Wine Investment: The Rise of Jura Wine & the Overnoy Phenomenon

Wine investment and speculation has become a hot topic in the world of fine wines, particularly with the increasing demand for Jura wines and the coveted Houillon-Overnoy bottles.

This post delves into how speculation impacts these wines and what it means for Jura wine enthusiasts and collectors maximising their wine cellar with expensive wines.

Understanding Wine Investment

Wine investment is essentially when people buy wine for the sole purpose of reselling the wine for capital gain, rather than with intent to drink it.

This is often seen with hard-to-find producers and cult wines with strong demand, and can be a lucrative investment, but it also creates issues in the market and is problematic for consumers who want to drink the wine. 

It can also be known as Wine Speculation, although the term speculation on the stock market refers more to investing in something which can lose substantial value. Wine rarely does… (unless improperly stored with bad wine storage)

In this article, we would like to highlight the difference between wine investors and wine collectors, with the collector being someone we presume to drink the wines themselves, whilst the invester buys to sell at a later date for financial gain.

The Allure of Jura Wines

Having imported wines from Jura, bought from suppliers and seeing the demand from customers as well as coming across the internet auction sites  - there is no doubt that Jura wine investment occurs on a grand scale with the excellent wines, even with those wines you might not think qualify as truly gastronomic…

Browsing online auction sites like IdealWine, one can truly wonder whether the people selling the wines are customers who bought them and decided they would rather sell for whatever reason… or if most of the sellers are in fact wine professionals in the marketplace, not just collectors.

It is the latter, that we ourselves strongly suspect to be the case.

Besides auction sites, we are for sure aware of restaurants who sell pallet allocations of extremely in-demand Jura producers as far away as Australia.

To understand how this happens when these producers are in such demand, you’ll need to keep in mind how the French distribution system works, which is quite different to other European countries.

In France, it is more commonplace for a restaurant to be friends with a producer, and buy the wine directly.

In Germany where our shop MORE Natural Wine is based, it is much more common to ONLY buy through a distributor.

Scenario:

So, if you imagine, a French restaurant has a direct relationship to a hot producer for many decades. 

They have been buying the wines before they were so famous, and thus, are being sold at a normal mark-up. You can also understand that instead of buying a pallet of wine (600 bottles) and ONLY selling for a standard French restaurant markup, the sneaky temptation is there to allocate just 120 bottles of the wines for their own restaurant, mark up or keep at the “nice price” to impress the top producer, and simply sell the others off under a mask of anonymity to other shops, wherever they are in the world, or auction them off to private customers at insane prices. 

There is big money to be made, and smarter deceivers less in need of a ROI (Return on Investment) may opt to age the wines, knowing their value will only increase. 

What is the impact on the market from Jura wine investors?

Either way, when discussing the topic of speculation it is extremely commonplace with Jura wines, and we personally know collectors who have sold Burgundy collections for massive sums to start with a newer in-demand region like Jura, where the vineyards have equally great Terroir.

Yes, they love their Jura wines too… but the amount they buy on a seemingly weekly basis is clearly to profit from in the future.

Some people may say, well "fair enough". It is after all their right to sell something they bought in the future.

But what is the effect on the rest of us, when there are many adopting this wine investment strategy? Those who enjoy drinking Jura wine and have no intent to ever sell their aging beauties, but to enjoy them when the time is right?

Well, it means it is increasingly harder to buy, or sometimes even see.

You will now rarely find the very most-hyped Jura producers in most physical shops anymore, and in many ways, we too actually feel this is the right approach.

With this we mean, due to the market situation and where we now are, is IS best too keep the wines away from those who want to merely sell it on. Such wines are more commonly seen in restaurants, and we feel this is a good approach (although we personally always prefer a wine experience at home)

Whilst we cannot guarantee our own customers will not sell it on, we actually refuse to sell perhaps the most in demand Jura domaine, Houillon-Overnoy / Maison Pierre Overnoy on our site.

This is a short video documentary we made on Pierre Overnoy. He also discusses wine speculation there too.

Instead, we ourselves give away all our Houillon-Overnoy wines in raffles, to allow “the common winedrinker” the opportunity to try the wines they may otherwise never afford, or see. 

With Houllion-Overnoy wines as an example, many are hidden away, tucked off-menu only available to those who ask discreetly, with the right approach… or have some wine industry credibility.

However… it is those times that the restaurant prices are the most fair, when even restaurants in the villages of origin mark up much more than you would expect. Visitors to most finer restaurants in Jura will also have noticed this.

Pierre Overnoy & Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy: The Jewels of Jura

Our upmost respect goes onto restaurants who sell their Houillon-Overnoy, Labets, Bruyere-Houillon and Ganevats at the right markup. We recently applauded the promoted the ethos of Le Etiquette in Paris, who have a direct relationship to the Labet family, and customers are able to get them at the most fair, incredible prices perhaps we have ever seen anywhere... as long as the customer drinks it there.

We totally love this concept, and will adopt it ourselves for our own Labet bottles in our upcoming wine bar...although not buying direct they won't be able to be as well priced sadly. We do not, and will not, sell Labet online.

A favourite experience of ours a few years ago is at popular European wine bar. On befriending the owner after a few visits, he asked what we would like next, after we had been sinking a few premium bottles, so we quietly and politely enquired whether he had a white Houillon-Overnoy wine “out the back” (despite hating getting asked this question ourself in our shop!).

He said he has one in mind, and on asking the price he replied “55€”. 

Oh, I said. I’m sorry.. I meant Pierre Overnoy & Emmanuel Houillon, rather than Domaine Overnoy (his more accessible and more affordable nephew’s wines, based in a different region of Jura). 

The owner said he knows which one I meant.

So I said that’s very nice to sell it at this price of 55€.

His face did not change, but with a shrug of his shoulders and a look of intent, he stated

“...well, thats the price it should be”.

We enjoyed it at this excellent price knowing many would charge 90-120€ for it, and have returned with the same fairly priced experience a number of times.

It is for restaurant owners like this, that their Houillon-Overnoy allocations have remained solid over decades even if the quantities have been reduced to share amongst others, whilst for some devious types they have been cut off.

Any suspicion from a winemaker of selling on to the secondary market or auction sites, and we are certain that no more of their wines would head their way.

This is a short video documentary we made on Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy, who runs Maison Pierre Overnoy following the retirement of Pierre Overnoy. Here he also discusses speculation on his wines.

Impact on Wine Enthusiasts and Jura Collectors

What’s truly sad to see when seeing the quite frankly absurd prices some Jura wines can fetch, is knowing the true Domaine price AND the humble way in which so many of the producers live, quite the opposite to the way people buying (and often selling) their wines at such high prices.

We genuinely mean this.

Having visited Arbois, Pupillin, Rotalier, Gruse, Poligny and other Jura locations many times… the winemakers truly do not live the same lives top conventional producers on auction sites live.

There are no Château winemakers in Jura, and we are glad about that.

These producers are essentially farmers, working the land mostly themselves or with a small team - quite the opposite to what you will see with Bordeaux, Burgundy and Californian producers commanding obscene prices for the wines, often released En Primeur (a method of purchasing wines early while the wine (a vintage) is often still in the barrel.

En Primeur offers the customer the opportunity to invest before the wine is bottled. Payment is made at an early stage, a year or 18 months prior to the official release of a vintage) of which we are not aware of any Jura producer working this way… yet.

Is En Primeur in Jura the the next step?

The impact on Jura wine investors creating such demand for the wines are of course, that there is less to go around, of an already tiny production for people who would actually like to enjoy the wines, or collect for personal consumption. 

Additionally, with the increase in demand comes the increase in prices - not mostly from the producers (although for sure some have seen the prices their wines command and naturally increased their own ex-cellar prices) but from shops, restaurants and bars who know that customers are in fact, very willing to pay excessive prices for certain wines, so the price is thus increased.

Will speculation ever stop with Jura wines?

Well, we can of course look at Burgundy. And that is where Jura wines are heading.

The price of Jura wines will only increase.

And more producers will fall into this hot demand section. Browsing sites like idealwine, you can already see this. Perhaps even BEING on auction sites can catapult a producer into the hype category…

There are some Jura producers who have studied under famous winemakers of Jura and their first few vintages are already the same price as their mentors.

So, our suggestion if you love Jura wines?

Treat them for as genuinely special as they are, and open on the right occasion.

Wait for the right supplier to offer wines at the right price. And if you’re dying for an Overnoy, Labet or Ganevat but not yet had one - don’t buy it for silly money, because it won’t taste as good when you consider what you paid.

Trust us... if you keep sharing wine and meeting people in the right wine circles, your time will come.

What goes around, comes around.

Seriously. The best wines we have ever had in our lives have been shared by those who do not buy at silly prices, but those who buy at the right price and keep for the right occasion, to share with friends.

If that fails... well, you can at least get the poster which is the same we gifted Emmanuel Houillon-Overnoy in Pupillin last time we met ;)

We hear it hangs in the cellar.