It’s well known that prices for Bordeaux First Growths trade at a premium to other Left Bank wines, but how do we quantify this premium – and how much of it is due to differences in brand value as opposed to quality?
To help answer this question, Liv-ex has plotted the prices of the First Growths in the Fine Wine 50 index and wines of the Left Bank 200*, which tracks the price movements of other leading Bordeaux wines such as Leoville Las Cases, Lynch Bages and Pontet Canet, against their scores from Robert Parker. The two resulting trend lines are shown in the chart below. This analysis assumes that a wine’s score from Parker acts as a reasonable proxy for its ‘quality’.
The chart above illustrates the average price premium that the market is willing to pay for First Growths relative to other leading Left Bank wines. Since the trend lines compare wines with the same scores, the distance between the two may be attributed to differences in ‘brand’ value.
For the lowest scoring wines on the chart (i.e. wines with 91 points), the market pays an average premium of £2,791 for First Growths over other Left Bank wines. This premium increases to £5,565 for wines with 100 points from Parker.
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