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 to be held rather than consumed. Because price is often seen as an indicator of quality, sellers may adopt a
premium pricing 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 servic ...
s "typically but not exclusively
Napa Valley 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
In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen c ...
* Cult following
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
* Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine
* 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