by Wine Owners
Posted on 2018-04-04
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram next week as our team will be sharing their first impression and analysis on the new vintage live from le Bordelais.
Here's a taste of our week:
Monday
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Tuesday
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Wednesday
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Thursday
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Lafite
Mouton
Cos d’Estournel
Pontet Canet
Calon Segur
Montrose
Margaux
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Nenin
VCC
Cheval Blanc
Château de Ferrand
Gazin
La Couspaude
Canon
Pavie
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Haut Brion
Pape Clément
Malartic Lagravière
Smith Haut Laffite
Haut Bailly
Lafon-Rochet
Beychevelle
Siran
Lagrange
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Le Pin
La Conseillante
Figeac
Eglise Clinet
Angelus
Latour
Palmer
Ulysse Cazabonne
Leoville Barton
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by Wine Owners
Posted on 2016-05-09
As we jump into the 2015 En Primeur campaign with analysis and our recommendations of those wines that could be worth buying early on, let’s have a look at how last year’s 2014 En Primeur ‘picks’ have performed.
We used our price per points analysis to identify relative value of the 2014 releases vs comparable back vintages vintages
It's worth noting that wines that we felt could have been worth buying early were a little more than a handful, out of the swathe of en primeur releases. But then, there are only about 60 wines potentially worth bothering with these days. Buying the equivalent of cru bourgeois releases as a future is surely a mug's game these days. Of the 60 or so top producers who released in 2014, we thought there were about 8 wines worth buying as a future.
Here's how they performed...
Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2014
Last year you could have bought a 12x75cl case of Château Lafite Rothschild 2014 for £ 2,700. Since then, it's increased to £3,300 (12x75cl) which represents a growth of 18% from it’s initial released price.
It was a tough one to taste at the property in April 2015, but we took a punt on it as proper wine - at least there was no lipstick applied to the barrel samples.
Chateau Calon Ségur 2014
Released at £410-£420 (12x75cl) retail, Calon has increased in price by 23.2% and stands at a market price of £505. It's worth noting volume of wine released En Primeur was much reduced last year and négociant channels were heavily rationalised. Having been earlier acquired by new owners for €200M, expect further 'management' of En Primeur releases in an attempt to drive the secondary market price.
Chateau Margaux 2014
The release price of Chateau Margaux 2014 was £ 2,340 (12x75cl).
Market price has risen to £ 2,850 for a case of 12 in one year, and increase of 21,8%.
Robert Parker Score : 93-95
Petit Mouton 2014
Le Petit Mouton’s release price was £ 750 per case of 12 bottles, the closest thing to a ‘one way bet’ we found last year, and I filled my personal boots. Given how well this atypically predominant cabernet Sauvignon Petit Mouton has performed in the last 12 months, we hope you did too! It was also the most delicious and impressive wine, and felt to me a little under-rated by Neal.
The price of Le Petit Mouton has increased by 30% going from £ 750 to £ 1,080 for 12x75cl.
Robert Parker Score : 90-92
Chateau Mouton Rothschild 2014
Along with Petit Mouton, we loved Mouton last year, with its merlot so successful on gravel that a large slug of it made it into the Grand Vin. The trade was baying for release prices close to 2008 (£1750-£1800), but we thought £2,300 was a fair price for the quality, especially in the light of how much market momentum there has been behind Mouton of late.
Mouton 2014 has increased from it’s release price to £ 2,700, an increase of 13%.
Robert Parker Score : 96/100
Chateau Lynch-Bages 2014
Chateau Lynch-Bages 2014 was universally declared good value by the wine trade last year, and released at £580.
Over the past year it rose from £ 580 to £ 650 (12x75cl) representing an increase of 12%.
Robert Parker Score : 92 -94
Chateau Canon 2014
This stood out as proper wine last year as well, and tasted alongside some heavyweights held it's own. Re-tasted this year, it's shutting down and wasn't the most exciting wine on earth. The price hasn't budged either way from its release price of £375. One that in retrospect we should not have recommended to buy early.
by Wine Owners
Posted on 2016-04-07
When asked by a French journalist if he thought 2015 was an antidote to the Bordeaux fine wine market 'bashing' of certain journalists, Monsieur Rolland let fly:
“There’s no cure for imbecility - it's reaching colossal proportions. For me, 2015 is a truly great vintage. There are too many idiots to notice. They’ll figure it out in 10 years’ time, as usual. We live in a world without gumption; with people without balls. End of story. There isn’t a journalist who's seeing it. Anyway, there isn’t a wine writer with any substance in the world today. I don't give a damn about what journalists say. That has nothing to do with the market. They can say, write and think what they want; the world won't give a hoot, just as it doesn't care what happened in 40 AD! (from the idiom 's'en foutre comme de l'an quarante' - a year which had been predicted as the end of the world). When they realise that, maybe they’ll eat humble pie. Not that they’ll become intelligent - that will be difficult - but maybe they'll learn to think differently.”
by Wine Owners
Posted on 2016-02-18
Looking ahead to the forthcoming Bordeaux En Primeur release, it seems like there’ll be plenty to be excited about, at least from a quality perspective, and there’s already a good deal of speculation about release strategies.
It’s fascinating that Chateau Mouton Rothschild has come out with a similar announcement to Chateau Latour’s 2013 En Primeur campaign withdrawal. It amounts to essentially the same thing, nuanced differently.
“Sales of our wines in bottle are growing a lot and we’ve got to the point where we don’t have enough bottles left in our cellar."
“We won’t be buying our wine back but we will be releasing less of it en primeur as we have to rebuild our inventory.”
“We haven’t lost faith in the en primeur system but you have to be reasonable with your pricing as there are so many reference points for consumers now.”
This roughly translates, into words that you and I will understand, as: "in an increasingly transparent world where discerning consumers can analyse and evaluate young wines by their relative value to past vintages, the only way we can get an en primeur campaign away is by pricing at a discount to comparable previous vintages, that recognises the end-user buyer needs a reason to buy early. That doesn’t seem to make a great deal of sense if we wish to capitalise on growing worldwide demand. Going forward, we would rather not give that discount away to more than a tiny number of en primeur buyers who will help us establish (hopefully higher) future secondary market pricing. That will create the preconditions for us to capture a much bigger slice of the downstream value of our wines, satisfying shareholder requirements for income growth and capital (land) appreciation.”
With Latour and Mouton effectively ‘out’, how will the remaining Firsts respond next year?
Last year there were only a small handful of wines worth buying early. That’s not to say there were not plenty of lovely wines made in 2014, but very few were sufficiently well priced to justify tying up cash. Given the overall superior quality of 2015, producers will hike up their prices, possibly quite a bit. Given that, it’s quite likely that savvy wine buyers will do well to continue to focus on relative values from comparable back vintages and revisit 2015 in a few years’ time. Meanwhile the impending campaign is bound to throw a spotlight on 2000, 2005 and even the better values within 2009 and 2010.
