The deal will see small-production wines of the Charles Lachaux négoce business offered exclusively to Crurated members, the new partners announced. Bottles will still be distributed separately to restaurants in several markets, they added.
Lachaux is considered an exciting talent in a younger generation of Burgundy winemakers. Alongside overseeing viticultural changes at his family’s Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux in recent years, he launched his namesake micro-négoce business in 2018.
From 25 July, the new partners said a debut offer to Crurated members will be a six-bottle case of Charles Lachaux 2021-vintage wines, comprising: Les Champs d’Argent, Bourgogne Aligoté; Aux Argillas, Nuits-St-Georges premier cru; Les Valozières, Aloxe-Corton premier cru; La Croix Blanche, Bourgogne Rouge; Aux Montagnes, Côte de Nuits-Villages; and La Petite Charmotte, Nuits-St-Georges.
Crurated, founded in 2021, describes itself as a membership-based wine community and specialises in offering wines sourced direct from top producers, mainly from France and Italy, to its network of fine wine drinkers and collectors.
It operates a sealed-bid auction process on many offers, but also sells wine at a fixed price. With the Charles Lachaux wines, ‘we’re going to start with private sales at fixed price and then we are going to have different offerings over time’, Crurated founder Alfonso de Gaetano told Decanter.
Wines offered by Crurated come with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are logged using blockchain technology, providing a digital record of ownership, provenance and information about the wine itself.
Charles Lachaux said, ‘Crurated streamlines access to rare wines and their use of blockchain and NFT technology provides buyers with the authenticity and provenance much needed in this industry. They are the ideal partner for us as we embark on a new age of direct-to-consumer wine sales.’
He told Decanter that part of the appeal of the Crurated partnership was the opportunity to trial ways of more directly controlling distribution of his négoce wines, and help put them in-front of consumers who want to buy them to drink. Prices for some of his négoce wines have recently soared on the market following release, he noted.
Bottles will still be distributed separately to restaurants across 15 countries, he said.
In September, Crurated also plans to begin offering members the opportunity to purchase a ‘fraction’ of a barrel from different top producers, including Charles Lachaux. Wine could then be bottled in a format of the collector’s choice. More details would be announced nearer the time, de Gaetano said.
‘Our team is fortunate to be working with the world’s greatest wines and winemakers, and Charles Lachaux is no exception,’ he said.