Château Haut-Bailly, a Bordeaux wine estate in Pessac-Léognan south of the city, boosted its 2014 vintage price by 9 per cent as more than two decades of investment by US banker Robert Wilmers spurred demand in export markets.
Some 85 percent of its wine is sold abroad, with historic markets like the UK, Belgium and Switzerland now balanced by sales in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and China.
Haut-Bailly has benefited from better growing conditions in 2014 that let many Bordeaux winemakers increase prices after two tougher vintages. While collectors have been hesitant to buy Bordeaux wine futures after declines in top labels since 2011, Haut-Bailly has been buoyed by critic Robert Parker’s upgrade of its 2009 vintage in April to a perfect 100 points.
“We are very pleased with 2014,” Haut-Bailly Director General Veronique Sanders said in an interview at the winery during presentations to merchants and journalists. “We managed to get the ripeness we wanted. I think we got the right balance.”
Haut-Bailly 2014 was priced at €43.20 ($47.46) a bottle from Bordeaux brokers, up from €39.60 for the 2013 and €42 for the 2012, according to data from the Liv-ex wine exchange. It compared with €76.80 for the 2009 wines and €89 for the 2010s, Parker’s two highest-rated vintages from the estate.
The 2014 broker price translated into a UK merchant price of £415 ($635) a case, according to Liv-ex, putting it in a similar range as several vintages over the past decade. “The 2006 in particular, awarded 95 by Robert Parker, appears to offer relative value,” Liv-ex said in its blog.
The Haut-Bailly estate was bought in 1998 by Wilmers, the chairman and chief executive officer of M&T Bank in Buffalo, New York. Wilmers has renovated the vineyard and chateau, adding two cellars with more smaller vats to bring greater precision to the wine-making. Concrete vats are used during the maturation process, with oak barrels for aging and stainless-steel tanks for storage.
Vines were grown at Haut-Bailly as long ago as 1461, according to the estate’s website, with the foundations of the modern vineyard dating from the 1530s.
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
