Lafite Rothschild followed its fellow First Growths, Margaux and Mouton, by releasing its grand vin at €600 per bottle today, with its second wine (Carruades de Lafite) also matching the price of its peers at €108. Although with the first-tranche volumes for both wines extremely thin, the actual price most merchants will pay for the majority of their stock is likely to be a great deal higher.
Both wines traded on the exchange; Lafite was steady at £12,000 per case and Carruades reached close to £3,000.
As we have seen in recent years, many merchants saw their allocations of Lafite tied to large amounts of Rieussec. As such, the Sauternes was trading at a new low of £250 per case, as merchants moved to unbundle stock. Duhart Milon, also part of the Lafite stable, was another of the wines to show its hand, releasing at €66 euros per bottle, around half the current trading price of the 2009. As such it is likely to garner high demand.
A wine that is unlikely to sell through quite as quickly is Mission Haut Brion, which used its 2010 release to firmly state that it should be considered the sixth First Growth. Despite being ignored in the 1855 classification, the sister estate of Haut Brion released at €600 per case, the same price as Lafite, Mouton and Margaux. This equates to a London release price of around £7,000. As you can see in the chart below, this is significantly higher than the current trading price of comparable vintages. With the 2000 vintage (declared perfect by more than one critic) available at £1,000 less, there seems little reason to purchase the 2010.
Also released was Forts de Latour, the second wine of Latour, which broke ranks with the other Firsts by releasing at €168. Is this a sign that its grand vin will also carry a premium over its fellow Firsts?
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