Cult wines are wines for which dedicated groups of committed enthusiasts will pay large sums of money.
Cult wines are often seen as trophy wines to be collected or as
investment wine
Investment wine, like gold bullion, rare coins, fine art, and Tulip mania, tulip bulbs, is seen by some as an alternative investment other than the more Traditional investments, traditional investment holdings of stocks, Bond (finance), bonds, cas ...
to be held rather than consumed. Because price is often seen as an indicator of quality, sellers may adopt a
premium pricing
Premium pricing (also called image pricing or prestige pricing) is the practice of keeping the price of one of the products or service artificially high in order to encourage favorable perceptions among buyers, based solely on the price. Premium re ...
strategy where high prices are used to increase the desirability of such wines. This is true even for less expensive wines. For example, one vintner explained that "on several occasions we have had difficulty selling wines at US$75, but as soon as we raise the price to US$125 they sell out and get put on allocation".
[''Decanter'' (June, 2006). "Cape crusaders". pp. 90 & 92]
Other wines that fall under the title occasionally are from Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhône and Italy.
These wines when scored highly by
Robert Parker have had a tendency to increase in price resembling the Bordeaux investment market.
California cult wines
California cult wines refers to any of the
California wine
California wine production has a rich viticulture history since 1680 when
Spanish Jesuit missionaries planted ''Vitis vinifera'' vines native to the Mediterranean region in their established missions to produce wine for religious services. I ...
s "typically but not exclusively
Napa Valley
Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) located in Napa County in California's Wine Country. It was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on January 27, 1981. Napa Valley is considered one of the premier ...
Cabernets" for which collectors, investors and enthusiastic consumers will pay high prices. The emergence of the cult movement coincided with trends in the 1990s towards riper fruit and wines with bigger and more concentrated flavors.
, Wine Spectator, November 15, 2006
These wines are generally very expensive, have limited production (often fewer than 600 cases per year) and can sell for several times their "release price" in the secondary market.
Bordeaux cult wines
The cult wines of Bordeaux tend to be left-bank Cabernet Sauvignon, cabernet-based wines that ranked highly in the Classification of 1855.
See also
* Conspicuous consumption
* Cult following
* Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine
''Langton's Classification of Australian Wine'' is a listing of fine Australian wines compiled by wine-specialist auction house and online merchant Langton's. The Classification is a ranking of the best-performing Australian wines based on secon ...
* Luxury good
In economics, a luxury good (or upmarket good) is a good for which demand increases more than what is proportional as income rises, so that expenditures on the good become a greater proportion of overall spending. Luxury goods are in contrast t ...
* Garagistes
References
{{reflist
Further reading
*Robinson, Jancis (Ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to Wine''. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, second edition, 1999.
Wine terminology