If you're looking for big names – and big price tags – in Pinot Noir, Burgundy is the place for you.
Well, it turns out that wine and mousetraps have very little in common – who would have thought it?
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously posited the theory that if you built a better mousetrap than the next guy then the world would beat a path to your door. It's a nice idea, but one that doesn't work for wine.
In wine, it seems, you can be better or you can be bigger, but not both and no region demonstrates this so much as Burgundy, where Chardonnay and Pinot Noir reach celestial heights matched only by the price tags of the top wines.
Big scores and big prices are par for the course in Burgundy; the region attracts plenty of both. Looking at critic scores, only one Burgundy wine in the top 25 highest-scoring wines has an aggregated critic score of less than 96, a hit rate that is unequaled by any other region on our database.
When it comes to price, Burgundy is unbeatable, especially its red wines. Nine of the 10 most expensive wines on our database come from Burgundy (the other wine is from the Mosel, in case you're interested) and no other region comes remotely close in terms of average price achieved.
However, when it comes to interest – by which we mean search traffic – Burgundy is a significant underperformer. Its wines are famous, and famously profitable investments, usually a combination that is irresistible to wine collectors. But Burgundy remains in the shadow of Bordeaux, whiskey and Italian wine when it comes to searches.
It seems there are different strokes for money and popularity, but at least Burgundy can comfort itself by knowing that it owns the fast-growing Pinot Noir search category on our database. Other Pinots are, as they say available, but few come anywhere close to the kind of search numbers that Burgundy achieves.
We'll be looking at those other Pinots in a later list, but first let's see who's leading the charge for red Burgundy.
The World's Most Wanted Red Burgundies on Wine-Searcher:
| Wine Name | Score | Ave Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanee-Conti Grand Cru | 98 | $24,251 | |
| DRC La Tâche Grand Cru | 97 | $6838 | |
| Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru | 96 | $4423 | |
| DRC Echezeaux Grand Cru | 94 | $3641 | |
| DRC Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru | 95 | $4154 | |
| DRC Richebourg Grand Cru | 96 | $5094 | |
| Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüe Musigny Grand Cru Cuvée Vieilles Vignes | 95 | $1097 | |
| Rousseau Clos Saint-Jacques | 95 | $1976 | |
| Clos de Tart Grand Cru Monopole | 95 | $725 | |
| Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru | 98 | $48,957 |
The first thing you notice about the list is the popularity of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – the legendary producer accounts for half the top 10.
What's really interesting, though, is that there is little sign of DRC's great rival Domaine Leroy. Leroy dominates the best Burgundy and most expensive Burgundy lists, but disappears when it comes to search volumes. Of the 15 DRC products listed on Wine-Searcher, 10 of them appear in the top 100 most searched-for Burgundies. Leroy has 100 wines listed, but only seven make the top 100, with the Musigny leading in 10th place.
That might be a function of price.
Leroy tends to attract high prices, pushed up as they are by trophy-hunting collectors, whereas most of our searchers are looking for value, even in the rarefied air of DRC, whose top wine has seen a fall in its global average retail price of USD 3500 since its peak in July 2023. Indeed, all the DRC wines on this list have seen drops in their average retail price. The Leroy, by comparison, rose by more than USD 10,000 a bottle in the past 12 months.
Taking a wider view, all the other wines on this list are cheaper than they were last year, in terms of global average retail price.
Clearly more people are looking for bargains than big scores – even in Burgundy.
Source: Wine-Searcher