Who to stop Haut-Brion?

After being presented as the best potential Premier Grand Cru based on its ratings and prices two years ago, would Château Haut-Brion finally take center stage?

This is not new: the price gap between Château Lafite and the other Premiers Grands Crus (the driving force behind this market being fierce Asian demand) has been constantly narrowing since 2011 (-47 % in all). While at its peak four years ago it was 130 %, it was down to just 35 % last month and there are signs that it may decline further.

However, as Liv-ex points out, Château Lafite's past did not foreshadow this recent market dominance. At the beginning of the XX^e century, Haut-Brion dominated sales. The explosion of the American market and the particularly strong demand for Château Margaux at the end of the 1990s contributed as much to the development of this domain as China had done for Lafite.

Liv-ex wonders if the cards are about to be redistributed.

There is no doubt that Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild are the domains that have benefited the most from the fall of Lafite, in particular the domain of Pessac (+7.7 %), between June 2014 and August of this year.

What we explained in October 2013 still stands: of all the Premiers Grands Crus, the case of Haut-Brion is the one with the lowest average price between 2003 and 2012 (£3,421, or €4,647). Yet its average Parker rating is the highest (96.4 points), with Latour also having the highest average price per case (£4,997, €6,788). Take the 2010 vintage for example: Latour and Haut-Brion each received a Parker rating of 100 points, but the former sold for £8,600 (€11,623), compared to £5,600 (€7,568) for the latter.

Haut-Brion 2005 is one of the twelve wines that have recently been re-evaluated at 100 points by Robert Parker, who also gave the highest score (98 points) to Château Haut-Brion 2012 during his bottle tastings of this vintage. this summer.

According to its ratio combining ratings and price (POP, points over price), Liv-ex has shown that among the ten Premiers Grands Crus “which seem to offer the best value for money”, five are Haut-Brion, four are Margaux and the last is a Mouton Rothschild. Assuming that the lower the POP score, the higher the quality, the 2012, 2008, 2006, 2011 and 2003 vintages of Haut-Brion all score below 200 (as do the 2012 vintages of Margaux and Sheep). To give an idea, the Latour 2010 rated 100 points has a POP of 430.

If we focus on the 2003 to 2012 vintages between June 2014 and August 2015, we notice that only the 2011 vintage is in decline (-5.9 %, from £2,550 to £2,400, i.e. from €3,456 to 3 €253, these prices being the mid price established by Liv-ex).

The 2005 vintage is the one with the biggest increase (no doubt thanks to the score of 100 points attributed to it by Robert Parker): +25.4 % to reach £5,150 (€6,967, mid price still). Next comes the 2008 vintage (+9.6 %) followed by the 2012 vintage (+6.6 % since last year).

The table shows the other growing vintages:

Many will keep an eye on Lafite next year, but many may do the same for Haut-Brion.

September 21, 2015

Rupert Millar

The Drinks Business