BC Business
We tell you exactly how to pop the cork on building a cellar collection in B.C.
Let’s start with the bad news: British Columbians live in a terrible jurisdiction for collecting wine. The combination of our high taxes and a government monopoly means we have the double whammy of limited selection and steep prices—not exactly Warren Buffett territory. And your ability to bring wine into the province from more liberal wine neighbours to the south is curtailed by insanely punitive duty‚ the highest in Canada. I suppose a sort of jaded silver lining is that even if you did amass a blue-chip collection, you wouldn’t be able to sell it anywhere in B.C., so we’re free to build something special without having to sully it with the grimy threat of profit.
But some of the most rewarding ventures are those done when the conditions are challenging. So channel your inner King Henry as you embark once more unto the vinous breach. To guide your way, here’s how the same disciplines used by your savvy stock picker can apply in the (not so) free market that is the British Columbia winescape.
Just as you’d pore through annual reports to uncover undervalued stocks, so too must you acquaint yourself with the state-of-the-art circa 2011 BCL website. The conventional wisdom is that there are no deals to be had at the government stores, but the determined shopper can find anomalies in which lurk deals. To be clear, it’s usually the producer and importer giving you the deal, not the BCL. The key is to dive deep on certain markets to get a baseline familiarity and then strike when the numbers line up. Take Italy’s Brunello di Montalcino—a wine loved by Americans (the U.S. is the wine’s No.1 market) who mark it up liberally, whereas here it’s equally as coveted and a great building block for a growing cellar but far more reasonably priced. For example, Altesino’s excellent brunello is $65 at the BCL and US$70 at huge American discount retailer Total Wine—that’s almost a 35-percent savings when you factor in the exchange rates. Brunello from another great producer, Argiano? $80 at the BCL vs. US$90 at Wine.com. Going farther north in Italy, the BCL sells Produttori del Barbaresco for $53, but it’s US$56 at Total Wine. Beware, this is a highly specific technique (don’t even think of trying it with anything from Bordeaux or California) that requires plenty of Google searching to identify the market’s blind spots.
If you absolutely must have Bordeaux in your portfolio—and we don’t blame you—then your best bet in B.C. is to look for back vintages hiding in plain sight on the shelves. The BCL has tremendous purchasing power and that means sometimes they’ll get allotments of wine deep from a chateau’s cellar that normal retailers wouldn’t have access to. Or sometimes they buy too much of a wine for the Bordeaux release and it doesn’t get all snapped up. In either case, this is when you pounce. To wit, the 2011 Château Mouton Rothschild, the bluest of the blue chips, is currently on sale at the BCL for $800, whereas Calgary’s usually low-cost retailer, BSW, is asking a whopping $1,500. Château Haut-Brion 2010 (a 100-point wine from Robert Parker) is $1,600 at the BCL, but the LCBO was selling magnums (the equivalent of two bottles) for $5,500—and they sold out. Sadly, this strategy works rarely and only at the very high end, but if you need the big names…
If you bought Apple stock in 2013, it doesn’t matter if you paid too much in the context at that moment, given how much the stock later increased. The same goes for wine. Even buying Burgundy 10 years ago at our inflated prices has turned out to be a wonderful investment given its steep, Apple-esque price increase. So, what’s the new Burgundy? The easy answer is… Burgundy. There’s very little land, they’re not making any more of it and demand continues to grow, so you won’t likely go wrong buying a bottle of Grand Cru even if it is $300. But a more daring choice is Burgundy’s southern neighbour, Beaujolais. No, not the lightweight stuff known as Nouveau, but wine from one of Beaujolais’ 10 delineated crus, where they make their finest wine. The best of them can age much like Burgundy but at a fraction of the price. Look for the wines from the regions of Moulin à Vent, Morgon or Brouilly as they have the best name recognition: we don’t have particularly good prices on any of them (maybe try the Moulin à Vent from J-P Brun at $38) but if they go up even a fraction of the rise their northern neighbour has seen, you’ll still have a heck of a ride and an under-$50 wine that can age with surprising staying power.
We’re blessed to live in a province with a wine region that is still one of the great undiscovered gems on the world stage. Do even the most optimistic speculators think that we’re going to take the world by storm? Not likely, although that reality has more to do with supply (like Switzerland, also a great wine region, we drink almost all our own wine) than quality—which is excellent. If we were going to choose a winery that still might break from the pack, you could do worse than Martin’s Lane, Anthony von Mandl’s passion project to make the best riesling and pinot noir in Canada. Even at prices that are high for B.C. (the rieslings start at $65, the pinots at $100) all it would take is for one international critic to lose their mind over them and you could see the start of a possible cult wine.
But on a more general basis, we have a plethora of wines that have a decent chance of steadily increasing in price, but that will definitely help build a cellar of admirable quality for serious value. So instead of buying your chardonnay from Burgundy or Napa, seek out wines from Meyer Family, Blue Mountain or Quails’ Gate Stewart Family Reserve. They all age wonderfully, can be had for under $50 and will wow your future guests. If you like pricey California pinot, try Spearhead or Foxtrot (also Meyer and Blue Mountain again). Bordeaux? Try Osoyoos Larose. Riesling? Tantalus all day long. You’re unlikely to get rich, but you’re guaranteed to be happy.
If you want your heart to have a role in cellar building, then there’s always the charity auction route. This is the exception to the province’s prohibition on the resale of wine—if it’s in furtherance of a registered good cause then it’s open season to bid away. Many of our bold-name charities have a wine auction as part of their galas and usually you don’t have to attend said gala in order to bid through the Givergy bidding app. Some notable ones include the Vancouver International Wine Festival Bacchanalia (not surprisingly a pretty savvy crowd for deals), the Gift of Time Gala (for Canuck Place) or the BC Hospitality Foundation’s occasional online sales. You’ll often find those who have amassed grand cellars—your forebears in our present endeavour—getting rid of excellent mature wine, and if you don’t need the boldest of the bold names (sorry, there are no bargains on Lafite) you can find excellent value while being a mensch at the same time.