclot’s speciality may be the Bordeaux wine elite but even it cannot afford to ignore the value currently on offer lower down the ranks. (In my view, Bordeaux wine today ranges from the worst value in the world at the top of the tree to the best at the bottom.) Khaida says Duclot is developing a range of petits châteaux (“although we don’t like the name”) to meet client demand.

For many years, the bread and butter of any Bordeaux négociant was the en primeur offer every spring, but demand has slowed to such an extent that en primeur sales may represent as little as 30 per cent of the firm’s total turnover some years, according to Khaida, depending on the quality of the vintage, that year’s pricing and the state of the world economy. It is typical of the old-school Bordelais way of doing business that Duclot has no contracts with any of the château owners on whom its business depends.

One big difference today is that the en primeur market is no longer ruled by the scores of one critic, as it was when the American Robert Parker (now retired) virtually dictated the market single-handed. Khaida admits that trading without this crutch is “more difficult but more interesting. Now properties can talk about much more than a score. They have the right to defend the wines they like.”

Some Bordeaux bargains
These, listed in ascending price order, are all wines I have tasted in the last few months that I thought were particularly good value. Note the very varied ages of the wines.

Ch Argadens 2015 Bordeaux Supérieur £11.50, Davy’s Wine Merchants
Ch Cabos 2015 Bordeaux £11.50, Lea & Sandeman
Ch Poitevin 2012 Médoc £17.95, Lea & Sandeman
Ch Fontesteau 2000 Haut-Médoc £19, The Wine Society
Ch Les Hauts-Conseillants 2012 Lalande de Pomerol £21.95, Davy’s Wine Merchants

[AlexR]

Hi,

A well-written article from Jancis. Somewhat of a "teaser" though because various subjects raised deserve developing.

I liked her comment "In my view, Bordeaux wine today ranges from the worst value in the world at the top of the tree to the best at the bottom".
However, couldn't one say that the most expensive wines from everywhere are poor value for money?

Best regards,
Alex R.

[DavidG]

Hi,

A well-written article from Jancis. Somewhat of a "teaser" though because various subjects raised deserve developing.

I liked her comment "In my view, Bordeaux wine today ranges from the worst value in the world at the top of the tree to the best at the bottom".
However, couldn't one say that the most expensive wines from everywhere are poor value for money?

Best regards,
Alex R.

Agree with your take on the article. Enjoyable and made me want to read more.

As to value for top wines, I was going to say Germany is an exception, but even there you can find a few examples like Keller G-Max where pricing is out of proportion to wines in the next lower tier.

[Ryan DB]

I agree with AlexR. I get a little tired of hearing people say that first growth Bordeaux represents "the worst value in the world." This is an absurd take, especially considering the prices of Cult Napa and Burgundy these days. Clearly her blind love of Burgundy is clouding her mind. High-end Burgundy is far more expensive than first growth Bordeaux, and is much more variable in quality IMO. And how about the fact that numerous Napa Cabs these days cost more than first growth Bordeaux? Personally, I think it's a little ludicrous to discuss 'value' when talking about first growth Bordeaux (or any other expensive wines).