Chateau Latour Sued for Cutting Allocation

[Don Giovanni]

Chateau Latour sued for cutting allocation

Other negociants agreed that some chateaux reduce their en primeur allocations as a commercial strategy to push up the price, to have more to sell as bottled wine, and to control volumes.

Click On Me

This is clearly price control and not a free market...the market is controlled and this is how they had the #alls to charge what they did for 2006...because they have an obviously controlled market...price fixing...collusion anti trust...monopoly...call it what you want...it's not market priced...it's priced by the producers in collusion with the negociants...and you are told what the price is in a unnatural closed market...

[docsconz]

All I know is that the prices have skyrocketed beyond my wherewithall and interest. No thanks.

[Don Giovanni]

From another web site I have more info... From Matthew Hudson

On a slight tangent, The Bours, pieds noirs, returned to France from Algeria in the 60's and bought an 'unexceptional' piece of land in [what is now] the Coteaux de Tricastin AOC.

They thought the wooded - and cheap - slopes had potential for winemaking.

They say that on clearing the best blocks they found unmistakeable traces of Roman viticulture. [Clever Romans. Clever Bours.]

Their wines, Domaine de Grangeneuve are great little wines of France. Their top wine La Truffiere in good years conjoins summer herb ethers and bright zesty, long red fruit in a way only natural Garrigues wines can - effortlessly beautiful and transporting.

I know these characters aren't the only ones but they don't get the oxygen they deserve - I think, hence the namecheck.

Berry Bros have the UK rights but haven't brought in the Truffieres for a while...Come on Simon, if you don't want it may I have it?

I find history and wine very intriguing ...cheers !!!

[Rebel Rose]

So according the article in Decanter, a wine merchant sued Latour because after 20 years of receiving 15 cases of this wine for their customers, their allocation was cut off.

I can see that they would be pissed, disappointed, hurt, even financially hit. But is it the business of the French courts to dictate that Latour must supply this merchant?

On April 5 this year, a Bordeaux tribunal awarded the merchant damages of €39,620 for 'a sudden interruption of its en primeur allocation'.

However, the above statement may be key. If the en primeur allocation was cut off after the merchant had pre-sold the wine, that would be very damaging to his business, and harmfully unprofessional on the part of Latour.

'This [speculation] is the phylloxera of the 21st century,' [merchant Maxime] Hamma said.

Now that may be true.