Bonnefond Ruchottes-Chambertin Gives Roumier Investment At Bargain Price

The Grand Cru Ruchottes Chambertin from Domaine Bonnefond offers attractive investment potential, but to understand it, you must look at one of Burgundy's brightest stars, Domaine Georges Roumier. Roumier is the producer of both Roumier’s and Bonnefond’s Ruchottes-Chambertin, but the price of Bonnefond’s is quite different.

If you are looking on the world market, the wine is extremely hard to obtain in whole cases - yet seven whole cases are now being sold here for investment.

Georges Roumier - An Elite Burgundy Producer

When it comes to the greatest, most precious, and exclusive Burgundy wines, nothing tops the wines of the legendary Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and the mighty Domaine Leroy. But just beneath them, we find Domaine Armand Rousseau and Domaine Georges Roumier. Roumier has become a superstar in Burgundy, and the prestige of the domain's wines is based on excellent quality and extremely limited production - in fact, as few as 4,000 cases, equivalent to less than 50,000 bottles per vintage - and that is across all Roumier wines combined. As an example, Roumier is famous for their Musigny, which is only produced in the region of 600 bottles and costs in the approx € 16,000 per bottle in a good vintage.

This illustrates very well that the scarcity of the best Roumier wines is extreme for the world's wine lovers, but this can be countered by a small but very smart trick of looking in the direction of Domaine Bonnefond instead - a clever trick the wine world is slowly starting to notice. But you can still get a head start.

Ruchottes-Chambertin Grand Cru And The Metayage System

Ruchottes-Chambertin is a Grand Cru vineyard in the municipality of Gevrey-Chambertin. Here, Christophe Roumier, son of Georges Roumier and wine maker at Domaine Georges Roumier, produces a coveted wine of the same name. The wine comes from a small parcel of just 0.54 hectares owned by a businessman and wine lover named Michel Bonnefond.

Bonnefond bought the parcel in 1977 and since then, Roumier has handled the production from this parcel on a so-called metayage agreement.

Metayage is an old concept where a landowner can "rent" a given piece of land to a wine grower/producer, in return for a share of the harvest or the finished wine as payment. In this case, two thirds of the finished product goes to Roumier himself, while the rest goes to Bonnefond. In other words, it is the same wine in every way, but with two different labels on the bottle. In total, Roumier produces around 2000 bottles of Ruchottes-Chambertin a year, bottled with the two different labels under Roumier and Domaine Bonnefond, respectively.

A bottle of 2018 Ruchottes-Chambertin from Bonnefond costs € 625 today, while the exact same wine with Roumier on the label will easily cost €1,000 - if it can be obtained at all. This obviously gives a strong potential to the "Bonnefond" version, produced by Roumier, and as a result, it has an extremely strong price/quality ratio.

With Roumier, Accessibility Is A Rare Phenomenon

As mentioned, Roumier produces around 2,000 bottles of Ruchottes-Chambertin, which are distributed so that 1/3 of the bottles get Bonnefond on the label, while 2/3 get Roumier - even though it is exactly the same wine, made by exactly the same hands. That gives around 1,400 bottles with Roumier on the label and around 700 bottles with Bonnefond.

Despite the fact that we are dealing with a young vintage, and at the same time the newest physical vintage on the market, the Roumier edition is almost impossible to find. According to wine-searcher.com, only a few retailers have it listed online, but dig a little deeper and they either only have a single bottle available, if they have any at all - something that is revealed if you attempt to make the purchase.

If you do the same exercise with the Bonnefond label, there is currently no 2018 vintage to be found, while the overall supply, across all vintages, is severely limited. On the other hand, it is worth noting that the few mature vintages of this wine available here are priced at sky-high prices. For example, a 2005 vintage currently costs just under €1,300 - a wine that at release was priced well below the price of a young vintage today.

In other words, this is a wine that, with Roumier's name on it, is almost unobtainable, while the availability of the bottles with Bonnefond's name is also rare phenomenon - something that supports the potential of Bonnefond Ruchottes-Chambertin, if you believe in the rare and the exclusive.

RareWine Invest’s Opinion

An investment in Bonnefond Ruchottes-Chambertin is actually an investment in a top wine from Christophe Roumier / Domaine Georges Roumier, as it is basically the same wine, but at a completely different and much more attractive price. The name "Roumier" obviously has something to say, but when the limited quantities of Ruchottes-Chambertin from Roumier have disappeared almost before it hits the market, only the even more sparse quantities from Bonnefond remain. And considering that this is the exact same wine, we are dealing with a very strong price/quality ratio.

Bonnefond's Ruchottes-Chambertin is inherently an attractive alternative to Roumiers, and those wine lovers not already looking towards Bonnefond will do so as Roumiers either becomes too expensive and/or cannot be obtained.

In a normal vintage, Bonnefond Ruchottes-Chambertin produces approx. 700 bottles. With the 2018 vintage, the wine investor gets a strong vintage, which with a strong storage and ageing potential stands as an attractive and exclusive investment wine, which few can obtain - even in a young vintage with a long life ahead of it.

Note: Only seven cases available - sold on a first come, first-served basis.