What are Australia's most collected wines?

It is sometimes a topic of discussion as to which wines are most likely to be represented in cellar collections. I am not referring necessarily to expensive wines or to cult wines, but to wines that are actually in the cellars of real consumers and collectors (not necessarily investors). Which wines do people actually put aside for drinking (or selling) later?

One could look at the data of a collaborative site like CellarTracker, which lists the cellar collections (number of bottles) of many of their community members. However, this would be a slow business, as the data are not readily available in bulk.

One alternative is to look at the data from commercial storage facilities, given that many people use them when they have a serious size of wine collection. Once again, this would be tricky in a country the size of the USA, where there are many such facilities, large and small scattered across the country.

However, in Australia there is one main company, Wine Ark, which makes such an analysis possible. Indeed, Wine Ark actually does the work for us, by releasing every few years a list of Australia’s 50 Most Collected Wines. Wine Ark was established in 1999, and stores more than two million bottles of wine in 16 cellars across Australia (for clients from more than 30 countries). So, their lists should provide a good overview of what is happening with regard to collections of Australian wine.

I have compiled the data from the four lists published to date (2006, 2009, 2013, 2016), in which the wines are simply ranked in order of the number of bottles in storage. From this, I have constructed a network of the 53 wines that appear in most of the lists.

The wines at the top of the Ark lists are at the top of the network, progressing down to lower ranked wines at the bottom. The network gets messy towards the bottom because the lower ranked wines can vary a lot in position from list to list — indeed, the lists have changed quite a lot across the decade over which they were compiled.

Nevertheless, there is a group of 14 wines that are at the top of every list, and I guess that we should call these the "most collected" wines. These are all widely available, as their production is relatively large. Notably, 6 of them come from Penfolds, which specifically targets this segment of the wine market. The Penfolds and Wynns companies are both owned by Treasury Wine Estates, giving this conglomerate 8 of the top 14 wines. This may justify their claim to be Australia's premier wine company.

Interestingly, while all of the listed wines are relatively expensive, Australia's most expensive wines (eg. Grange and Hill of Grace) are not necessarily at the top of the list. Indeed, Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz actually topped two of the lists — this is often recognized as the most collected wine in Australia, as it has the same cellaring potential as Pengfolds Grange but costs only one-tenth of the price.

The listed wine with the biggest production is Wynns Coonawarra Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (often called Black Label), which I have written about before (Why lionize winemakers but not viticulturists?). At the other extreme, Australia's cult wines are produced by more low-profile winemakers, such as Chris Ringland, Drew Noon, and Phillip Jones, whose productions are too small to appear in the Ark lists.

It is also worth noting that 10 of the 53 wines (20%) in the network are white, rather than red, including 2 of the top 14. It is debatable whether this is a surprisingly large or disappointingly small percentage of the collectable wines; but it includes 5 chardonnays, 3 rieslings, and 2 semillons (one of them a botrytized version).

Finally, we can compare the network to Langton's Classification of Australian Wine. Langton's Fine Wine Auctions holds more than 250 auctions every year, and their Classification is based on the sale prices of the auctioned wines. The current Classification is from 2014, with a new one due in September this year (the 30th anniversary).

The differences between the two lists are quite revealing. All of the top 14 Ark wines are in the Langton's Classification, although only 8 are listed as Exceptional, with 2 Outstanding and 4 Excellent. Conversely, there are 3 Classification wines that are not in the Ark cellaring list: Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir, Chris Ringland Dry Grown Barossa Ranges Shiraz, and Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz — these are pretty much cult wines (ie. low production).

Of the remaining 39 Ark wines, 8 are classified as Exceptional, 11 as Outstanding, and 15 are Excellent. That leaves 5 wines in the Ark list that are not in the Classification at all: Jacobs Creek St Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon, Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz, Seppelt Chalambar Shiraz, Howard Park Cabernet Merlot, and Rockford Rifle Range Cabernet Sauvignon.

There are also 29 Outstanding Classification wines that do not appear in the Ark lists. Perhaps the most unexpected of these is the Penfolds Bin 144 Yattarna Chardonnay, which was specifically created by Penfolds as the white equivalent of their red Grange (ie. a cellaring wine — "the result of one of the most comprehensive and highly publicized wine development programs ever conducted in Australia"). Apparently, Penfolds have convinced the auction market (Langtons) but not yet the cellaring public (Wine Ark).

These large differences between the two lists presumably reflect the different attitudes of people who are cellaring wines and those who are selling them at auction. Do you want mature wine to enjoy in your lifetime, or are you treating them as an investment? This may result in you choosing different wines for your storage.