‘Rare wines are everywhere!’ smirked a wine broker at a Bordeaux tasting a few years ago. He was referring to how he was managing to deal with the increasing demand for hard-to-find fine wines by looking to regions other than Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne. But what is that makes a wine rare? Is it that not much is made, that what was made has been drunk over time, or is it because what was made rarely comes to market? In this article we’ll look at what makes a wine rare in detail and answer the other big question regarding hard-to-find wines: are rare wines always fine wines?
5 things that make a wine rare
There are 5 main reasons for a wine being or becoming rare. These are:
1. Small production
Many of the world’s rarest wines are rare because so little was made. Burgundy’s Domaine Leroy produced just 618 bottles of Musigny in 2013, a single one of which will cost you around £50,000. Even rarer is the snappily named Egon Muller Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese. Egon is rightly regarded as one of Germany’s greatest winemakers and when he decides to make this wine, which is only in truly exceptional years, he produces between 100-200 bottles. This awesome sweet wine costs around £12,000 a bottle, though if you’d like to try one at its mature peak, the 1976 will be closer to £18,000.
2. Age
Wines are made to be drunk, and every year vintage wines – wines made from a single year’s harvest become rarer. As the vast majority of wines are made to be drunk within a year or two of release, this isn’t much of an issue for everyday drinking wines. For fine wines, however, it’s very significant. As fine wines age they enter what is known as their ‘drinking window’ and people start enjoying them. As these wines often have small productions, as time goes by, they quickly go from being hard-to-find wines to being rare wines.
3. Tiny vintages
While some wines are produced in small quantities as that’s what the producers wants, some are made in small quantities as that’s what nature has decided. Spring frosts, hail storms, rot, excessive summer heat and drought can all reduce crop sizes dramatically. Severe May frosts famously reduced the 1961 Bordeaux harvest by as much as 50%. This, and the excellent growing season that followed, produced a tiny crop of wines that are now amongst the most sought-after Bordeaux from the last century.
4. Speculators and collectors
Fine wine has become a commodity or an ‘investment vehicle’ to use the jargon. In the upcoming Bordeaux en-primeur campaign speculators and collectors will rush to buy the finest wines. Production at top properties in communes such as Saint Emilion, Pomerol, and Paulliac are small and once these wines fall into the hands of investors and collectors, they may not be seen on the market for many, many years.
5. Rare grapes and production methods
Some wines are rare as they are made from obscure grape varieties. Caberlot, a hybrid of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, is the world’s rarest grape with only two hectares of production in Tuscany. For others, their rarity value comes from how they are produced. Vintage champagne is rare as it’s only made in the finest years as is vintage port.
Are rare wines fine wines?
Just as all that glitters isn’t gold, so a rare wine isn’t always a fine wine. Some of the rarest and most expensive wines in the world wouldn’t be worth putting in your glass. The famed ‘Jefferson Bottles’ of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1787 sold at auction for over $150,000. The wine inside could scarcely be described as wine, let alone as a fine wine, indeed these bottles have become known as ‘Billionaire’s Vinegar’. Other less extreme cases abound. Bordeaux’s 1991 vintage, for example, was small and largely poor, and what was made was destined to be drunk young. Today, wines from some of the top chateaux – those that released a wine – can fetch high prices as they are rare wines, if not fine wines.
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You may also be interested in reading our more in-depth red wine guide, white wine guide and sparkling wine guide.