Inside Bordeaux With One of the World's Top Wine Critics: In Conversation with Jane Anson

Welcome to the Arrini Global Podcast. Arrini is a global research and action institute for the future of Fine Wine. In this series we bring you conversations with thought leaders in and adjacent to the Fine Wine World. To discuss how we as an ecosystem can ensure the collective future of Fine Wine. Hi everyone and welcome to this new episode of the Arrini Podcast in Conversation. I am your host, Pauline Vika, and this week I will be joined by Arrini Editor, Extraterer, Felicity Carter. Because in almost exactly a month on the last week of April, Felicity and I will descend to Bordeaux to experience our very first Antrimeric campaign. And to be totally transparent, we are quite excited about this. Because the both of us have been to Bordeaux many times, and we both have strong personal opinions about the role in place that the region will claim the future of Fine Wine. But as we were both getting ready for this very unique week, some key questions emerged. What will happen this year during the Antrimeric campaign? What's at stake for this particular week? How does it all fit within the larger context of the Plaster Bordeaux? To answer all of these questions and many, many more, we thought we needed the help of one of the most globally recognized experts of Bordeaux. And so we are extremely pleased to welcome influential wine critic, Bordeaux-based writer and journalist Jane Hanson. Jane is without any doubt one of the most influential wine critic globally and is respected and praised around the world for her work ethos, dedication and talent. The extensive work includes the Magnumaube's Bordeaux Legends, a history of the 1855 first-grows published in 2013 and released as an NFT book in 2022. Wine Revolution in 2017 and of course, Inside Bordeaux published in 2020, a book that was called A Caterpie Buster by Wine and Arach and The Borde Bible by French newspaper, Refiel. She recently launched Jane Hanson.com, a site dedicated to Bordeaux, one of the world's greatest wine regions. And as we will see in this episode, the centre of so much of the global wine trade. So I have two main reasons to be excited about this conversation. But first, Felicity and I are about to spend an hour exploring the current state of Bordeaux, the wines, the marketplace, the region, with one of the world's leading experts on the region. So stay tuned for Insider Secrets and Revelations. And two, Jane has generously created an offer for all of our only listeners and subscribers. Stay with us until the end of this episode or explore the show notes you know how you can get 15% off on Jane Hanson.com and get access to "Oprimaire in Botto" ten years on and September release reports plus regular estates, verticals and fascinating profiles. But for now, back to Bordeaux. What does one of the world's top Bordeaux experts think about La Plasse, so the marketplace, the Alprimaire campaign and the current social and economical context in Bordeaux? How does one of the world's top critics prepare for this very unique week, which is about to start in less than a month? Let's dive in. Well, Jane, thank you so much for being with Felicity and myself today. And as you know, we are exploring Bordeaux this year and the role of the Plasse Bordeaux in the distribution of fine wine. And as you are, you know, the experts on Bordeaux, I can't wait to ask you some key questions. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being and for listening. I'm very happy to be with you. Yeah, it's great to see you. So I'm going to start asking you some question about, you know, the history of the Plasse and Felicity will take the lead on the Plasse today right after me. And you've been in Bordeaux since 2003, fam, correct? And my first question for you was before you arrived in Bordeaux, what were your impression of La Plasse before moving there? What did you understand of the system and what did you think it was? I think I'd say before I moved here, I'm not sure I really had any impression of it. I don't think I really understood the mechanism that Bordeaux wine went out to the rest of the world. And perhaps in the early years, I probably thought like most people did, that you imagine there is a physical place that the Plasse is actually somewhere where you have all of these different businesses instead of what it actually is, which is really a virtual network. So it joins focus, it joins wine merchants, it joins the shadows, but that is really a virtual thing. And I think the other thing that's really important that I didn't understand is that all of those points of the triangle in the Plasse are internal to Bordeaux. It actually isn't about the selling out from Bordeaux as much as what's happening within Bordeaux itself. So how did it take you to understand how it worked? Was it one of the first jobs that you did when you arrived in Bordeaux trying to understand that ecosystem? I think it is like a layering of understanding just how interconnected all the different parts of Bordeaux is. I would say it is one of the things that made Bordeaux so interesting to me. And why I think it kept me interested in how Bordeaux functions. Because the more you learn about the Plasse, the more you understand how different it actually is from the way that most other wine regions do business. And there's so much history involved and obviously economics. And yeah, I think it was one of the things that fascinated me about Bordeaux. And you've just mentioned that there's a lot of history. And we're not going to go through an in-depth history of the Plasse because it would take too long. And you've written an amazing book about it. And we'll put some details on the show notes and of course we encourage everyone to read it. But when did we first start to talk about the Plasse? When this notion came as an organized thing? So let's think if we go back just as far as 17th or 18th century. Then you could kind of think of the Plasse as being the shut one key side. So here you've got this lovely key side where today you've got the organic markets on a Saturday and lots of bars and restaurants. And for most of the 17th and 18th century, that's where generally all of the wine brokers, so the Courtaillies and all of the wine merchants, so the Negotiants, were along that stretch of water. And they would have rolled their barrels containing the wine out from their sellers to the waiting ships. But even then, that's forgetting the third part, which is the Chateau's, which were always a course out of the city centre. I think thinking about the Plasse in its modern form, which means the rise of the Plasse in the consciousness, not just of consumers, but actually of wine merchants around the world, is much more recent. And I think as with so much in modern Bordeaux, you can probably date it to 1982 because that was really when this idea of how Bordeaux did business, suddenly had some element of consumer involvement and suddenly became more interesting than many different wine merchants. Can you explain what happened in 1982? What was the mechanism that changed that or the impetus? Yeah, it is really interesting. And I think using 1982 as a way to understand how the Plasse work is key. So up until 1982, the Plasse was really about. You're getting the wines from the Chateau's to the Negotiants via the Courtais, they're just kind of us today. But then the wines would largely have stayed with the Negotiants, so with the wine merchants and they would have been the people who were aging it and would have sold it on. And when it was being sold on, it was probably going to maybe 20 different big buyers at that point in maybe in northern Europe. So places like Switzerland and Belgium always big buyers at Bordeaux. They would have been going maybe to the US and to the UK, but really not to many different producers. Along comes 1982 and there's certainly this rise of interest from consumers. 1982, remember, was the first vintage that Robert Parker ever gave 100 points to. So he gave 100 points to Mute on Rust Child and to Patrouse in 1982. And the general buzz around that vintage meant that all of a sudden consumers were asking to buy and as consumers were asking to buy, say, well, lots of other wine merchants suddenly wanting to buy from Bordeaux. And that was really the first time that Negotiants were selling to other Negotiants in a serious way, like in a major way. Before that, these individual Negotiants would have just kept the wine and sold it on. But at that point, all of a sudden Negotiants A is saying to Negotiants B, hang on a minute, I want some of the food. I know you've got some in your cellars. Can I buy it from you? And so then this big internal marketplace suddenly became a lot bigger. And what does that mean? It means there's a lot more money being generated within the class itself. Because every single transaction within the plan, your broker is making 2%. So if the broker is making 2% just going from shadow to Negotiants, that's 1%, 2%. But if he's then selling on between Negotiants, because remember, they have to use a broker as well, then that 2% is getting to be another 2%, another 2%. And suddenly, brokers are making a lot more money. And suddenly, it's not just trading in one line, but it becomes that web of network and relationship. Exactly right. Have we seen a number of members of La Plasse Explodings since 1982? Well, actually, when I moved to Bordeaux in 2003, there were maybe 400 Negotiants and about, I think, 140, 48, something like that. Today, you're talking to about 300 Negotiants. And really, maybe 70 different brokers, so Courtais, both of them. But there are only maybe 10 that count. 10 Courtais who really deal with the top estates, who really make the money. and for the negotiations there are probably 40 or 50 again that is seriously important and that really deal with these with these biggest dates. So I wouldn't say numbers have massively exploded now it's more than money going through the path. And almost the shape of the transaction as you described. So 1982 first year Robert Parker gave a hundred points and suddenly the the world wants more board. If any other dates in the recent history of the past. I'm just wondering about 2008 when suddenly the Chinese market exploded and the American market found it wasn't as competitive as Southeast Asia. Did that change the nature of Laplace? I think Bordeaux got incredibly lucky in 2008 because as the economics globally were imploding and many many industries had to deal with problems in their supply chain and had to deal with you know this global financial crisis. Bordeaux was kind of rescued at that point by China coming into the market because don't forget as you know very well Hong Kong got rid of their taxes so go to the terrace exactly and that really did explode that market and because Bordeaux had dropped its prices in 2008 and remember Bordeaux is reactive generally speaking Bordeaux is very reactive when it has to be. It holds off for as long as it can but then it is able to be reactive and so China came in at that moment prices were low China saw for that one sadly for that one vintage that there was a lot of money to be made in on-premise and so it protected Bordeaux from making some structural changes that probably it should have made at that point and that now I think we're seeing it will have to make. Can you talk about what some of those changes are? It's that memory that to be truly successful on the place you have to be able to put your prices down as well as up and I think that is so crucial and that has seen Bordeaux successfully through many centuries of difficult times economically is being able to be responsive to knowing that you can drop your prices if you have to. You might not want to but you can do it. I think that the younger generation of people in Chattos today, a lot of them people are making the decisions because 2008 they were saved by this entrance of China that maybe they didn't learn that lesson as well as they could have done and as well previous generation certainly have. So when you think of the generation like Jean-Michel Cahars they would have been very an even old brokers like the Lawton's LAWT-ON those those guys who've been through generations are being broke as we're very conscious that for this system to work in a long time it is like any market it goes up and down. So yeah and I think that the current generation because of that being saved by China in 2008 maybe it's taken them longer to realize that prices have to come down now for the on-premise system to re-work. We are entering a new cycle of prices right so we're quite simply in a similar position in that 2008 but it doesn't seem that you know neither Russia nor China nor the US nor Brazil nor India nor any kind of market will you know change will become suddenly extremely interested with fine wine in the next few months. So do you think this is the year where people will have to make a change? Well I think that we all say this every year that these things have to be taken seriously and the board lays have to bring their prices down. I do think they do. I don't think structurally we're going to see size make changes yet. I think there are a couple of signs of where we might see the market going so obviously the tour for a long time has stepped back from on-premise. It can't sell on-premise so there are you know these kind of real flagship wines that don't sell on-premise. I think maybe a bigger sign is what happened with the Ross Childs buying good house in the UK so buying a wine merchant. It's not the feet the general section if that's the word is that it's the feet the board. The feet are a small shareholder in you know minority shareholder on this. However it is still a big deal that the Ross Child family are buying into a wine merchant who is then obviously selling directly so there is a clear wish and a desire to get closer to the end consumer and it's it's fascinating to see what will happen because at that same time and I know we're going to talk about this in more detail later but at that same time many of those big international wines are choosing to come through the Bordeaux Plast system so it's rather a fascinating crossover between what some of the Bordeaux shatters are doing and what some of the international shatters are doing. So I mean obviously a great deal has changed in the last 21 years but if you had to describe La Plast today as an international organisation could you sort of summarize where La Plast is at the moment? Yes I think if we look at what are the major changes? What are the major changes that we've seen in the past over the last 20 years or so? I think probably one of the key changes is that is more transparency. We were chatting about it just before we started this conversation and there's no question there is more transparency than they used to be. You have players like wine searcher like live ex you have really done a very successful and important job overshining a light on what happens in the plast and certainly overpricing much more than was historically the case. We're seeing everything being much more data driven than it used to be. So a lot of these prices that were how they're being set and where they're being set is driven by data in a way that wasn't really the case in the past. There are companies called like wine services, identified as a small but important company within Bordeaux who is tracking hundreds of different data points connected to the branding and the pricing which might mean presence on wine lists and top restaurants. Yeah, positioning in the Android. Yeah, exactly. Positioning on trade is huge and not just that actually they're now also looking at different negotiations so they're kind of like internally policing the negotiations are they really sending things to what they say and then how much those things are very new and in some ways the international wines have driven that because when you have people like OpenSWM coming onto the market they really want to know exactly where their negotiations are selling because they used to knowing themselves because they've been used to doing it direct to their own small list and so that has I think made the Borde Shatters realize oh we have more agency than maybe we realized in terms of where and how the Bordeaux negotiations are selling so that's a big change being slightly more demanding I guess is one way of saying it of knowing the whole chain of sales. So yeah it's interesting I guess it's a bit like it happened to other industry much longer ago where they'd get external consultants to come in and kind of bring in outside information which could help you know strategize how companies work and sometimes that's the problem as well. You mentioned 2008 one of the problems in 2008 was that for five to ten years before that I outside consultants people like KPMG etc working with all these industries and banks and saying it'll keep going and it's never going to end. The market's going to keep on growing and that's often not the case. In fact it's never the case. This is a good moment to say so where we are today what are the advantages and disadvantages of Laplace as it stands today. Okay there are many advantages but really I can be negative about the plus sometimes but when you actually step back one of the major advantages is the incredible distributions that they have and long standing deep seated understanding of different markets so by going through the plus you're going to have access to at least 10,000 different clients around the world and not just the sellers but you're talking about on trade as actually you mentioned on trade off trade wine clubs, commodities and every real level of the fine wine market there is a negating on somewhere that has expertise in that and it's why brokers have a more important role than maybe many of us understand because brokers have a deep knowledge on the one side of Shatteries and what their strategy is but on the other side of these 300 different negotiations firms within Bordeaux and there's a lot of them and some of them will be truly specialists in certain parts of China others in India others in whatever that's extremely specialized most negotiations and so having somebody on the ground who understands and can marry those two things is actually very important and yeah so brokers can really offer that. I would say the Bordeaux plus is not brilliant at building a brand or it's brilliant at is a capillary distribution it's brilliant at taking the headache of logistics out of Shatteries who are wanting to sell into 20 different regions across China but not understanding that each one of those have a very different way of selling negotiations would take that headache away. Well actually that's really interesting because I think there's a perception from outside Laplace that it is a place to burnish your brand if not build it from the ground up so what do you think of the major misunderstandings that people have when you hear people talk about Laplace? So I teach a council on the Place de Bordeaux at Keijs Business School in Bordeaux and one thing that strikes me every time is just how much is misunderstood I think one thing is nobody understands what Courty A's do. There's a wheel understanding that I don't understand what Courty A's do please explain. That idea of them being the internal regulator and understanding is much more important I think than is widely understood. What's the biggest misconception is that the class is only about on-premar I think that's probably the number one thing. Yeah and also just about fine wine right and just about fine wine exactly because people forget that there's all the levels of wines that I've traded through the class maybe not by the exact same stakeholders but that you've got many many different wines. Exactly right and I think what you've just said there is so important that when we said at the beginning there's say 70 brokers and 300 negotiations of those actually most of them will be dealing with less expensive wine or bulk wine or whatever and there's only 10 or 15 lucky guys who are dealing with those top classified states and on-premar is one tiny slice of that so a lot of the Bordeaux classes kind of grunt work of I need so many on-block to make a big brand but so many on-block and I'm not going to say that I'm not going to say that I need a broker who knows, I don't know, a thousand shadows that makes a non-blow. How do I get the one that's right for the profile of wine I'm looking for? See, you've just completely enlightened me. Until you said it, I had no idea that they're dealt in bulk wine. Yeah, it's some, so about 70% of bordeaux wine, overall, will go through the past. There'll be others that go direct, but not, but not many, to be honest. Most of them will go through the plant at some point. Yeah, it covers exactly as you say, it covers every single level of bordeaux wine. What's happening in correct me if I'm wrong, Jane, but what's happening recently is that there's more and more speciality and specification within the stakeholders of the of the Plastelac. Negotiants that do now like specialise in fine wine are almost never taking bulk wine anymore. And same thing for the courtier, like a the courtier agent, you will have specialist because that was one of the things that interested us in exploring bordeaux is that it seems that fine wine distribution is more and more separated than regular between bracket wine distribution. Is that true in that sense? Fine wine is very different in terms of price. That is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but actually even back in history, it was really a different, it was specific merchant who dealt with the less expensive wine. Okay. Maybe less extreme than it is today. But for a long time, if you were a merchant in Chartreau, you dealt with the classified estates, even before they were classified the expensive estates. And then if you were a broker in the right bank or if you were a broker who happened to be based out of the Medoc even, you weren't dealing with those expensive wines, you were dealing with the smaller, less expensive wines. So there was really a kind of mafia by those courtiers who were on that Chartreau on key side because they were the ones that had access to the ships, which were going out. So even back in the 18th, 19th century, there were some lucky guys who made more money and then there were the people who kept things going. But it is really crucial to see just how much the Place de Bordeaux is responsible for the success of bordeaux over the last thousand years. So ever since the middle ages when this system really began to be set up as it is today, the place has been about keeping money in bordeaux, keeping the wheels turning in bordeaux and it really is crucial to that understanding of why this is such a true global wine capital and that's why people come in for the expertise that has been hard-wut over centuries. So, Janet, given the history, the depth, the importance, the importance of bordeaux, why is Laplace so misunderstood? I think and they probably wouldn't lightly saying this, but I think it's in their interest for it to be a little bit mysterious. I think there's quite a lot of people in bordeaux who are not thrilled with the idea of what we talked about them before people like livex and people like wine searcher have done in lifting the veil and showing margins and showing all of that kind of stuff. I'm sure there's plenty of people who are not thrilled with that. And I think it is a genuinely complicated system. There are these high profile things such as on Premiere and it's easy to be blinded by that and to then not see just how actually in-depth the bigger picture is. It's also quite easy to forget that, you know, the work that it takes to be ready for that there is on Premiere campaign because it's the job of a year almost to be ready for those, you know, two weeks of spotlight. Oh, and you're right. There's another misconception. You're quite right. A misconception can be that it's super easy for negotiations to make their 15% because they're just selling on Premiere. But to get the right to have that allocation on Premiere, you have got to buy whatever basically the big set is ask you to buy throughout, I say ask and ask you to buy throughout the year from their sellers. So they will be drip feeding many older ventures to the negotiations who then have to buy basically whatever price they're told to buy or after they lose that allocation for on Premiere. And it's why you need deep pockets to be an negotiating and historically and still true today they'll be buying from the shadows at prices at the shadows set, often that much higher than the market price and then they have to hold on to that wine. Interesting. Until the market's risen to make it, you know, make it worth their while. And they really act as a bank, really as a as a financial of the trade. They do. That's exactly right. Exactly right. And today the banks themselves are not thrilled about helping that situation because interest rates are high, certainly higher than they've been. So that is another one of these crunch points that's coming. It isn't necessarily structurally it's not working. It's that the external conditions, the market conditions are changing and therefore. Cash flow is expensive. Yeah. Cash flow exactly. Cash flow is expensive and the shadows can't expect or they might expect it but it won't happen. Negotiants can't continue to bankroll them in the same way. So turn you man, shouldn't a couple of times that what the plaza board has been really good at is keeping the money in board. Oh, and actually benefit to that local ecosystem. So I'm really wondering the impact of the Beyond Board of Wines there because by nature it is outside of that board. Oh, it's system. And we've learned a lot of good story about the Beyond Board of Wines coming and as you mentioned in terms of transparency in terms of working in a bit of a more modern way. It did create a lot of good but we've learned also, you know, we've heard different stories about that. So what really was the impact of their Beyond Board of Wines? Not just one or two but the spectrum of wine that is now present on the plaza. So I think as with so much about the plaza there are negatives and there are positives. I'm going to actually start with the negative because I really think it's very important. We've worked out this system of how negotiations have to buy from the shadows and in many ways the only clients for the shadows are the negotiations and I think that's so crucial to understanding the ludicrous prices and why shadows continue to get prices wrong. And they don't mean all prices are ludicrous. I mean this situation where they don't respond as quickly as we'd like them to often that's because in their minds it's the wine just has to go as far as the negotiate. So if we think about that in terms of the external wines, here's your shadow who's released wines at a high price. The negotiations support what they have to keep their allocation. At the same time you have all of these big international wines coming in. Again the negotiations buys those because you see that as being potential to make money. It's great but let's say 50% of those international wines don't sell through immediately. The negotiations have to hold on to that stock. Same thing they're buying expensive wine from the shadows. It's not all going to sell through because the shadows are selling it at a very high price. So let's say again they're holding on to 50%. That means that there's less liquidity in the market for the negotiations to then do what they traditionally did which was by Kru Bojoa which was by those lower level classified Santa Millions and also to buy the graph wines and all of these things which traditionally the negotiations would have bought much more of. So what happens? There's a problem those smaller shadows struggle massively to get money because they're not used to selling direct to consumers because they've been used to selling through negotiations. All of a sudden the negotiations have less liquidity out there to buy. It's really being dramatic particularly for Kru Bojoa. They have wines that have good price, often really good quality and they're having hard and harder time being bought by negotiations. Kind of say they've got to quickly pivot and find different routes to market at that proving to be very complicated. So in some ways that beyond Bordeaux wines have enlarged the gaps between the top wines of Bordeaux and the entry level, even middle range of Bordeaux wines and I think so now you've got all those fine wines wherever they come from, whatever they origin, they're all in that universe. That's all at the top and you've got Italy and California and top Bordeaux and they created a new category of international fine wine with that borders. But that somehow disconnected Bordeaux from its roots and had impact on the lower level of Bordeaux, right? I think that's really extremely well put and that's exactly right and on the bright side it has even more underlined the idea of Bordeaux being a well capital of wine because it's inviting and giving a warm welcome to those icon wines. But exactly as you say the downside of it is this lack of liquidity for the smaller wine. As the beyond Bordeaux person sitting on the call, to me it sounds like the issue there is that the financial model isn't flexible enough. I mean I would think if you're a merchant and you've got the offer of, I mean the Cribage were are terrific wines and they're very salable wines. So what is it that the beyond Bordeaux wines offer? Is it a big margin or you know why would they be more attractive than something that's close to you that is also easy to sell? I think as with the top Bordeaux there is more margin selling expensive wines and there is selling lower price wines. There's also the prestige that's associated with selling icon wines and Bordeaux has proved throughout the centuries that well they know having some icon wines on your books is a great way to create burs and to secure your own future as a business. So I think it's extremely tempting and probably hard to turn it down. Again we're not talking about every negotiating. There are still plenty of negotiations who only specialize in the smaller estates but those big guys who have really all of the contacts and who have the you know people like CVBG or Joanne or those kind of big name negotiations. I think it's probably very difficult not to see the benefit for them of selling the icon name. And so because if I'm being the devil's advocate I'm like cool then the negotiation makes more money you know, selling it to the, then selling centimillion plus classier and, you know, centimillion superior or whatever. What could be the long term of the midterm impact on the region should that gap between the top wines and the entry/medium plus bourgeois level wines? What's to continue? - We're seeing it already. We're seeing vines having to be pulled up. We're seeing a lot of bourgeois who are being bought up by the bigger guys. So you have things like La Tour Carnée. La Tour Carnée is now over 200 hectares, I think, 225 hectares because they bought a lot of the smaller bourgeois. And it's not to say that the quality isn't good for La Tour Carnée, they bought excellent bourgeois. They bought like Karen Sanjem, a really brilliant bourgeois. But in terms of consumer choice, inevitably that's been reduced because some of those smaller, really good names, who find it increasingly difficult to make enough margin to continue or having to sell up. So I think it is changing the landscape. - Do you see it impacting the attractivity of the region in terms of tourism, in terms of, you know, bordeaux global name, or can that have that type of impact as well? - It's a really interesting question. And I guess we're going to see. Bordeaux has been counted out so many times, and it always manages to find a way through. - Yes. - You look at 19th century writings about Bordeaux. What are people saying? They're saying the top wines are too high, the prices are ridiculous, nobody's going to want to buy them, that turns out not to be the case again and again and again. I think we forget that there are fine wine regions who are making a thousand bottles of something incredible or making 300 bottles, that's probably a better way of something incredible. Like often might be the case in Burgundy, even in Napa, is remarkable and should be congratulated. But to be able to do that over 5,000, 10,000, not just bottles, but sometimes cases, is really something incredible. And it allows this fine wine marketplace to receive margins in many different parts of the world. And that will always give Bordeaux an edge over other fine wine regions. It's the ability to make good wine at scale. So because of that, there is more margin in Bordeaux, I think, for messing up, but for people to be patient and for Bordeaux to find a way through. And I do think right now, it is a crunch point, exactly as you both point out. There's a lot of things wrong right now structurally, but underneath it all, there's still the name Bordeaux, which is very, very strong. And there's still the potential, if we take out what the wine tastes like, the potential for the fine wine market to make money from Bordeaux. And these are businesses we're talking about. So I'm still confident that it will find a way through. - So this is probably a good time to start breaking down the system. Can we start with on-premise? Can you describe an on-premise campaign? - Okay, so let's imagine the theory. The perfect theory of on-premise is that it's offering away for wine merchants and consumers to buy what is unfinished, but still a wine that has been blended and put into battle, probably about a year before it's released. And in theory, you're getting at the best price you're ever going to. And also, probably even if that's not the case, you might be getting it in formats that you want that you're getting in large formats in magnums or whatever. And maybe in the best cases, it's a wine which you will not be able to get later. So maybe that's lapan. Maybe it's some, I don't know, over on block. Things that are really made in small quantities. That's the theory behind on-premise. But as wine critics, and not just wine critics, in fact, there are probably 5,000 people that come for Bordeaux during the on-premise season, not just in the off-meal week, but let's imagine like over the on-premise month. And they're tasting these wines. One thing I often like to say about Bordeaux is it is the pressure. Imagine the pressure if you're a wine maker in Bordeaux and every single year you are lined up in front of 5,000 people who are tasting your wine and saying whether or not it's good. So the pressure to perform, but also for the consumer, the pressure that puts on wine makers to actually produce something good, even in challenging conditions, is quite extraordinary. And yes, so is that what you meant, by the way? Or did you mean actually the mechanics of how we go about the tasting? We'd like to know the mechanics. (laughs) Okay. And how you do it? How do you get the stamina to do it? Give us the whole story. I tell you, it is bloody hard work. I'd definitely tell you that. I think it's very easy. Yeah, to look from the outside and think, "Oh, that must be fun tasting wine for a month." It is not fun. Well, and it's our female wines. It's very young wines. In a region where there's a lot of tannins. (laughs) Exactly. Yeah, you've got to protect your teeth. Well, there's a lot of tannins, terrible beauty. So you say, I would say, for me, I will, it's always three weeks. Sometimes it's a little bit more than that. So start early April. So it used to be March. It's now almost always, well, not all miss always. It is now in April, which is them. I think they're a bit better 'cause you've got given the wines a little bit longer after they've been made. And your days probably start at 7/30 or 8 to get out because remember, we have to go out to the shadows to taste almost always. If you're a negocent, the lucky things they have, like basically one or two days downtown, where every shadow sends their wines to a place downtown and the negocents can taste through them all, with critics that don't let us do that. And people forget, I mean, it's a lot of drive it. It's a large region border that from Pissac to. It's a big region. No, Santa Stéph. It's probably the year and a half. And you're right, if they're straffy, it's a lot. So yeah, so you're tasting probably 800 wines over the course of those three weeks. Maybe a thousand, but probably more likely 800. And for those of us who actually publish scores, when you think how many critics actually taste everything and publish scores, that's probably less, would probably then get down to, I don't know, you guys would know that's much as major, or do you think 30, 25 to 30, who really taste everything and publish everything. But if you are doing that, of course, you're doing the tasting, but you're also filling in your spreadsheet, you're getting all of the technical information that you need for the great blend of that specific year, putting it all together like a jigsaw, and then writing your tasting notes, editing them, getting them ready to go out, and you're hopefully publishing within a week or maximum two after the on-premise has finished, because you want it to be helpful to people. That's the whole point. When we're tasting these wines, we don't know the prices, we might have an idea, but we don't know the prices, but we do want to be as useful as we can be for whoever's going to be buying them. This is a piece of trivia, but I'm dying to know. Are the police out in force during on-premise? Like, how do you get from place to place with all this tasting going on? It's such a good question. So in the olden days, and I don't know if this is true or not, but you used to hear that the police would basically turn a blind eye during on-premise season and not stop people, but it's definitely no longer the case. There are police, and there should be. There was exactly no question there should be. I will, if I'm no- I'm tasting a lot in a day, I would have somebody, I would find a way to not be driving myself. I've been super lucky in the last couple of years that I have somebody who comes and helps me with the driving, but also with the logistics of finding out things like those blens. Like, because these aren't finished wines, it's a pointless tasting note. If you're just saying what they taste like right now, you have to be projecting forward, you have to be thinking, what's the structure like? What are the different elements like? What is going to happen? And so knowing those technical details for me is quite important, not for me, but for what I'm the service I'm performing, which is, I hope, trying to make sense of what the vintage is like, and what individual wines are like. And so knowing that a wine is 14.5 or 15%, compared to a wine that is 12.5 or 13, that's important information for the buyers who are going to be doing a template and consumers who are going to be drinking it. So I like to have technical stuff, not necessarily on tasting, but while I'm putting it all together before I publish my notes. So we've been talking about the misconception of bordo and one that's often the case with people, you know, get confused between the class, the entrepreneur and the 1855 classification and those wines. And of course, the entrepreneur week is not just about the 1855 classified wines, but I was wondering because of all the recent news of that classification and what happened in Sant'Iminion and all of that, what is still the relevance of that classification in the success of your entrepreneur campaign? Do you have more chance to have a successful campaign when you are within that classification system or when you come from outside just for the fine wine segment, not for the bulk wine, of course. Yes, I think actually if we're talking about the class bordo as a whole, then the classified wines are only a small portion. But if we're talking about on-premise, the classified wines and their equivalent are basically the beginning and the end. So it would have been the case previously that maybe some. I would have been sold on-premise successfully. They are not successfully sold on-premise anymore. Because of this idea that the classified wines of prices have gone up so deeply, there is less money in the system for those smaller wines selling on-premise. So I think that's something that we have seen change. So today, you have maybe in a good campaign, 200 to 250 wines that successfully fell on-premise in difficult years, like 2022, even though they were good wines, they were priced you highly and they were not successful campaigns. So then you'd be talking 50 or 100 wines that really were successfully sold and they're classified. What's a successful campaign? Well, it's a great question and that is one of the things that I think is not transparent, still isn't transparent. So you have a state like Grand Priler Cost. Grand Priler Cost is a shadow which famously is happy to sell as much as it can on Prima. And that might mean 90% of their production, even 95% of their production, they'd be happy for it to be sold on Prima. One of the things that François Xavier, who's the owner there, said to me once, was he likes to get on a train while it's stopped in the station and get his wine out. I really like that, I like the way he's thinking about it, but that's old school. So many other people like, let's imagine, most of the first girls now. The feet used to sell a huge amount on Prima. They probably do sell more than most of the others, but some estates will now not want to sell more than 50%. But they'll decide if they want to sell 50% on Prima, say, "Shatty Palmer," for example, is a good example of that. And then they keep 50% back to sell up to 10 years, or whatever, whatever their strategy is. Palmer happens to be 10 years, I'm sure other shatts have different things. And because they feel there's more margin to be made, if they hold some back, and they sell it over time. But do they communicate about that? Do we know exactly how much they keep and how much they sell? No, that's what I mean. That's where we have no idea. Absolutely not. No, you don't have any idea. You have to go through people like me who have that understanding of the marketplace. The culture will know. Well, they have them. Of course, they'll know. Yes, they will. Okay. And the negotiations will know as well. So the negotiations get their allocation each year, and their allocations often are smaller each year, not necessarily because they've done anything wrong, but because the shatts are releasing less wine. That can make sense in the rising market. Does it make sense when interest rates are going out? Probably not, but these are the things that has changed a lot in the last decade. And that I don't think yet anyone really knows what will happen in the future. But the good for the negotiators, they only really means 50% because it means they've got to carry less stock. Except who has to buy that stock in three or four years time when the shareholders release it at a higher price? Oh, it's the negotiator. So when I ask you about the classification I meant, does it make a big difference in the flexibility that you have, the power that you hold, whether you are a first gross or second gross or so gross to drive the market into drives a price of your. So let's imagine how does the shatts set his price? So he's looking at a number of different things. One thing he's looking at is quality. By no means is that the only thing he's looking at. But we'll be starting to look at the time of harvest that we're starting to think, okay, what kind of a wine have I got this year? How much can I push my price purely for the quality? He'll then be looking at how he sits in the marketplace. So that certainly classification is part of it. A first growth will always have more power than a fifth growth to set his price highly. That is a fact. However, what I have found when you look back over history, first growths also have more flexibility and they are almost always the people who we get quickest when they have to drop their price. So 2008, flitity you talked about earlier. In 2008, it was the first growths who came out quickly, but very quickly at about a hundred euros per, you can't even imagine that price now. But they were very quick because they believed at the time that they had a duty to set the price because that was really they were so important in how the other shuttles price themselves. That's a bit less true now. But anyway, so yes, so they're thinking about their place in the market, which means partly classification, but also means how many vintage do they have on a Michelin style restaurant in LA and how many hundred points did they get from Parker in the last, you know, whatever, all of those things will come into it. And they'll also be looking at what is the market like. So what terrible dramatic event has happened? I say to people often, if they're interested in Bordeaux and actually if you're interested in fine wines a whole, become interested in politics, you need to know something about politics and economics because it's set the price. Well, actually speaking politics, I just want to ask you about so the first growth, so responsive, is that a because they have the prestige and nothing to lose so they can do or be or both that because they acknowledge they have leadership role. I think they certainly do acknowledge they have a leadership role. I think they used to maybe feel that a little more strongly. It's super interesting. When La Tour left the system and remember La Tour did not leave the place, it left on-premise. It still sells through Négo-Sion. However, when it left the on-premise system, it was very interesting how emotionally people reacted to that within Bordeaux because they definitely felt that the Tour was letting the side down in terms of that leadership role for Shattos and La Tour, quite rightly, I'm sure, that they owned by a big businessman who didn't come from Bordeaux, who doesn't have that centuries of feeling that they are the custodians of the fine wine in Strait Bordeaux and made a choice for themselves. But it was very interesting as an observer seeing just how equally felt it was that the first growth should have a leadership role. Well, if you put it like that, it's actually a sad decision or a selfish one. It was very interesting the way it was taken. But now that it's 10 or 12 years on, they have proven quite adept at getting their prices right when they've released. I was worried for them and they don't need me to worry about them, but I kind of think the great thing about on-premise is everybody's eyes are on Bordeaux. It's a very good way to once a year go, "Hi, we're still here, and aren't we great?" And so selling that wine when you have a sense of, you don't have it too much now, but 10 years ago, there was quite an excitement around. Well, you remember 2009, when all the wines were really great and the prices haven't gone so insane, at least at the beginning of the campaign, and there was a feeling of excitement. And so people would, their merchants would call their best clients and they'd say, "Okay, Lidge Barge is out, but you could, will also give you that, I mean, will also give you, I don't know, what's a great, a great right bank?" And people would probably buy more than they wanted to just because we're all human, and you get caught up in the excitement of that idea. And so I did feel it was a worry to leave that system. But, you know, the tour, of course, are a different case, but they seem to have done quite well. And this year I was quite interested. I was just tasting their wine at the chateau and they were releasing the 2017. And I thought, you know what, maybe we've all forgotten about the 2017, because it wasn't that big of a vintage and it had the '16 before it and the '18 after it, but actually it's tasting delicious now. So in a way, the tour is quite clever, at a later date, to have a time to go back and check in to these older vintage. So I don't know. I grew up in Burgundy in rural France in a wine village and I really remember how people would look at each other and copy each other like, you wouldn't take a decision without actually thinking what the impact would be on the on the village and who would talk and everything. And I remember when I first visited Bordeaux, it was very much that impression that I had. It's like people observing what other people were doing in order to take their own decisions. And, you know, whether for the date of the release of the price or even the pricing and sometimes even for the blend and even the wine making decisions. Is it still the case today? Yes, and thank you so much for that question, because I've totally forgotten to say that when they're looking at this list of reasons why they set their price, the most stupid one, but they're definitely part of it. Is that how much our price the other one? Is how are their neighbours doing exactly right? And thank you for reminding me that that shouldn't be part of the equation, but it absolutely is part of the equation. And that is where I think another reason why often the price is a wrong, because they think, well, I want to be positioned at the top of the second growth category. So even if really the market conditions don't allow it, I don't want to drop down below that price because it won't look good. I don't want to appear to be a fourth growth, which is again, back to my question about your position in the classification. Like, I have that standard to keep because I'm a second or so, so I can't go below whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's only the first that genuinely have that. Like, they can go up and down, but it won't change the way they're perceived in the marketplace, even if they go down. There are the super seconds that we talk about. And they, you know, they are also very high. And in a way, they're at risk, I think, right now, because they have gone really high. And the market probably is asking them to come down in a way that they may not want to because they're thinking, well, this is my new price barrier. I don't want to go beyond it. But it isn't as simple anymore. So it's a form of stodous anxiety? Yeah, it's definitely a state of anxiety. I love that. Yeah, definitely. Do they compare themselves to the Beyond Bordeaux wines now? I imagine. So what I imagine is one of the things that people like wine services do. I don't know this, but my imagine is that one of the things they'll be doing is benchmarking price-wise, not just position in on trade, etc. price-wise, against those icon wines from rest of the world. Can we turn now to some of the other parts of the system, which is you, as one of Bordeaux's top wine critics, how do you describe your influence on this part of the wine world? Oh God. Honestly, I try not to think about that. Certainly not when I'm tasting on-premure. I try truly to keep in mind the people who I want to be helping, who are the people who are subscribing to my site, or also my scores are used. And it's really wonderful. Truly, it's always nice when you see it. My scores are used by a number of different merchants. So even like big US merchants like JJ Buckley, wine.com, K&L, they use my scores. I just actually just last week or a couple of weeks ago, I've been used by people like Barry Brothers and Big UK merchants, but I'm just about to, I'm with Costco UK, which is obviously the biggest wine we've tried in the world in the US. In Costco UK, I'm now the only critic that they're using with my full tasting notes being published in UK, not in the US. So that's it. That's an exciting influence, but truly I don't think about it when I'm tasting the wine. Speaking of misconceptions, I think one of the big misconceptions is this idea that many people in wine hold that scores don't matter, but of course scores matter a great deal, and there are even services now that aggregate the scores of people like yourself. One of the criticisms of wine critics is the raising of scores, this idea of score inflation. Do you think score inflation is a real thing, or do you think it's a response to the fact that policy has improved? I think it is definitely a bit of both. There's no question that there are less completely misventages than there used to be, not just in Bordeaux, but globally because technology allows people to respond better to problems. There are still ventures which are difficult, though. 2021 is a great case in point, and I hope that my scores reflected that. I try to be as honest as I can be about quality. So a decanter in the old days, I'm sure this isn't true anymore, but before I started tasting for decanter, they would change the scores depending on the vintage. So if a vintage was poor, they would say, "Oh, well, 98 in a, let's say, I don't know, 1997, that's not the same thing as a 98 in a 2010, which is ludicrous because how does it consume a note that?" So I try very much to, so in 2021 I didn't give anything above 97 for a red, and most of them are under 90 because I felt the consumer had to understand that that 89 is true for that vintage, but I did really try to be relative. Yeah, and it's actually interesting because we had one of our latest podcasts was on wine investment, and that's actually what the said is like to determine the price, usually on the secondary market, what counts as the critic scores, and the global reputation of the vintage because then in 98 in 2021 might not be 98 in 9 or all things like that. And what I discovered as well is that there are some tools that do rank the consistency and the accuracy of critics and compare the scores that they gave to the prices that the wines do have on the secondary market. Are you aware of that in how you perform in that kind of system? I again try not to look at things like that, but I do think they idea of an aggregate score when you take a lot of different critics notes in one way that's super helpful, but in another way it's not because what's the best way to use a critic is to find a critic that has some similarity to the way that you yourself. Yes, and to what you like. Aggregate scores are very useful maybe for wine investment, but not for wine purchasing. I think for wine purchasing and actually drinking the wine, what you want to do is find a critic that you trust and that you think in some way reflects the wines you like yourself. How do you think the scores and notes and tastings and stuff that happen within Bordeaux? Do you think they have a wider impact across the fine wine world or do you think what happens in Bordeaux stays in Bordeaux? I think it's definitely historically. It used to be that what the vintage was like in Bordeaux was assumed that it was like it everywhere else. So if you had a great Bordeaux vintage, I don't know, 2010, I think the assumption was that 2010 must be brilliant everywhere else around the world. Of course that's not true so much now. People are much, much more responsive to the individual areas and there's so many other important wine regions in Bordeaux now. Thank God, that's really very important. I guess do you think the way that people operate within Bordeaux and around Bordeaux? Do you think that has an impact on the rest of the fine wine world? It is the model for how people elsewhere also score and rage? Well, not when it comes to burgundy, I think if you just take a brief glance at how many hundred points burgundy gets compared to Bordeaux, clearly they're unless in burgundy, then there are Bordeaux. I think that critics in burgundy, there's no way that it's not that the wine's off better or you know, we're as good, but there definitely seems to be high, high scoring, which is super interesting. Napa almost the other way. Napa, you tend to get a load more hundred points than you do in Bordeaux. I've been to Napa recently where I've had wine producers in Napa complaining about critic scores and really feeling if they don't get 95 plus, even 97 plus, that it's not good enough, that it can't be used and that's fascinating because I think in Bordeaux, people want high scores, but I don't think that they expect everything to be 95 plus, maybe they expect it to be 90 plus. So each different region has its own system, I would say, but yes, in the situation that cabinet dominated big wines around the world probably do follow that because of the Borde system. Do you feel the pressure in some ways, like we've talked about the pressure on the wine maker when they present their wines in for five thousand people? When you do represent such a big influence on the wines, like how are you received in the estate? Do you feel any kind of pressure or what's the welcome that you usually have? I think I am lucky in that I've been here for a long time now and I think writing inside Bordeaux has been very helpful in not just in my own knowledge of how Bordeaux works and the Chateaux, but I think in making the Chateaux think, well, they trust me, but they're not going to tell me that what I should say and what I shouldn't say. And you definitely hear about some wine writers being told they can't come back if they give a negative score. That doesn't happen to me. Every now and then I might get someone being upset and asking me to come back and taste it again, but I wouldn't be blocked. And I think that there's a recognition that I'm not trying to do anything other than to be honest in how I'm tasting. It really is important to me to not be influenced by that. Living in Bordeaux I think that can be the easiest thing for people outside to think, oh, well, you must be having dinner with Chateaux and be best friend of them all. I truly am not. I live downtown. I have very little social contact with Chateaux and it's of course some of them I like that's normal, but there will always be some people that you see and you're happier to see than others. That's just human nature. But I'm very, very conscious of not being close to them because I have a job to do and my job is not to have dinner at the feet every night, even if I might love to and have a cell of full of 1961. That's not my job. Okay. So what's your process when you go and assess the wines? How do you do it? I think if you're going to do on-premise, we talked about how many wines you're tasting. You've got to start off with a little bit of excitement. I think that you really have got to think at the beginning of every on-premise season. Well, how am I going to get to the good stuff? Where am I going to find the wines which are truly going to offer somebody brilliant value for money or just a wonderful experience? So you've got to be optimistic, I think. You've also got to be healthy. I think that's something that we don't think about very often. So during on-premise season, I go home almost every night. I very rarely go to the dinners because I've been tasting wine all day. I don't want to go out and taste the night. I want to go home, have water, just kind of get ready for the next day. So that's kind of important to me. I'm a big tennis fan, so I love thinking of it like the ATP scores and I like thinking of it as this kind of jigsaw of every wine that you taste. You're learning something, not just about that wine itself, but you're learning something about the wine you tasted before it. And the wine you're going to be tasting tomorrow because all of them will be shedding some light on what has happened to the vintage. I like to also speak to consultants because they're not connected to one particular estate. My favourite thing to do is to talk to the professors at the university who do those annual or vintage assessments because you've got to speak to people who will be negative as well as positive. And then you have to remain open-minded and you have to read between the lines. You've got to be good. For the university, you do a lot of investigative journalism and you're so brilliant at doing that. Reading between the lines and kind of finding what the real story is. If you just listen to what the shatter you say, of course you're going to think every vintage is great. But if you have all of that background knowledge of where you know that they were potential pitfalls, you then can. You just know how to ask just one more question to get to the things that went wrong as well as right. Just on the role of the wine critic, there's a lot of technology now. Not just sort of gimmicky AI semeliers, but satellite data that can predict what the quality of the wine is going to be before the grapes are picked. Given all of this, how do you think this integrates with wine critics? Or do you think there will come a day when the wine critic is superseded? If you know, I think even with satellite data which can be very helpful for the shadows, very helpful for the shadows when they're doing their picking and deciding what they're going to bring in, it's still not going to tell you what human choices did they make in the winery in terms of what they left out, what they put in, how they split between first, second and third wine. The fact that some. I don't know, they've lost their technical director, he's been poached by another shadow, so they've got to. Somebody knew on the job or they brought in someone like Axel Hines from outside and all this pressure. So I think that technology will take us a long way and is extremely helpful, but it will never, or maybe not never, but never say never. But certainly now it will not replace the fact of having somebody who's independent and who goes in there and who. You have to have experience, you have to have experience, you have to understand where the shadow is coming from historically and where it's going to in terms of the wine in the future. But I think for now anyway, a trust where the wine critic still has a role. So talking about the wine making choices, one of the clichés that we hear as well is the wines that are presented in the Alprimarch campaign are made in such a way to be shiny and ready. but actually are not the same that the people will buy two years later. To what extent is that true? Are people transparent about that? Yes, again, you have to note to ask the questions and you have to certainly have to trust. And I do believe that there have been the case in the past where there may be were bowels that were maybe specifically for Parker etc. I don't think that that's true, certainly not to the extent anymore. What is true is that not every shadow does present their final blend. The vast majority do. Certainly on the left bank in the 1855 classification, pretty much every blend is completely finished by January after the harvest. On the right bank, it's actually far less common. It's actually probably only 70% are completely finished and 30% will be very open about saying we don't do our final, final blend until maybe six months before bottling, which is not the case usually on the left bank. So that's why an on-premise note can only be as good as of course as the sample and why you can never just score on the why you're tasting in front of you. You have to be scoring on how it's going to develop what you're seeing. And I would never give ever 100 point on on-premise note. I would say this has the potential to go to 100 points, which of rare anyway for me I don't give very many of them. But I would say it has potential but I would never give over 98 during on-premise because you don't know. If I'm going to give 100 points, it would be to an in-bottle one. I think that's all of my questions. I think that's a fantastic insight into what goes on. I think I learned a great deal, Jane. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jane. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of a really neat low ball in conversation with Jane Onsen. We can't recommend Jane's website www.janeonsen.com enough because it's a gold mine of insights, reports and data and border winds and beyond. On top of all this content, subscribers also get first access to the Chronosur week and the Border Man to Week, two of the greatest initiatives in the world of fine wine at the moment. So to enjoy the promised 15% off the first year subscription, use the code ARGL15 of. So that's ARGL15 OFF during the sign up process. And if you are interested in the global conversation around fine wine distribution and I want you to know more about La Blast de Bordeaux, well, stay tuned because Felicity and I are working on a very special series of podcasts to be launched in April. Make sure to subscribe to the really global newsletter which is thought to be free to be the first to know because whether you are producing or selling fine wine, you need reliable specific data to make informed decisions. And we have just that installed for you. Until next time, cheers. Thank you for joining us for the Arena Global Podcast. If you liked what you heard today, please give us a positive review and share this episode widely. Stay connected with us and join our conversations via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and visit our website at arena.global to find out how you can take action to ensure the future of fine wine.