After a few weeks of vinous excess, most drinkers start the new year with a renewed focus on those wines that offer the most pleasure for each pound.
As such, we thought it would be interesting to restructure the Liv-ex Fine Wine Power 100 (focusing solely on Bordeaux) to identify those wines that represent the best value.
In this new ranking, it is those wines with the lowest average price and the lowest annual price move that are awarded the top scores. We have also kept the ranking by Parker score from the original list and introduced a new measure based on each wines POP value. A wine’s POP score is its price-over-points ratio, our loose measure of value. It is calculated by dividing the price of a nine-litre case of wine by a shortened 20-point Parker score. In theory, the lower the POP score the better value a wine is.
Each wine was then ranked across these four criteria.
Below is the table of results. In contrast to the Liv-ex Fine Wine Power 100, it is the Sauternes that head the table, with Rieussec and Climens taking the top two places. The top-ranked red wines is Smith Haut Lafitte, closely followed by fellow Graves, Pape Clement.
At the other end of the table we find the second wines of the First Growths, closely followed by the First Growths themselves. Indeed, as you would expect, most of the big names are shown to be relatively poor value.
The two biggest names towards the top are, arguably, Pavie in 6th place and Leoville Las Case in 16th. Are these two of the wisest buys as we move into 2011?
