Why are Bordeaux châteaux holding so much stock back?
It's been a slow burn really .Châteaux have always kept some wine back for themselves. In the 17th century it might have been a barrel of their best grapes for the owner.
In tough times, it was often the buyers who set the terms – a contract from 1916 between Château Margaux and a small group of négociants who agreed to buy the entirety of its crop for five years specified that the estate was allowed to keep four barrels back for its own use. Later, during the 1970s oil crisis, négociants would regularly refuse to take any wine at all and châteaux would be forced to keep stocks piling up in their cellars.
So watching what is happening today must be rather surprising for some of the older guard in Bordeaux. All of a sudden it is increasingly fashionable for the region’s top châteaux to choose to keep back increasing percentages of their harvest to age in their own cellars and release at some later, usually unspecified date.
The late Daniel Lawton, one of Bordeaux’s most illustrious courtiers from the firm of Tastet Lawton, told me a few years ago, ‘Wine gathers in price when most of it has been drunk, so the chateaux should have little interest in keeping too much of it’.
If this is true, why are they doing it? And what does it mean for us?
Squeezing supply-
Younger brokers admit that while the old theories still hold true, land values and on-paper stock values have become increasingly important to many classified châteaux, especially if they have shareholders to answer to. Put this together with an increased demand for older wines with provenance, maintaining greater control over distribution and the temptation to keep prices high by squeezing supply and suddenly things start to make more sense.
