Is it Time to Buy Your Own Bordeaux Chateau?

French wine country, whether your pick is Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Champagne or legendary Bordeaux offers striking opportunities.

Debbie and I travel to France’s countryside twice a year, and have run into a surprising number of Americans who have made purchases ranging from a run down old Provence farmhouse with ancient olive trees and some modest vineyard holdings to a Grand Cru vineyard in Burgundy and even the most beautiful wine estate just south of Burgundy’s capital Beaune. Marvelous options are seemingly endless.

Decanter offers you a compelling glimpse of what it may be like to own your very own Bordeaux chateau. Enjoy

It’s that time of year, when the French land agency SAFER releases its updated price guide for buying viticultural lands around France, and we can fantasize about buying something in Bordeaux and then over-charging for our own en primeur wines.

Of course, we are only talking about vineyards here. So, make sure you have something spare for estate buildings and the brand name…

What’s happening to vineyard prices across France?

The Rural Property Review covers the price of agricultural land – forests, grazing land, orchards, farms – in all regions of France. It shows the overall prices have risen by 13.5% since 2012.

For vines specifically, France saw just over 9,000 vineyard transactions in 2016, unchanged since 2015, covering 15,580 hectares of wines worth €780 million (down -2.6% from last year).

Vineyard land prices in AOC regions as a whole were stable, with just a 0.1% rise overall to an average of €104,000 per hectare, with a 2.2% rise for non-AOC regions.

Champagne was one of the few places to see a drop in price per hectare of -2.6%, with Burgundy-Jura-Beaujolais (they are recorded as one) seeing the biggest average rise of 6.8%, the Loire 5.8% and Bordeaux-Aquitaine 3%.