Rolf Bichsel - Best of Bordeaux

enough of it. However, not even God knows how many cases are sold and drunk

and how many are stored and hoarded – perhaps because Peter is speculating

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with Bordeaux on the Lord's behalf. If the flyers advertising special offers and

premium-price cellar clearances which land in our mailboxes at times of crisis

are anything to go by, there is no shortage of great Bordeaux.

Profit calculations

Contrary to popular belief, there is no real correlation between wine quality

and selling price in Bordeaux. ‘Année vert, année cher', the elderly can be heard

to say: the less there is available, the more expensive the wine becomes. Bor-

deaux is a prime example of the law of supply and demand, and thus a strong-

hold of assets. The fact that Engels was a fan of Margaux (as claimed by Karl

Marx's daughter) is a peculiar irony in the history of winemaking, as speculation

with great Bordeaux does pay off: anyone who has gambled with skill over the

past 20 years will have pocketed healthy profits. Running a Grand Cru is there-

fore a rewarding enterprise – to a varying extent. Over the past hundred years,

the average value created by actual winemaking (including on top estates) has

been a meagre five to eight per cent. Grand Crus are monuments of wine his-

tory, so everything looks better if we examine the ‘valeur vénale', or estate value,

which (depending on the time of the purchase) can increase by up to 1,000%

not including investment, sometimes causing inheritance taxes to rocket and

also creating high levels of debt if inheritances are divided up. However, for

those who bought and sold at the wrong time it can also mean a -50% loss.

Nevertheless, if considered over the past twenty years, the top estates are true

treasure troves. Translated into bottle terms, no one in Bordeaux can produce

wines for less than 1.5 euros per bottle, and top quality for less than 5 euros is

an illusion. However, nowhere do production costs rise much above 20 euros,

which allows fortunate producers to gild many taps, employ many gardeners,

dig many pools, sponsor many artists and much more: in terms of the prices cur-

rently being applied (and depending on their level of debt, as mentioned above),

in good years this means profits of 50% or more. But remember, this only ap-

plies to the top 20 or 30 most famous estates – wineries in the 40th to 500th

positions have similarly high production costs but invest considerably more in

marketing and sales whilst having to sell their wines at significantly reduced

margins. As in most other high-quality wine regions, the widest range of per-

fectly respectable wines in Bordeaux from a quality perspective can be found at

between 20 and 40 euros. Depending on the expenditure incurred, profits in the

red wine sector range from moderate to good, but can start plummet in a flash

when loans take their toll, crisis looms on the global market and the tax authori-

ties are at the door. The situation is equally fraught at the other end of the scale:

the 500th to 1,000th positions are occupied by wines whose style has nothing

in common with the Grand Crus but which are still called Bordeaux, and whose

HistoryThe theatre of aging

Barrels at Pédesclaux

44

HistoryProfit calculations

existence is therefore based on maintaining the pretence that they are similar to

a Grand Cru but available for much less money.

For Bordeaux simply suggests Grand Cru and implies a complicated, exces-

sive, high-quality wine. Instead of unsuccessfully tagging along behind this idi-

otic ideal, winemakers either side of the Grand Cru line (which is a world of its

own) would be better off setting their minds to producing good, fresh, fun wines

for cheerful consumption as an increasing number of winemakers are now do-

ing – modern wines for everyone, rather than being forced to struggle between

heaven and hell at the limit of profitability. If Tuscany can do it, then why can't

Bordeaux – in the Côtes or Entre-Deux-Mers – do the same? Every month Gi-

ronde winemakers throw in the towel, countless producers are surviving by

the skin of their teeth, and average prices in Bordeaux are still no better than

in Beaujolais or Côtes du Rhône. Don't forget that Bordeaux floods the global

market with around a billion (1,000,000,000) bottles of wine every year, more

than 90% of which have nothing in common with Grand Crus, and the mere fact

that some of this is described as Bordeaux Supérieur implies that there must be

plenty of ‘Bordeaux Inférieur'!

Thanks to the Internet, we now have the ability to compare the prices of

world-famous brands in an instant. Online trade in Bordeaux is flourishing (and

for the time being is not upsetting the traditional system, just traditional Bor-

deaux merchants). Grands Crus are available via numerous channels, and the

margins that an intermediary can make are on average relatively modest (un-

less they go into cellaring and create added value from long aging). To this can

be added competition from major (French) distributors who are increasingly

seeking to circumvent the primeur-courtier-merchant system and use Grands

Crus as lures. Special offers arrive in our mailboxes and the (executive) staff

of Bordeaux Grands Crus are the first to run to the supermarket. Things look

rather different at the other end of the scale, with rules that bring to mind the

ills of the agricultural economy. Producers are receiving barely enough money

to survive, sellers are trusting in the power of a recognisable name and fanning

the flames of misunderstanding until they are blazing, slashing the margins of

wines bought cheap which have to compete with Grands Crus, and once again

wine enthusiasts are pulling chestnuts out of the fire and getting their fingers

burnt on illusory bargains. And because the rest of the wine world grumbles

about Bordeaux in public but emulates it in private, there are very few real al-

ternatives.

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The Bordeaux-makers History

The Bordeaux makers

Well, first there are the North Africans. Although they do not drink great Bor-

deaux, they play a major role in producing it, for which they are paid a pittance.

They are also Muslims, which poses no problems, as the Bordelais have always

shared Old Fritz's view that everyone should be holy in their own way. Although

Bordeaux has always been Catholic, it has successfully traded with Israelites,

Protestants and Anglicans who had become the ultimate controllers of global

trade, and its vines are now cultivated by Muslims, particularly in the historic

left bank regions of Bordeaux, largely by (local) women. Despite the high unem-

ployment rate, your average Frenchman does not want to get his hands dirty

with hard vineyard labour. Men sit on tractors and drive full barrels through the

winery. Manual work such as foliage treatment, vine pruning, hoeing between