Last week, we looked at how the “Lafite premium” has declined. The Lafite Premium was calculated by comparing current Market Prices for Lafite Rothschild against the average for other First Growths.
Despite this decline, Lafite continues to command a significant premium relative to quality, using score as a proxy.
To show this, we have plotted the prices for each First Growth wine since the 2000 vintage against its respective Wine Advocate score. We then derived the individual trend lines for each of the First Growths, shown in the chart above.
The trend lines highlight the relationships between Wine Advocate scores and prices for each wine. Since the trend lines compare wines with equal scores, the distance between lines can be attributed to differences in relative brand value as opposed to differences in quality.
The chart clearly shows that Lafite continues to command a higher brand premium compared to other First Growths.
Interestingly, Haut Brion, Latour and Margaux appear to be more sensitive to very high scores: they begin to close the gap as their scores approach the 100-point mark. Lafite Rothschild and Mouton Rothschild see less of an incline, perhaps because they enjoy a particularly strong following in Asia where brand buying is more prevalent and high scores are relatively unimportant.
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