Tag: Value Picks

Press Release: Value Picks vs Investment Staples at Hong Kong Showdown Dinner

Less than 18 months on from its inaugural Showdown Dinner, last month Wine Lister returned to Hong Kong to host the city’s most experienced wine collectors at a fascinating follow-up dinner.

Attendees were asked to bring along an Investment Staple or a Value Pick which were served blind throughout the evening, along with an added ‘mystery wine’, and scored out of 10 for enjoyment. With just a 7% difference between the two Wine Lister Indicator categories, the Value Picks put up a good fight, though Investment Staples just managed to take the trophy (unsurprising at more than six times the price).

First place was awarded to the Krug 1995, but the biggest surprise of the evening was the revelation of the Chinese mystery wine, Ao Yun 2014, which came in second place.

Read the full press release here.

Wine Lister Showdown Guests 2

From left to right: Averardo Borghini Baldovinetti, Mimi Shun, Jonathan Leung, Cathy Anderson, Seok Hui Lim, Ella Lister (Wine Lister’s Founder & CEO), Agnes Hon, Antonio Koo, Brian Yim, George Tong, Alex Cheung.

For more images, please contact alice@wine-lister.com.

Value for money? Look to Bordeaux

One of Wine Lister’s four Indicators, Value Picks identify the wines and vintages which have the best quality to price ratio, with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus giving the finest wines a look-in.

With the latest price data in, 28 new wines have recently qualified as Value Picks. While Value Picks are calculated using a three-month average bottle score for accuracy (in order to take into account any price fluctuations), we have shown the current price per bottle below for ease of comparison. Please note that the price shown is excluding duty and VAT, and often reflects prices available only when purchasing a full case:

Value Picks_2017

Bordeaux dominates the new Value Picks, filling 11 of the 28 spots. Margaux’s Prieuré-Lichine seems a particularly keenly-priced brand at the moment, with both its 2015 and 2016 vintages now Value Picks. With Wine Lister Quality scores of 891 and 912 respectively – very strong and amongst the strongest on Wine Lister’s 1000 point scale – and both priced under £30, they represent excellent value buys. Within Bordeaux, Pessac-Léognan is home to the highest number of new Value Picks. Of those, two are white, with Château Carbonnieux Blanc 2014 and Château Olivier 2015 achieving very similar Quality scores (809 and 806 respectively), and each priced at just £20.

The other wine to feature twice in the latest update is Domaine de Cristia Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with its 2010 and 2007 vintages. The former, which achieves a Quality score of 763, is available at just £18 per bottle. With plenty of life left in it, it looks like a great buy.

Three Piedmontese wines recently qualified as Value Picks – M. Marengo Barolo Brunate 2010, Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba Cascina Francia 2010, and La Spinetta (Rivetti) Barbera d’Alba Gallina 2007. All three achieve powerful Wine Lister Quality scores of over 900 points. You might buy Giacomo Conterno’s wines to impress – the Barolo Cascina Francia is a Wine Lister Buzz Brand, but also averages £157 per bottle. If you’re looking for something more appropriate for a weeknight, the 2010 vintage of the same producer’s Barbera d’Alba, priced at just £30, would be an excellent Value Pick – a perfect example of how Wine Lister’s indicators can help you find the right wine for any situation.

Listed: five new wines to explore each week

You may have noticed a subtle re-design today on the Wine Lister homepage. This includes moving up and expanding the scope of the “Listed” section: a changing Top 5 of wines from around the world, updated each week.

You can now explore the five most recent Top 5s, even if you’re not yet a subscriber to Wine Lister. For as long as the list is live, this includes access to all the underlying vintage-level data that feeds into one of our Listed wines, including critic scores, restaurant presence, search frequency, and price performance. Simply click on the Listed wine that takes your interest, then select from the drop-down of vintages at the top right of the wine page. What’s more, this allows you to play with tools such as interactive price history and vintage value identifier charts.

Listed_Top Tuscan wines

Our Listed section addresses a variety of tastes and priorities – some weeks you will see our best Value Picks from a particular region, other weeks will focus specifically on wines with top Brand or Economics scores, or wines of the highest quality from a specific vintage.

To access independent wine ratings, tools, and analysis for all of the thousands of wines and vintages in our database you’ll need to subscribe – or why not try a free 14-day trial?

France dominates latest Value Picks

Like Buzz Brands, which we explored last week, Value Picks are one of the four Wine Lister indicators, designed to highlight particularly interesting wines for our subscribers by isolating sub-sets of data. The Value Pick indicator helpfully identifies the wines and vintages which have the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus allowing the finest wines a look-in).

This month, five of our eight new Value Picks are from France – but with a Sauternes, Riesling and left bank Bordeaux to choose from the options are still diverse.  Most affordable is Domaine Cauhapé La Canopée Sec 2011, from Jurançon, at just £16 per bottle and with a Quality score of 733.

The most expensive wine – but still at only £34 per bottle – is one of the two Italians that feature this month: Elio Grasso Barolo Ginestra Vigna Casa Maté 2004, which has an exceptional Quality score of 971. The other wine in the table with a Quality score above 900 is Domaine Zind-Humbrecht Clos Windsbuhl Pinot Gris 2007, from Alsace, priced at under £30 and with a Quality score of 906.

June Value Picks

Please see our previous Value Pick blog for a note on prices.

Piedmont dominates new Value Picks

The latest price data is in, enabling Wine Lister’s algorithm to award new Value Pick status to those wines that achieve the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus allowing the finest wines a look-in).

Wine Lister Value Picks April 2017

This month, the new Value Picks include a Champagne, a Port, and a sweet white Bordeaux, but it is Piedmont that dominates, with three of its wines achieving Value Pick status: Poderi Luigi Einaudi Barolo Costa Grimaldi 2008, Luigi Pira Barolo Marenca 2007 and Giacomo Conterno Barbera d’Alba Cascina Francia 2010.

Each wine is priced at £44 per bottle or less – with half under £30 – and all have impressive Quality scores (based on ratings from our three partner critics) of 845 or above.

Prices per bottle are provided by our price partner, Wine Owners, whose own proprietary algorithms process millions of rows of incoming price data from Wine-Searcher to calculate a more realistic market level price – the price at which a wine is likely to find a ready buyer – based on market supply and spread models. As lower retail prices are likely to sell first, the prices you see on Wine Lister may be below the Wine-Searcher average in some instances.

Value Picks

Wouldn’t it be brilliant if there was a tool to help you work out which wines represent the best value for money?  Well look no further; our Value Pick indicator algorithm puts that knowledge at your fingertips.

Analysing the very latest price data and reviews from our partner critics, Wine Lister’s algorithm awards Value Pick status to those wines that achieve the best quality to price ratio (with a proprietary weighting giving more importance to quality, thus allowing the finest wines a look-in).  Crucially, Value Picks are awarded at vintage not wine level.

Here are Wine Lister’s newest Value Picks:

value-picks-22_02_17

Wine Lister’s prices per bottle are provided by our price partner, Wine Owners, whose own proprietary algorithms process millions of rows of incoming price data from Wine-Searcher to calculate a more realistic Market Level price – the price at which a wine is likely to find a ready buyer – based on market supply and spread models.  Wine Owners believe lower retail prices will sell first, hence their price may be below the Wine-Searcher average in some instances.  As you can see, using this method, each of the new Value Picks is priced at £25 or under, with the cheapest costing just £11 (excluding tax).

Furthermore, other than William Fèvre Chablis (64/100), all of these wines have an average critic score of 74-77/100 on Wine Lister’s rebased, calibrated scale (where any score above the average of 40-60/100 is strong).  Underlining their appellations’ reputation for excellent value, two sweet white Bordeaux feature in the list: Coutet Premier Cru 2007, from Barsac, and Rayne-Vigneau Premier Cru 2013, from Sauternes.  Each earning an average critic score of 77 and with plenty of life still in them, these represent remarkable value for money.

Would you pick Bordeaux for value?

The Wine Lister Indicators have been devised to tell you in one glance the particular characteristics of a wine. One of those is Value Picks: wines which represent exceptional quality for the price. Of all the fine wines in our database, Value Picks have the best quality-to-price ratio, where we have applied a coefficient to allow exceptional quality to be recognised, even for higher-priced wines.

In the image below, taken from our study “Bordeaux – Reasons to Hope”, we list the value picks among the 100 foremost wines of Bordeaux. On our site you can view a wider selection of Bordeaux Value Picks.

To read the complete Bordeaux study, follow this link, and if you are not a subscriber yet, why not try a 14-day free trial.

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