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Another Very Good Year To Learn About Wine
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Commencer à lire- Éditeur:
- Herald van der Linde
- Sortie:
- Dec 2, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781310530593
- Format:
- Livre
Description
The Flying Dutchman and the Mad Englishman have known each other for more than 15 years. During that time the Flying Dutchman has learnt a lot about wine
recently earning a diploma from WSET (kind of a CFA for wine, and the entry-
level qualification for becoming a Master of Wine - for which the only
financial industry equivalent must be having a multi-billion dollar fund named
after you!). He now spends some of his spare time teaching wine to sommeliers
and other wine experts for Berry Bros in Hong Kong.
During that same time, the Mad Englishman drank a lot of beer and developed
a bit of a belly in the process. In 2012, they started sending each other emails in the hope that a little knowledge would help convert the Englishman from beer to Bordeaux in the hope that his belly will disappear. At the end of 2012, they published this collection of emails here:
www.amazon.com/Very-Good-Year-Learn-ebook/dp/B00AE5QGPO
In 2013, they started again...
Informations sur le livre
Another Very Good Year To Learn About Wine
Description
The Flying Dutchman and the Mad Englishman have known each other for more than 15 years. During that time the Flying Dutchman has learnt a lot about wine
recently earning a diploma from WSET (kind of a CFA for wine, and the entry-
level qualification for becoming a Master of Wine - for which the only
financial industry equivalent must be having a multi-billion dollar fund named
after you!). He now spends some of his spare time teaching wine to sommeliers
and other wine experts for Berry Bros in Hong Kong.
During that same time, the Mad Englishman drank a lot of beer and developed
a bit of a belly in the process. In 2012, they started sending each other emails in the hope that a little knowledge would help convert the Englishman from beer to Bordeaux in the hope that his belly will disappear. At the end of 2012, they published this collection of emails here:
www.amazon.com/Very-Good-Year-Learn-ebook/dp/B00AE5QGPO
In 2013, they started again...
- Éditeur:
- Herald van der Linde
- Sortie:
- Dec 2, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781310530593
- Format:
- Livre
À propos de l'auteur
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Aperçu du livre
Another Very Good Year To Learn About Wine - Herald van der Linde
year's…
Friday Wine: What should we expect in 2013?
Hi Herald,
Well, 2012 was truly A Very Good Year - To Learn About Wine
(particularly on amazon.com), but other than non-stop shameless plugs for your book, what else can we expect in 2013?
Cheers, Michael
- 0 -
Thanks Michael,
And speaking of shameless, did I tell you that I got an email yesterday from Amazon suggesting that I might like to buy A Very Good Year
- but it quoted you as the sole author!!! I know that salespeople like to take the credit for work that analysts and strategists do (and even wine-tasters), but I'm impressed that you managed to get amazon to join in to!
Anyway, I can't expect that to change - and so maybe I should go back to my day-job of writing about what markets will bring us in the year ahead... but this time about wine.
The global world of wine is under pressure. Demand in the major economies is weak and weather is bad. For brokers, margins are under pressure and volumes have fallen. I read somewhere that a wine broker in the UK had said 2012 was the worst year in the last 30. But wine supply appears to consolidate faster than demand.
Here are my trends:
1. Wine prices will rise. Prices are so low, especially at the supermarket level, that some producers cannot afford to do business. This is why supply is consolidating. Persuading consumers to pay more for good wine is essential. However, at the high end of the market, I believe some prices will rise too as buying power returns from the larger emerging markets. China is key here. But even in unlikely markets such as Indonesia there is a growing trend of drinking wine, as witnessed by the numerous wine bars in Jakarta.
2. At the high end of the market, Burgundy outstripped Bordeaux prices in 2012. This will continue. Burgundy is much more fragmented and is smaller (quantity wise) thus a wide divergence between these prices is not unreasonable to expect. This is driven by demand from emerging markets, and assumes that that we will see a further diversification of this demand (mostly from China) into Super Tuscans and Barolo in 2013.
3. At the end of last year, it emerged that Robert Parker has sold a majority shareholding in his magazine, the Wine Advocate. This presumably implies he is stepping back from wine criticism. His dominance will start to wane and new critics of wine, many of them online, will come to the fore. Hey, maybe it's the two of us!
4. A growing interest in new
wine regions and grapes. Some UK retailers are leading this trend by selling wines from Turkey, Greece, Georgia, South Africa and, yes, the UK. All offer wonderful and largely unknown flavors. Jancis Robinson, another influential wine critic, just co-authored a book called Grapes
in which the writers go in detail into the 1000 or so grapes. There is more beyond Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
And 5. I predict that you will get better at tasting wine... Or at least try!
Cheers - and keep keeping off the beers - Herald
- 0 -
Thanks Herald,
Actually, one of my New Year resolutions is to get better at tasting wine... so I am working on it. I'll send you my first one next week. Maybe that's why Robert Parker is retiring - he's scared of the competition!
Cheers, Michael
- 0 -
Prices - And How (Not) To Taste Wine Like An Amateur
Hi Michael,
Last week we looked at general trends in wine, and this week I want to look at price trends - but it's not an easy subject. The wine market is unregulated and murky. Prices differ by country, by retailer and also can differ within a store, depending for example on how the wines have been stored.
For general trends, it's best to look at Liv-Ex. This is a wine exchange used by all major wine traders globally. I believe that they connect to 420 members across 35 countries to both check prices and to trade. On this Liv-ex exchange, trades take place according to a standard contract with the same terms for payment, delivery and the condition of the wine to make wine prices comparable.
Another good thing is that it's on Bloomberg:
* LIVX100 Index gives you the price index for the 100 most sought after wines around the globe, mostly Bordeaux but also Burgundy, Champagne and Italian wines are included.
* LXFW50 Index gives you a top 50 fine wine index. Mostly Bordeaux and only of the last 10 vintages.
Looking at this shows a couple of things.
First of all, wine prices have come down since mid-2011 but are still some 20% above the previous trough seen in 2009, when a financial crisis hit the wine industry.
Another trend is that Burgundy wines have (price-wise) done much better than Bordeaux. While prices for Bordeaux have fallen by some 25% since mid 2011, Burgundy prices are up some 10%. At a prominent annual Burgundy auction (Hospices de Beaune), the average price of red wines at this wine auction rose by 69% over last year, while those of the whites rose by 18%.
It seems that this divergence is driven by a broadening of Chinese demand. They first went for top end Bordeaux, now for top end Burgundy and in the last months the prices for Super Tuscan wines from Italy have shown some resilience, presumably because this could be the next wine they are looking for. Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Solaia were all the rage in the late 90s and maybe the Chinese will create another boom in these Tuscan wines.
But what if you need to get a reasonable estimate for the price of an individual wine? In that case, I suggest you use www.wine-searcher.com. Type in the wine and country and ‘voila!’, it shows the price for the bottle at different associated merchants. A very useful way to find wines, and it makes sure you don’t pay too much for them.
So, how did your first attempt at tasting
go? Wasn't that your homework?
Cheers - and keep tasting - Herald
- 0 -
Hi Herald,
Ok, you asked for it...
Chateau de Sainte Gemme, 2000. Bought in Enoteca, basement of Takashimaya, Singapore. Don't remember how much. Not a great start, I admit.
It's a Bordeaux, Haut Medoc, and 50/50 blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, which I would think was a high degree of Merlot if I knew what I was talking about, which as we both know, I don't.
I decanted it, as I thought this might help, and then tried some straight away, which would seem to defeat the purpose of decanting, but couldn't wait. Ok, I did actually pause to look at the colour, and it wasn't particularly dark, even in the middle. And was definitely moving towards orange (is that what you mean by garnet
?) towards the edge. I am colour blind for red/orange/brown so I have no idea if that colour even exists...
I thought I might be having a bit of a Herald moment
, though, as I could immediately smell licorice, and rich tobacco, maybe even something tar-like. Not road tar though, or cigarette tar. More like the coal-tar soap they used to give to the kids with flaky skin. (Do kids at school today still get flaky skin, or was that just a 70s thing?).
Ok, enough looking at it and sniffing it and thinking about it. Tasting time. I have to say the first go was under-whelming. Not as much going on in the mouth as in the nose, and not the same thing either, more watery than you'd expect. It was light, I suppose, not at all what you'd expect, but it wasn't exactly vivacious. It reminded me of being young and going to a friend's house and being given a glass of Ribena by their mum, but she's obviously a health-freak and she hasn't put enough Ribena in it, and you're thinking, It looks like Ribena, but it doesn't taste like it. Is it because your kid's got flaky skin?
Mrs G didn't like it at all. Said not her thing and left the room, saying she'd see if it opens up
later... You see, Herald, even she's been reading the emails. An hour in the decanter, though, and Mrs G is accusing me of changing the wine over.
It's warmer and more heady. The beginning, middle and end are far far more intensely fruity, almost as if you've sneaked back into your flaky-skinned friend's kitchen, and poured five times the amount of Ribena into the glass. The aroma is much fruitier now too, and I'd like to think I was picking up red fruit, but I don't know... I may have been influenced by the colour of the wine.
It's now got a much more rounded finish too. Not a hint of over-dilution, but almost over-ripe. Plenty of tannin too, which is a good thing, as the next glass is going to have to wait until I've burnt some Argentinian grass-fed steaks...
Oh, whatever the steak was just too damned good! Practically hoovered it and forgot all about the wine-tasting!
I'm not very good at this am I?
I need a more rigorous system to help me with my tasting attempt. I mean, at the end of this exercise, looking at it, sniffing it, tasting it, thinking about it, I still don't even really know if I (in quote marks so big I decided to actually write them out like this) like
the wine when I've finished, let alone know if it was worth what I paid for it, however much that was.
So, fully fed, and most of a bottle of wine to the good, I decided I would embark on creating my own wine-tasting system. What does it need?
1) I want it to be comparable to price. Starting with an end goal in sight, I want to have PE for wine. What's the point in having a system that doesn't compare to the pricing? Some wines cost 100x more than others, so why not have rankings that reflect that? It has to be points and the points have to have a wide spread.
2) The points should be a compilation
. Who the hell can say, with accuracy, that a 92 wine is better than a 93? Surely better instead to have separate bits
that add up to 100... Again, to compare to PE, the E of the EPS isn't something that analysts just think up on the spot (well, most don't): it's the compilation of many other factors.
3) And those bits should, to a certain degree, be process driven or automatic. Or as close to objective as you can be. And some should be entirely subjective. So that helps.
Anyway Herald - my homework for next week is to draw up a system that helps me do ratings... I'll let you know how I get on.
Cheers - and all this homework will definitely keep me off the beers!
Michael
- 0 –
Good Investments... And Other Dubious C.L.A.I.M.s?
Hi Michael,
You've asked me a few times if wine is a good thing to invest in. I can tell you it's definitely a fun thing to invest in, and sometimes a confusing thing to invest in - but I thought maybe I should look at whether it's profitable...
I looked up some research and focused in on some papers that treat wine as an investment portfolio. First of all, there are obviously different kinds of ways of investing. You can even buy a whole vineyard. But for now let's just focus on different portfolios of wine. In line with some other research I did, I looked at the expected return and risk of different portfolios of wine, using auction prices (since mid 1990s) as a benchmark.
The highest returns were made in Spanish wines, high-end Medoc wines (that’s Bordeaux, left bank with the top five chateaux in the wine portfolio – Lafite, Latour, Haut-Brion, Margaux and Mouton-Rothschild) and Burgundy wines.
On average, since 1996, they would give you an annual return of 8% for the Medoc wine portfolio, 7.1% for the Burgundy portfolio and 4% for the Spanish portfolio.
But, as you know
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