Bordeaux prices to rise up to 15pc(1)
The wealthiest vineyards are preparing an increase of up to 15 per cent for the 2010 vintage. Picture: AFP Source: The Australian
THE PRICE of a bottle of the very finest Bordeaux is about to soar higher than ever, driven up by a second successive exceptional vintage -- and by China's insatiable thirst for an investment.
"The chateaux are saying to themselves: 'We'd like to ask just a little bit more than last year,'" Miguel Coumau, a Bordeaux-based wine broker, said.
"They reckon people are prepared to break open their piggy banks to buy their wines."
That means a bonanza for the top 130 chateaux in Bordeaux, the Rolls-Royces of the wine trade far removed from the struggles affecting the rest of the industry in France.
Wholesale prices for the widely praised 2009 vintage themselves set records, with Chateau Latour and Chateau Mouton Rothschild charging 550 euros ($737) a bottle and Chateau Cheval Blanc 700 euros a bottle.
Retail prices are higher still: a case of six bottles of 2009 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, for example - the favourite wine of China's millionaires - is on sale on the internet at 8700 euros ($11,659)
Dismissing critics who accuse them of provoking a speculative bubble, the wealthiest vineyards are preparing an increase of between 5 and 15 per cent this year for the 2010 vintage, according to Mr Coumau.
The 2010 vintage will not be delivered until 2013 and connoisseurs will avoid consuming it for many years after that.
But the judgment of Robert Parker, the hugely influential American wine critic, has convinced purchasers that last summer's grapes were almost as sumptuous as the previous year's, hailed as one of the greatest vintages ever.
Mr Parker has said the top chateaux are on course to produce wines of perfection, capable of obtaining scores of 100 out of 100 when they are bottled.
