In part one of our series on the Burgundy wine industry, we wrote about viticulture and the maintenance and harvest of Burgundy wine grapes. Part two covers the winemaking process, from harvest through vinification and bottling.
In this third installment of the series, we’ll present a broad overview of the Burgundy wine market, who's buying it, and how to buy Burgundy wine in the United States.
Let’s get right into it.
Understanding Allocations
For the most part, the buying and selling of Burgundy wine is done under the allocation system. Every year producers split their harvest into separate parcels, keeping some aside for direct sale and then allocating the remaining percentages to domestic buyers like restaurants, bars, and wine shops, as well as to importers in foreign countries.
These importers of Burgundy wine are then free to do the same thing, parcelling out allocations to their various buyers; private individuals, restaurants, wine shops, and so on. Who these importers can sell to is restricted by a framework agreement with the producer, generally prohibiting them from re-exporting the wine once they have it.
Under the allocation system, most of Burgundy’s best wines are bought and paid for before even being bottled, and because of the extremely high demand there’s a long waiting list to get in on the action. If importers or retailers choose to skip a year, they risk falling to the back of the line.
For the most part BurgDirect works with allocations too, but we'll often add wines from older vintages which have been held back by producers to sell privately as well.
Who’s Buying Burgundy?
Burgundy produces about 200 million bottles of wine per year. Of those, 60% are white, 30% red and rose, and 10% Crémant de Bourgogne, Burgundy’s answer to sparkling wine.
Half of those bottles are sold domestically, the other 100 million are exported. The top buyer is the United States, snapping up 21% of Burgundy exports (around 200,000 bottles per year), followed by England at 17%, then Belgium and Canada at 9% each.
Buying Burgundy Wine in the US
Besides flying to France and bringing Burgundy back home with you, there are pretty much three ways to get your hands on Burgundy wine: restaurants, retailers, and mailing lists. Some people also import the wine themselves, but it’s an expensive, complicated, and bureaucracy-laden process that’s generally not worth the hassle for casual wine drinkers.
To buy retail, all you need to do is walk into a wine shop and pick a bottle off the shelf; or order the bottle online from the same shop. The benefit is simplicity, but the price you pay is the absence of curation. You’re far removed from the producer, and left to your own devices. While Burgundy produces some of the best wines in the world, it’s also a bit of a minefield, and much of what’s exported has a wildly inflated price for the quality simply because of the name.
The alternative is mailing lists and direct delivery, like us. BurgDirect sends out periodic emails containing information on different bundles of Burgundy wine, offering a range of interesting tasting choices carefully selected based on producer, price, vintage, and style.
After making your selections from offers linked through our newsletter, the wine is packed up and shipped directly from the winemaker to your doorstep. This means careful curation and fewer intermediaries, mitigating concerns of poor handling and provenance. As simple as retail, with a few added benefits.
Conclusion
Buying Burgundy wine is one of those things that's simple in theory but difficult in practice. It's not uncommon to find some duds among the gems, and while the region produces some of the best wine in the world, it can often be difficult to navigate the profusion of appellations and producers that Burgundy has to offer.
With many thousands of bottles being imported every year, it's easy for an inexperienced buyer to walk away from the wine shop with an expensive regret in hand.
And that's where we come in!
Keep an eye out for the final part of our series on the Burgundy wine industry, where we go into depth on Burgundy's own domaine-to-doorstep delivery model.