Save for the Grand Crus from Puligny and Chassagne, white Burgundy generally offers more value than the region’s reds. However, prices have escalated significantly in the last five years—even in Chablis. In the main villages of the Côte de Beaune, there has been a lot of coattail riding, too, with second-, third-, and fourth-tier producers charging more because their neighbors do. And though premature oxidation is largely in the rearview mirror, casual wine drinkers and collectors aren’t letting go of their taste for young white Burgundy. Why pay up for some youthful bottling that you may have no intention of aging, and where do you find pockets of value when buying white Burgundy? Four in-the-know pros tell all.

Burgundy has arrived. The wines are incredibly sought after. Now, what we [people who are not über-wealthy] consider fancy-occasion bottles are shifting. These wines are way too expensive. It's especially serious at the blue-chip end of the market, but even the tentpoles are just so aggressive. I work in a Michelin two-star restaurant, and we have a Michelin one-star that is more casual, but where you could spend more money if you wanted to. My average client's price point hasn't adjusted, while Burgundy prices have gone through the roof. It is part of the cycle and not necessarily good or bad. It's the result of our global economy.

So I switch the appellations that we buy. We're seeing village Puligny from C+ producers at $100 a bottle [wholesale]. I don't know what to do with that wine. We've moved to Saint-Romain and Saint-Aubin. But even Saint-Aubin Premier Crus are now $250+ on the list. In 2021 at Manresa, I drank a bottle of 2014 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Pucelles for $375 off the wine list. The importer just offered us the 2021 for $780 wholesale! 

They say they want placements on restaurant lists, but this is just uncomfortable. I opted into Sauzet Grand Crus [2021s] at $700 a bottle. That sort of makes sense. In the next two to four years, I'll sell a few of those bottles. I sell 12 to 15 bottles of white over $1,500 a year. Over $2,500, that number drops to zero.

I don't see a retrenchment. Burgundy has become a global commodity. I just talked to someone running a new project in New York. She bought all the Leflaive she was offered this year. Maybe there are markets where price is not an issue. The global ultra wealthy, they drink things like Sauzet Monty [Montrachet Grand Cru]. For them, it's not a real amount of money. But do these wines continue to show up on wine lists? Maybe they are now the purview of retailers.

Many of my people who drink the fanciest wine bring it in on corkage. They have people who solve their wine supply problems. They're not calling [West Coast retailer] K&L. They have a helper doing that. It's the era of private client sales. The era when the best Burgundies were the pinnacle of restaurant lists just doesn't make sense anymore.

There has been a rending of the market and there is this fetishization of producers. There are producers that people drink and the others they don't drink. If you're not Arnaud Ente or PYCM [Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey] or some of the others, you're SOL. You see David Beckham drinking PYCM. Wine is now an accessory, and people have private sommeliers that tell them what's best. People find the wines in Belgium, Switzerland, and other places, and then they bring them here. As a producer, you want to be a doyen of this insider crowd.

Most of the white Burgundy out there is drunk in the range of three to eight years. No one really buys or collects wines anymore, except for the blue-chip producers. What is so fascinating is that precision farming and global warming are coming together. I remember that you used to taste new Burgundy and think, "Yeah, I can imagine that being good in seven or eight years." Now you can drink the wines when you get them.

I haven't seen a lot of premox [premature oxidation] personally post-2014, but you do get it in ‘12s. I think a lot of those wines have worked their ways out of the market.

I still sell a tremendous amount of Chablis. The pricing is so flat outside of two producers [François Raveneau and Vincent Dauvissat]. The rise of the Mâconnais has been remarkable. You even have Leflaive making wine there; it's like Château Latour making Pauillac de Latour. Smart businesses with more capital and vision are stratifying their product ranges. These are more agile wines on a list. I also get super excited about Verget and Guffens-Heynen. There's also Dureuil-Janthial and Feuillat-Juillot in the Côte Chalonnaise, and de Montille's Rully is really nice. You would think that people would branch out more, but it's rare that something gets elevated to the pantheon by the elitist crowd.

I am definitely buying Burgundy. And it is definitely more painful than it used to be. I also feel more confused than ever because buying it is easier than drinking it. You buy a $100 bottle. The bottle becomes worth $200. I can have the conscience to drink that. Now, it is worth $400 and is irreplaceable. Literally. You are not going to find another bottle. Am I going to flip it? What do you do when that bottle is $1,500? And this is not over a 10- or 20-year trajectory. With producers like Arnaud Ente and Jean-Yves Bizot, this is a five-year trajectory!

I remember scratching my head when Coche was priced very differently [very expensive, but not as astronomically expensive as it is now]. Then, Comtes Lafon was only $120 to $150 for Meursault Perrières. I had a dinner with 20-plus wines to try to figure out how these price gaps were rational. Then within two years, it became escape velocity. Prices are now triple what they were three or four years ago. It has led to more speculation and fewer people getting to experience the wines. Now the wines go through more hands, and it gets sketchier when wines are resold that way.

If you are cellaring, you have to think about things that way. Why am I able to buy Guigal La Las [the three, highly-coveted Guigal single vineyard Côte-Rôties] at the same price as a good or maybe a great Premier Cru Meursault? Does that make a ton of sense? The La Las are not as cool to drink—stylistically they are less in vogue. Some of these massive price disparities make it compelling to think about buying other stuff. Like older Bordeaux—there are some wines that I love that I don't buy on current release. I know they will probably be properly cellared, and I can buy them later—just in time for drinking, and possibly at a lower price. If you can get good, 30-year-old Bordeaux or 10-year-old Nuits-Saint-Georges from a good but not great producer, why wouldn't you buy the Bordeaux?

That said, the 2022s are really good. The reds have been really good. I have liked a tremendous number of whites in the last several vintages. Interestingly, the bottom end of the quality range is better in whites than in red. I'd rather drink a 2017 white versus red Premier Cru from a good village. If you think about 2013, not a great vintage, would you rather drink white or red? [Christy’s take: I’ll take a white, please!]

Another handful of stuff I think about. How should I think about buying futures—all of the pre-arrival stuff? Do I stop buying pre-arrival? Even from people who are good actors? I am doing a lot less pre-arrival. Today I was about to buy some Hubert Lamy and d'Angerville pre-arrival. You have to trust people, and it is one thing if it is coming in two weeks. But when the offer says "Arriving Winter 2023-2024"? Well, it's not winter 2023 anymore. Do they already have it? Is it coming this summer? 

I don't buy as much at auction. Not that I've had a bad experience, it is just that part of what I am doing is relationship building. I buy all over the place, and I look for people who want to build a relationship. There are stores that just don't seem to want that. I lean into those that are interested, but there are a half-dozen stores on my no-fly list.

Everything I have heard from winemakers and importers is good. Everyone is so excited about the [2022] vintage. The early previews I tasted when I was there for the Hospices de Beaune auction in November showed wines that are expressive but not fat, concentrated but elegant. A warmer vintage, but it still has lots of freshness.

There is quality plus volume. It seems it would be difficult to have price hikes because there was yield. But of course, someone is going to raise prices. Still, generally, I think it is going to be a happy vintage for consumers and vintners.

While I don't have data on this in front of me, I feel like whites suffer more from higher prices because they are being drunk younger. Who is not asking themselves “do I want to spend this much on something that I am going to drink very quickly?”

Premox? Younger Burgundy drinkers—they don't even know what we are talking about! Our younger collectors sometimes read about it. They haven't experienced it.

Some people who really know wine say, “I want to drink Burgundy but I don't want to put this down.” There is definitely aging based on vintage versus color. In general, people just don't like to be told anymore what to do with their wines. They don't want to buy wines that they have to wait 20 years to drink. 

We sell a ton of Meursault in any vintage. I haven't seen a lot of people buying in Burgundy or otherwise trying to go around the U.S.'s three-tier system. People do have "their guy." We sell all sorts of collectible stuff. But there also are people opening a phony importing business to bring in wines at a lower price. Then, they sell to friends on the side.

2022 is a beautiful vintage, and it's bigger in volume than 2021. The whites are delicious and they will be ready to enjoy early on. 

A few producers put up their prices slightly. That's tough because there definitely has been a bit of pull back in buying Burgundy. I have a buyer who asks me for a list of everything before 2021. He would rather buy through the rest of what I have than take on more expensive, more recent vintages.

It is tough. The 2021 prices went up considerably. While I like a lot of the wines, the vintage is much smaller in quantity and less heralded. They remind me of the very expensive 2003s [another small crop, dismissed because it was considered an excessively hot vintage at the time]. Some of those sold, but the rest took a few years to go through. Maybe we'll see the same with the 2021s. Besides, the 2022s are much friendlier. For 2021s and 2022s, the question is what will end up on the discount shelf?

Most people are still buying wines here in the U.S. Some are going on certain apps that sell Burgundy out of Great Britain. But most are still going the traditional way, needing access to the blue chips—those that will command the big price increases. I'm on Liv-ex [a digital marketplace for online wine trading], and I've been watching Burgundy pricing. It's been down 15 percent in the last six to eight months. I expect the overall market to follow. Maybe people are hesitant right now. 

Most people are mid-term aging their white Burgundy now. It's not like it used to be. Some people don't even know that premox exists! It's just not on people's minds anymore. Burgundians have pulled back from working the wines like they did during those years. They have regulated the sulfur now. It is probably the gatekeepers that are selling whites that way. I think that shying away from old white Burgundy is in the past, but it depends on the sophistication of the collector. 

The whole talk about young people not drinking wine—it's RTDs [pre-packaged, ready-to-drink beverages], spirits, and pot now—and not collecting? It's a pendulum. It's going to come back. Young people are still drinking wine. It's hard for me to see. Most young people I know are sales people and somms. They're drinking wine, so it's hard to believe. Besides, I didn't drink a lot of wine until after college. Plus, you see some traditional wines that the producers' kids are trying to modernize. The younger generation will affect the winemaking as well. 

In white Burgundy, some satellite regions are starting to come along. You have to look to where you can find value. Even village-level white Burgundy is $60 to $90 a bottle now! I have a 2020 Chassagne-Montrachet that you can pour [in a restaurant] now for $48 a glass. The 2021 would be $70 a glass though. You're better off showing Saint-Aubin or Rully from the Côte d'Or. But the Côte Chalonnaise and Mâconnais can really deliver value.