In the last 20 years, that landscape has changed. The finest wines are now luxury goods: tokens of exclusivity. Exclusivity means exclusion. The high peaks are sealed off by fencing; only extraordinary wealth will get you through the gates. What used to be said of yachts (to move our metaphor offshore) is now true of grand cru Burgundy or luxury Champagne. If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.
Is there any duty on fine-wine producers to ‘be accessible’ in some way or other? Luxury-goods executives would chortle. There are no cheap Ferraris or Rolexes. François Pinault’s Artémis Domaines exemplifies this approach: a glittering diamond necklace of fine-wine properties (Château Latour, Domaine d’Eugénie, the Bouchard domain, Clos de Tart, Château-Grillet, Eisele, Jacquesson), each new purchase deepening the moat between it and its peers. Even William Fèvre was, it seems, not quite glittering enough, and has been disposed of. Poor Chablis.
I don’t doubt the search for quality at Artémis is unremitting. Few wine lovers, though, can do more than peep through this particular fence.
Maybe, though, there’s another way. A Bordeaux first growth whose owners also sell $10 Chilean wine, Entre-deux-Mers and Corbières? Yes, it exists: Lafite.
After visiting its Corbières property Château d’Aussières to get the latest updates for Decanter Premium, I chatted to Saskia de Rothschild, the now 36-year-old president of Domaines Barons de Rothschild, about Aussières itself, her family’s approach and ‘the money problem’ in the fine-wine world.
‘We’ve never,’ she said,