First of all, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers and suppliers for their fantastic support in 2010. We are well aware that you all have a choice of where you buy and sell your fine wine and we really appreciate the fact that, for so many people around the world, Farr Vintners is their number one wine source. 2010 has been an amazingly successful year for us (our best ever!) with sales more than doubling from 2009's figure of £83 million to £169 million. This massive total was helped, of course, by record demand during the extraordinary 2009 en primeur campaign (which brought in sales of £62.8 million), our unique "Great British Cellar" sale from a leading UK collector, Asian demand for Lafite and its siblings and our recent hijacking of an enormous parcel of young Bordeaux that was destined for the USA but which was shipped instead to us in the UK and which we are now offering at knock-down prices.
Charles Chevallier of Château Lafite, big in China
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It does seem that, as much as the team here love Burgundy, the Rhône Valley and other wine regions, there is an insatiable appetite for the great wines of Bordeaux. Our end-of-year statistics reveal that Bordeaux really is the core of Farr Vintners' business. Customers might be interested to see a breakdown of our sales by wine region, first by volume and then by value:
Sales by Volume
Frédéric Engerer of Château Latour
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Sales by Value
Our leading role in the Bordeaux wine trade was recognised in 2010 by our winning the "En Primeur Wine Merchant of the Year" in the International Wine Challenge. Over the course of the year we have tasted our way through the 2009 vintage several times, have organised horizontal and vertical tastings (Ducru Beaucaillou, La Conseillante, Bordeaux 2003, etc) We have welcomed leading Bordeaux producers to Farr Vintners to pour their wines for our customers including Frederic Engerer, Bruno Borie, Jean-Guillaume Prats, John Kolasa, Melanie Tesseron, Jean-Michel Laporte, Jean-Charles Cazes, Anthony Barton and many others.
In 2010 our top ten best selling wines were all from Bordeaux and, in order, they were:
Sales by Volume
Jean-Guillaume Prats in his gravity-fed winery at Cos
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Sales by Value
It's hard for us to believe that sales of Carruades Lafite out-performed, for example, Cheval Blanc but this is a testament to the huge importance of the Chinese market and its current massive demand for a relatively small number of high profile Bordeaux "brand names". It is expected, and hoped, that as the Chinese market becomes more educated and sophisticated, there will be less emphasis placed on the "chosen few" and demand will grow for a broader selection of wines. Our advice to customers who find current market prices for Carruades Lafite, Duhart Milon and Lafite itself too high to stomach, is to sell while the bubble is full. It may not burst, but will it deflate? Who knows... As always we are keen for customers to sell back to us any wines that they no longer plan to drink. We can list wines for you on our high-profile web site almost instantly and it is not unknown for wines to be sold and paid for within 30 minutes of agreeing to put them up for sale. We offer a flat 10% commission sale fee or will buy most fine wines outright for prompt payment on delivery.
Certainly sales to the Far East have been enormous in 2010. This is due largely to our outstanding tri-lingual sales team in Hong Kong led by the indefatigable Jo Purcell who has organised numerous tastings and dinners in Hong Kong and in several cities on the mainland. All together we sold wine in over 50 different countries in 2010. The UK and the Far East continue to dominate as sales were weak in the USA and completely collapsed in Russia. The figures were :
Bruno Borie of Ducru Beaucaillou
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Sales by Volume
Sales by Value
Finally a personal thank you from me to our amazing team at Farr Vintners. Many of you will know the members of our sales departments in London or Hong Kong but one of our greatest strengths is our "back room" staff. Our administration department led by Yvonne Dinan ensures that customers receive invoices more promptly than from any other merchant - usually within an hour of placing an order. Our logistics department led by Richard Sparkes provide a quick and efficient service into and out of Octavian's warehouse in Corsham (undeniably the world's best professional wine storage facility). Our accounts department led by Rajesh Patel ensure that all suppliers are paid promptly (a major reason why we are able to source such an impressive volume of wines) and our IT department led by Tim Doe continue to enhance our easy to use and brilliantly practical web site which is the envy of the entire wine trade.
It's been a great year for Farr Vintners and for me personally - my 30th in the wine trade. When I started driving a van for a little wine shop in Chelsea in 1980 I didn't really expect that in 2010 I would be the Chairman of the world's most successful wine company, tutoring tastings of First Growth clarets in London, Hong Kong and Beijing or serving fine wine to visiting Football Club owners in the boardroom of Crystal Palace FC. There have been some great wine highlights during the year but two of them were a blind tasting of Chateau Montrose during a Championship game and serving a jeroboam of Chateau de Beaucastel 2003 to the directors of Hull City at our last home match. I'll bet that they didn't get that in the Premier League!
