Camping Out for $2,000 Bordeaux in British Columbia

If you drove by the Signature BC Liquor Store at 39th and Cambie in Vancouver around midnight on October 2, you would have seen a small group of people milling about with shopping carts by the store wall. The assembled crowd was camped out to purchase 2012 Bordeaux, and they had lined up as early as 7PM for the chance to get their hands on bottles from legendary châteaux like Pétrus, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild, and Lafite Rothschild when the store opened the next morning.

People camp out for iPhones and Xboxes, and to some, it might seem a little strange to wait in line for a mass-produced product that will ultimately be available in stores everywhere. In that regard, waiting in line for a rare and limited bottle of wine makes sense. However, it raises curiosity about the consumer who would line up overnight to pay thousands of dollars for fancy alcohol.

BC Liquor Stores is a state owned chain in British Columbia. It has been holding a special Bordeaux release event for the last 30 years, with the biggest splash coming at its flagship store in the Kerrisdale neighborhood. Every October, BC Liquor Stores releases bottles from France's most legendary appellation from three years prior. The bottles it stocks are exclusive to the chain and include many of the legendary Bordeaux appellation's top producers. The special event builds anticipation, and by the time the release rolls around, there can be considerable hype around the vintage and certain bottles; some of the top bottles came with limits of one or two per customer, and BC Liquor Store staff gave those in line the opportunity to put in reserves on those top bottles in the middle of the night.

Saturday morning, about a hundred people were lined up outside BC Liquor Store. People pored over guides describing what was on sale inside, strategizing a plan of attack. These guides also included the important Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate ratings, which influenced the purchases of many, along with suggested "drink by" dates. An easel at the head of the line displayed the availability of sought-after wines, but by 9 AM some of the top bottles were long gone, as were the two $8,500 mixed cases of the year's top releases. One man pointed at the listing for Carruades de Lafite, the legendary Château Lafite's little brother, excited to get a bottle at $388, limit one per customer.

A local customer, Jason Laidlaw, had just arrived and was near the back of the line. He was by comparison a casual wine fan, and planned on buying six bottles in the $30 to $50 range—some for drinking, some to put away. He was a little disappointed that the Château Hosanna had sold out already, which, at $190 and with a Wine Advocate rating of 97, was one of the best bang-for-the-buck bottles available. "It doesn't look like they have a lot of wine," Laidlaw said. "It's not a great vintage apparently. Unfortunately, the $8,500 bottle set is sold out," he added with a chuckle.

It was impossible not to note that the large majority of those in line were Chinese, with Mandarin being the preferred language of most in line. Chinese since 2005 have moved to Vancouver in record numbers under the now disbanded immigrant investor program that fast-tracked visas for wealthy immigrants willing to invest in Canada. The new residents have given a boost to sales of luxury goods. Vancouver is a great place for car spotting—I don't think I had ever seen an early twentysomething drive a Bentley Flying Spur.

The Chinese love of Bordeaux and red wine in general has been well documented. China is the fifth largest wine consumer but the biggest export market for Bordeaux, primarily the reds.

"They barely drink any white," says Spiros Malandrakis, an analyst of alcoholic drinks at Euromonitor International. He says that the Chinese wine market has come along way. "I remember it was common knowledge that Chinese nouveau riche and higher echelons of the bureaucratic elite used to pay tens of thousands of pounds for some of the more sought-after wines, Château Lafites. Then they would mix them with Coke to drink them."

In the last three years, however, much of the insane spending for the status conferred by a label like Lafite has come to an end with China's anti-extravagance laws that have cut into the consumption of luxury goods. Malandrakis says he doesn't foresee a return to the astronomical prices of the extravagance era anytime soon. "They know the actual prices, what it should be worth in a couple years time." That's key for buyers who are purchasing Bordeaux as an investment to flip down the line, as many at BC Liquor Stores seemed to be doing.

When the flood doors opened, buyers streamed inside. Those that had already secured a shopping cart made a beeline to one of two huge piles of cases of Bordeaux, while others grabbed baskets and followed on their heels. It was a bit of a feeding frenzy, with people gobbling up case after case of $50- to $200-per-bottle wine. There was a selection of white Bordeaux available, but the focus was squarely on the reds.

"They're all cheap wines, $60 to $70 a bottle," one man said as he piled a case on top of about a half dozen already in his cart. He said he was purchasing for his family, a common refrain among Chinese buyers, who were largely hesitant to divulge too much or to give names. He was working in tandem with an older man, guarding his haul while the other went in for more. By the end, he had 15 cases piled on his rolling warehouse-style pushcart, including Haut Bergey ($50 Canadian per bottle), Côtes de Castillon ($50 per bottle), and Sociando Mallet ($58 per bottle). If we're measuring in terms of quantity, he lost out to the family next to him with 17 cases. Over at the registers, bills reached well into the thousands, and even tens of thousands.

"This is tame," a security guard stationed at the corner of the action told me. "In years past, I've had to stand in between people."

That's largely because the 2012 vintage wasn't a vintage for the ages. Barbara Philip, Master of Wine and the BC Liquor Store's European wine buyer, said she had to be very selective in making her choices with the 2012 vintage. "In a great vintage, like 2009, 2010, I would just go in the room, try anything and, for its price, it would be a great wine," she said. "In 2012, they had to do a lot of work in the vineyard to make the grapes good. They had to do a lot of work in selection of the wine to make the wines good. And then as buyers we had to do a further kind of culling. So actually this year, I've got about half the cases I would have in something like 2010."

Even if it's not a great vintage, for first-generation Chinese buyers in Vancouver or Chinese who split their time between Vancouver and China, purchasing wine in Vancouver allows them to buy with confidence. In China, counterfeited Bordeaux is big business.

The legendary Lafite, Malandrakis says, was widely and poorly imitated. One Chinese official estimated that half or more of the Lafite sold in China is counterfeit. In 2013, one bust alone turned up 7,000 cases of fake Lafite, Latour, Mouton and more. Counterfeiters often reuse old wine bottles and fill them with lesser wine, though some go with more innovative approaches, including mixing alcohol with watermelon rinds and grape juice.

Purchasing Bordeaux is a bit of a tricky endeavor even when it's the real deal. Philip and other buyers taste the wines during the spring after the harvest while they are still in the barrel and have yet to mature. Buyers have to reserve their limited allocations of wines based on how they think a wine will develop and taste when it ends up in a bottle a couple years later, and, for many wines with the potential to age gracefully, years after that. "They're not vintage wines," Philip says. "They're still quite rough, the tannins are really pointy."

But the hopes are that a Bordeaux will develop into a thing of beauty and be an exemplar of wine's most famous region.

"It's a strong brand, there is no question," says Philip. "But like the iPhone, it's a strong brand because it's a great product." Makers of Bordeaux, she said, can say with confidence that they're selling some of the best wine out there, based on the region's roughly two-thousand years of experience growing excellent wine.

And so the well-heeled will spend $2,800 for a Château Pétrus from the Pomerol region or $1,200 for a Château Ausone from St-Émilion. Who those buyers are, Philip isn't sure. "Those tend to be the more discreet buyers, and they tend to send their personal sommelier or their cellar manager to do the buying for them," she said.

By 11 AM, most of the wine was long gone, including top-of-the-line bottles and the most affordable, a Château Rahoul priced at $28, which Philip considered to be this year's bargain buy. About 20 or so shoppers picked over what was left. Outside, another wave of buyers waited for their chance to come in.

If this year's release was tame, the 2018 release shouldn't be. Weather conditions in Bordeaux this year have been near perfect.

"As we speak they are harvesting in Bordeaux and the 2015 vintage looks like it's going to be another vintage millésime du siècle," Philip says, "so I think it's going to be fantastic."