Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Bordeaux, France

Probably the most famous chateau in the world. The famous banking family of France has owned this vineyard since 1868. Considered the epitome of Bordeaux wine culture.

 

Romanée-Conti, Burgundy, France

One of the most expensive cult wines. The Grand Cru estate, owned by the Domaine de la Romaneé-Conti, is less than 4.5 acres. An average vintage yields around 5000 bottles.

 

Montrachet Domaine Leflaive, Burgundy, France

The vines of Le Montrachet yield the finest white wines in the world. Managed by a select group of renowned vintners, the Grand Cru vineyard measures 20 acres. The most coveted bottles come from superstars like Domaine Leflaive, which owns less than 0.25 acres of Le Montrachet.

 

Krug Clos d’Ambonnay, Champagne, France

A place of pilgrimage for Champagne lovers, House Krug was founded in 1843. Two extremely rare vineyard estate Champagnes are made here – Clos du Mesnil and Clos d’Ambonnay. The latter comes from a vineyard less than 1.7 acres in size and has been produced in 2000, 1998, 1996, and 1995.

 

Pingus, Ribeira del Duero, Spain

Danish oenologist Peter Sisseck established Dominio de Pingus in Ribera del Duero, Spain in 1995. Influential wine critic Robert Parker called the very first vintage “one of the greatest and most exciting wines I have ever tasted.” – the prices went through the roof. The vineyard estate is less than 12.5 acres. Pingus is considered the rarest and most expensive wine of Spain.

 

Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese Egon Müller, Saar, Germany

Egon Müller is Germany’s ultimate cult vintner. International collectors and connoisseurs know his Rieslings are worth every penny. Scharzhofberg wines are among the most coveted and best in the world. Only a few dozen bottles of Trockenbeerenauslese are made and sold exclusively at auctions.

 

Penfolds Grange Bin 95, South Australia

Penfolds Grange is the Australian cult wine that’s second to none. Considered the first true “Premier Cru” of the Southern hemisphere, it was designated a heritage icon by the National Trust of South Australia on its 50th anniversary in 2001.

 

Barolo Riserva Monfortino Giacomo Conterno, Piemont, Italy

Many experts say the Monfortino is Italy’s greatest red wine. This exceptional Barolo is only made in certain years, then ripened in a cask for 7 years before it is bottled. Its storage-ability is legendary.

 

Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, USA

California’s contribution to our list of cult wines hails from Oakville. The 1992 vintage received an impressive score of 99 from Robert Parker. For 1997, 2007, 2010, and 2012, the Screaming Eagle scored a perfect 100. The stellar quality and very limited production run of 5000-8000 bottles per vintage made Screaming Eagle the most expensive wine in the USA. And the price might make you scream indeed…

 

4G L’Aube De La Vigne, South Africa

Winemaker legend Giogio Dalla Cia and “Pope of Wine” Denis Dubourdieu, who tragically passed away in July 2016, are behind this relatively recent project. Their objective? To make the best and most expensive red wine in South Africa’s 350-year history of wine-making. Only 3000-4000 bottles of this rising star among cult wines are made per vintage. It found international recognition when it left several perfect 100 score superstar Bordeaux in its dust at a blind tasting event.

 

The 2019 Bordeaux en primer season—disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic—is now underway, and it’s a buyer’s market for a vintage that many consider to be very good. 

The big news for serious wine investors, drinkers, and collectors is that prices of this vintage from the very best châteaux are for the first time in more than a decade being offered at substantial discounts of as much as 30% or more off release prices from a year ago. 

Château Pontet-Canet kicked off en primer—the sale of wine futures—for the 2019 vintage on May 28, releasing it at €58 (US$65.60) a bottle, from the negociant (Bordeaux merchant)—a 31% discount from 2018. That release set the tone, with many top producers following suit. Château Mouton Rothschild, for instance, offered its wines at a nearly 31% discount to 2018 prices at €282 per bottle, ex-negociant, a similar price cut to that offered by Château Palmer, at €161 a bottle.

“If I’m a buyer in the U.K., sitting there in London, I’m buying everything at this price—it’s clearly a buyer’s vintage,” says Nick Jackson, a master of wine and owner of the consulting firm Vintage Variation. “We haven’t seen pricing like this since 2008. And the quality of this vintage is better than 2008 by all accounts.”

Still, it’s a complicated year. The situation for buyers in the U.S. is less clear cut, as Jackson alludes to, with tariffs on still wines imported from France subject to a 25% tariff. The tax was among several imposed last October on various products produced in the European Union in response to a long-running trade dispute over Airbus, based in the Netherlands. 

Consumers who buy en primeur are securing wines that they won’t receive until the wines are bottled and shipped two years later. It’s a system that’s been in place for generations, ideally designed to allow wine lovers and investors to get a better price on bottles that haven’t yet come to market.

But in recent years, that premise has been undercut by high en primeur prices, causing many consumers and participants in the wine trade to lose interest in futures and to question the system’s survival. 

 

Avoiding “Death by a Thousand Cuts”

 

There are several reasons Bordeaux producers are cutting prices, at last. The most obvious is that this year, for the first time, en primeur, typically held at the end of March and early April, was canceled. That meant wine journalists, merchants, and consumers, who typically descend on the region, didn’t get to taste the vintage, and critics couldn’t release their influential scores. 

But en primeur was facing headwinds from other corners as well, including U.S. tariffs and unrest in Hong Kong, the center of the Asian wine trade. And then there’s the fact that many in the fine-wine trade were fed up with paying high prices for futures.

 

“I would love it if [the discounts] were also about the fact that the Bordelais realized they needed a bit of a reset after a few years of some pretty firm prices,” Jackson says.