Bordeaux 2011: Chateau Lafite Rothschild releases at €420 per bottle

Chateau Lafite Rothschild 2011: First major name to release

The wine will be €420 ex-negociant, and merchants will wait to announce their price until they are sure of their allocations. The ex-chateau price is €350.

Merchants are still digesting the news but one or two have commented in pleased terms.

An email from Farr Vintners read, ¡®Welcome news on the pricing and let's hope that other chateaux follow this lead and allow us to sell at a lower price than we sell physical vintages.¡¯

Both they and Berry Bros also said they were pleased there was no ¡®tie-in¡¯ with the Rothschild-owned Sauternes Chateau Rieussec, which last year merchants were obliged to buy along with their Lafite allocation.

There is now a good deal of uncertainty about how the rest of the blue-chip properties will react to this price.

¡®I doubt very much that Mouton, Haut-Brion, Margaux and Cheval Blanc will be able to sell at €350,¡¯ Simon Staples at BBR told Decanter.com.

His prediction ¨C with the proviso that this was a very early state of the campaign ¨C was that Lafite¡¯s sister property Mouton-Rothschild, for one, would release a very small tranche at €350 and then price the following tranches according to market reaction.

Lafite¡¯s announcement will also unleash a wave of speculation as to how this year¡¯s most-lauded wines, such as the third-growth Chateau Palmer, Ducru-Beaucaillou, Montrose or Calon-Segur.

Palmer was given five stars and 18.5 points by Steven Spurrier for Decanter, the others 18 points, or four stars.