What determines the price of a great wine?

As with any luxury product, the equation for the price of a wine is simply the law of supply and demand. As it happens, France's great wines have enjoyed a boom and an international reputation that has seen them grow more or less steadily for over a century.

More precisely, here are the main factors

- The intrinsic quality of the wine, which is conditioned by a multitude of variables ranging from the intrinsic quality of the terroir and vines, to the winemaker's know-how and winemaking methods and techniques

- The reputation of the "brand", i.e. the château or winery itself. The grands crus benefit from a "brand image" that has a medium- to long-term influence on the price of their wines when they leave the château or winery

- Vintage. The vintage of a wine, corresponding to the year in which the grapes were harvested, has a strong influence on the intrinsic quality of the wine, as variations in climate from one vintage to the next have a more or less favorable impact on the quality of the raw material for this product

- Production. By a simple effect of supply and demand, the number of bottles produced by a château or estate in a given vintage will also influence the market. The same château with lower production from one year to the next, for example, will tend to make its product rarer, and thus raise its price. This is a factor to be correlated, of course, with the inherent climatic conditions of the vintage and the quality of vinification in a given year.

There are other factors that influence the price of great wines to a greater or lesser extent, which can be more subjective and anecdotal, and all of which mean that the price of great wines can be quite volatile.