LIVE24SEVEN // Wining & Dining
Patricia Terry COMFORT FROM BUYING BRAND NAMES
I’m off to Birmingham tomorrow for lunch with Rebecca, Rosie and Laurie for our belated Christmas ‘Doo’ (it’s an excuse that is understandably wearing a bit thin now with partners and friends). After lunch, it’s a foregone conclusion we pop our heads through the doorway of a few shops. Rebecca and Rosie are partial to a bag or eight! Louis Vuitton and Mulberry are favourites.
Laurie and I shall watch them agonise over whether to buy or not, while we seek out a bar selling bubbles on the periphery (bags are just not our ‘thang’), but teasing apart, many of us derive comfort from buying brand names, whether it be handbags, shoes, watches or what have you… and the same is true for wine.
To have a second wine, a third wine and even a fourth is normal for prestigious Bordeaux-classed growth properties. It’s as if a fairy (called Glenda...I can’t be the only Wizard of Oz fan out there) sprinkled magical dust over these wines, or it is the perfect example of ‘Branding’. The second wines of first growths can command a huge premium and are now considered investment wines in their own right.
Some second wines have been made for years, but they really found their place after 1982 – often mentioned as the first vintage of so called ‘modern’ Bordeaux – when prices began moving upwards in- credibly quickly. Châteaux became more competitive about price and quality and it became almost a point of honour to put less and less of your production into your Grand Vin. Greater selection equalled better first wine, which in turn meant that more good barrels were being consigned to the second wine.
Second wines in their turn attracted more attention and third wines were created to protect the quality of the
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second wine! ‘Super Seconds’ aiming for first-growth quality such as Leoville Las Cases, routinely put less than half their production into their Grand Vin. Lynch-Bages, in contrast, aim to make more wine that people can afford to drink and will put more into its Grand Vin.
WHO DRINKS THESE WINES?
Perhaps those who tend to be slightly cautious in their tastes, people who used to drink the Grand Vin and are now unable to afford to (this must be a growing demographic!!!) and are less comfortable with a Château they are unfamiliar with. These customers will make a beeline for La Reserve de Leoville-Barton, Le Clarence de Haut-Brion, Les Fiefs de Lagrange, Segla, Les Allees de Cantemerle, La Dame de Montrose…the same names pop up repeatedly.
Partly this is because the reputation of the Grand Vin needs to be good and long-standing. If the Grand Vin has less history and less reputation then it will be so much harder for the second wine to sell – good though it may be – and the truth of the matter is that pound for pound it would make more sense to buy a Grand Vin from somewhere cheaper, but of course we are also buying security and familiarity…and I think that is something that many of us can relate to, whether buying premium wine or other perceived luxury goods.
Vintage is also very important, second wines make it possible to buy into a ‘great’ vintage when it would normally be impossible to do so, unless, of course, you happen to be kissing cousins with a Russian Oligarch or two…
DOES IT MATTER HOW CLOSELY THE SECOND WINE FOLLOWS THE STYLE OF THE FIRST OR GRAND VIN?
Personally, I don’t think so…though with my commercial head on, then yes of course, people expect a mini version of the wine they are not buying!
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