Cash-Equivalent Wines
Can wines that don't have ageing potential be considered fine wines?
In the mood for wine is the only weekly newsletter for the next-gen of fine wine lovers and investors. It’s free. The best way to keep it free is to share it with everyone. Literally everyone.
Hello fine wine lovers,
An existential question for you in this newsletter — what is fine wine?
This question was posed to me by Richard Bampfield MW while he was pouring me a Greek rosé wine made with Fokiano grapes sourced from Naxos by Ousyra Winery’s Scot winemaker Edward Maitland-Makgill-Crichton (or MMC).
A mouthful.
ARENI Global, an independent think tank focussed on the future of fine wine, defines fine wine through five distinct characteristics:
Balance, harmony, and complexity, where all characteristics are integrated and complementary.
It should evoke emotion, akin to great art or music, transcending time and offering a deeper experience.
The relationship with its maker is crucial, reflecting the terroir and the fruit's expression.
Additionally, fine wine is now recognised for its sustainability practices, both environmentally and financially.
Finally, recognition by critics, sommeliers, and the wine community is essential for a wine to be considered fine.
To put it bluntly, a fine wine must be good and be recognised as such.
In addition, they noted that “[a]cross all markets, drinkers and collectors value fine wine’s capacity to age.”
Ah, longevity!
Longevity is a frequent topic of discussion in this newsletter, as it plays a significant role in a wine's price appreciation over time. Yet, this raises an interesting point — is there a place for wines with limited ageing potential in a fine wine portfolio?
The Ousyra rosé is made with Fokiano grape, an indigenous red variety from Greece, primarily found in the Aegean Islands. Known for its resilience to the harsh, windy island conditions, cultivation is limited and mostly localised, making Fokiano wines a niche discovery for enthusiasts of unique, regional varieties. While not age-worthy, Richard and I agreed, it certainly is fine.
This way of thinking about short-aged wine made me realise how cash plays a similar role in every’s investors fund.
Pension funds’ allocation to cash or better, to cash-equivalent (short-term, highly liquid investments with a maturity date that has 3 months left or less at the time of purchase), accounts for 2% or more. This allocation is a necessity (to meet immediate obligations), a risk management tool and a strategic move to capitalise on favourable interest rates. In other words, when interest rates on short-term deposits i.e. cash-equivalent are, say, at 5%, why invest in anything else? The benefit of investing in longer-maturity bonds or equities might not offer such a high risk-reward profile that cash does.
Back to wine. Elin McCoy, wine critic for Bloomberg, interviewed Jamie Ritchie, Worldwide Head of Wine for Sotheby’s about wine collecting, and he made a very interesting point:
Like pension funds need cash to meet their short-term needs, so wine collectors need to balance the need for wine to drink now, wine for medium-term and wine for the long-term. Indeed there is nothing more annoying than spending anything upwards of $5,000 a year collecting wine and then friends come around to your house and all you have is Barolo 2020. 🙄
Similarly to cash for pension funds, wines that are fine but don’t have ageing potential (or they have much shorter drinking windows), still have a part to play in a collector’s portfolio. While they might not offer those tertiary notes and we don’t expect them to appreciate in terms of future value, they allow us to explore what styles of wine we like and more importantly, they build our palate.
This made me contemplate which wines I consider to be of high quality, yet have a shorter drinking window. After spending several days pondering this, I've settled on Claudio Alario’s Dolcetto as my pick.
Claudio, and now his son Matteo, have 10 hectares in Diano D’Alba, Verduno and Serralunga d’Alba. When I first went to Piemonte and tasted Dolcetto, I expected a sweet wine (dolcetto in Italian means sweet treat) but it’s instead a temperamental and, now neglected, grape of Piemonte. Claudio Alario is a notable figure renowned for his life-long dedication to Dolcetto, which people in Piemonte regard as more difficult to master than Barolo. Dolcetto is usually relegated to everyday wine status and to cooler vineyard sites because it is more lucrative for winemakers to plant Nebbiolo for Barolo.
Additionally, Dolcetto's three seeds per berry can lead to an aggressive and unripe tannin profile, necessitating short extraction times during winemaking and resulting in fruit-forward wines that rarely see oak ageing. These factors contribute to Dolcetto's reputation as a simpler, more straightforward wine, overshadowed by its more complex regional counterparts.
Not Claudio’s!
His passion for this grape produces three elegant versions of Dolcetto from three different Sorì (which in Piedmontese means sunny hillside) in Diano d’Alba — Dolcetto Sorì Pradurent Superiore, Sorì Montagrillo and Sorì Costa Fiore. This last one, is a very elegant wine from 50-year-old vines, aged in stainless steel, preserving its precise fruit notes and a refined tannic texture. I managed to fish out a vintage review from Robert Parker himself from 2000:
This is undoubtedly one of the greatest Dolcetto d'Albas I have tasted. While it will not make old bones, for drinking over the immediate future, this awesome, black/purple-colored 1999 provides a glorious perfume of violets, black fruits, and mocha. Super-rich yet not heavy, beautifully pure and fleshy, with tremendous palate presence, it will drink well for 2-3 years. An amazing achievement!
What a sweet treat!
And also, I’ve asked a few other wine professionals to give me their favourite non-age-worthy wines so that I could compile for you a list of cash-equivalent fine wines. Here you go:
, a.k.a. the Nigella Lawson of Wine, recommended Triennes, Rosé 2022. Before you go on raising your eyebrows at this Provençal rosé for being, well, a Provençal rosé, please note that it’s a product of collaboration between Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac and Aubert de Villaine, co-owner and long-serving co-director of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, along with Michel Macaux. “Some of the biggest names in Burgundy proving that they can turn their hands to ready-to-drink wines,” says Hannah.Luma Monteiro, Marketing Manager at Davy’s Wine Merchant and known in the IG space as wineriaofficial, gave me thousands of ideas. Here are a few: Marchesi Antinori Chianti Classico Riserva which she calls a baby Tignanello as it’s made with grapes from the same vineyards, and Il Bruciato from Tenuta Guado Al Tasso.
Federico Moccia, Head Sommelier at 67 Pall Mall mentioned that Condrieu & Beaujolais as wines that are wonderfully fresh when young but that don’t age so gracefully.
Harry Ballman, sommelier at the Wild Shropshire and founder of wine consultancy Cépage, recommended:
Weingut Dorli Muhr, Carnuntum, Blaufrankisch & Syrah (an Austrian wine with a crazy blend, it’s odd in an intriguing way, or is it just me?).
Château Sénéjac, Haut-Médoc.
Oliver Collett mentions Ochota Barrels, Grenache from the McLaren Vale in South Australia. Intriguing, especially because I don’t get to drink many Australian wines. And, on the topic of great Garnacha-based wines, I’ve had the pleasure to attend a Master of Wine event called “Mastering Garnacha in Spain”, moderated by Almudena Alberca MW with a panel of two of the best Garnacha specialists and producers, Fernando Mora MW and Norrel Roberston MW. We tasted 9 incredible wines, of which Las Alas de Frontonio 2019 and Mataquemada 2020 particularly impressed me.
Last but not least,
turned my question around — “we drink wines too young,” he said. He then went on to mention three wines that, while they have the capacity to age, he prefers drinking young:Pieropan, La Rocca
Burlotto, Verduno Pelaverga
I hope you found a few wines to add to your liquid portfolio.
Happy drinking (responsibly)!
This newsletter is free for all readers and the best way to keep it free is to subscribe, re-share it with your wine-lover friends, and follow me on Instagram.
👋 Sara Danese
Comments, questions, tips? Send me a note