In front of a well-stocked shelf, the eye often reaches first for the most expensive bottle. The assumption behind it is understandable: what costs more must surely be better. Right now, that question is particularly in the air. In Bordeaux, this year's En Primeur season revolves around little so much as price, and the region's land prices have been easing for four years. A good moment, then, to ask calmly: what does a price actually say about a wine — and what does it not?
What a price describes
A price describes many things that, at first, have little to do with your taste. How rare a wine is — how little of it exists. How much time it holds before release. How much handwork a parcel demands. And what role the wine plays within a range. All of this settles into the number on the label, long before anyone has poured the first glass.
An example from our own cellar: in some years the Caprice is made in barely more than a hundred bottles, in a reductive style that is hard to hit consistently. Its price is higher because there is almost none of it and because the method is delicate — not because it stands above the other wines. Conversely, a more accessible, more affordable wine is no compromise. Often there is simply more of it, and it takes on an opening role.
Why, with us, no wine stands above another
We think of our range as a suite: movements of equal standing, each with its own place. If we order the wines at all, then by price — and within each group it rises with complexity and rarity. The Gigue opens the reds, lively and direct. The Sarabande holds the middle, calmer and deeper. That does not make the Sarabande the better wine; it does something else, in a different place.
A higher number therefore marks a different role, more time, a smaller quantity. It describes the effort and the rarity held within a wine. About its quality, it says little.
Reading the price as information
For you as a buyer, this perspective changes the decision. Whoever reads the price as information about role and rarity, rather than as a verdict on quality, chooses more calmly. The question shifts from “Which is the best?” to “Which one belongs at this table, with this meal, in this company?”. To that question, the more accessible, more affordable movement is often the right answer — and that has nothing to do with saving money.
The price reveals how rare and how demanding a wine is. Whether it suits your evening, it does not reveal — and therein lies the freedom in choosing.