Buyers return to Bordeaux 2010

As trade in the Bordeaux 2005s has blossomed and faded, interest in the 2010 vintage has begun to pick up.

In the build-up to and immediately after Robert Parker’s 10-year retrospective, the 2005s were all the rage, prices rose, trade went up but, like cherry blossom, the attention was brief.

After a week those highly-rated wines had traded as much as they were going to and those tipped for success that fell short quickly saw interest drop away as well. Over the course of the month when it was in the eye of the storm trade in the vintage dropped from a high of 23.4% share of trade to just 9.2%.

Liv-ex reports that trade in the 2009s has remained steady but the space left by declining interest in the 2005s has given the 2010s room to manoeuvre.

In July the vintage took 18.2% of the share of the trade in Bordeaux with Pontet-Canet and La Mission Haut-Brion in particular seeing “high activity”. The five most traded 2010s last month were: Pontet-Canet, Duhart Milon, Palmer, La Mission and Margaux.

The 2010s represented a new peak for Bordeaux release prices when they came out in 2011 but they appeared in a market that was already beginning to falter and prices immediately suffered in the secondary market.

Prices have been declining steadily for the last four years – as has the wider market – but the signs are now that most of the wines have found their bottom.

Lafite’s 2010 seems to have settled on £5,500 a case, which it’s held for the last six months and Pontet-Canet’s 2010 has held at around £1,260 for about the same period.

In fact, the Pauillac flying-fifth’s 2010 effort was awarded 100-points by Parker and at under £2,000 a case (nearly 50 100-pointers since 2000 are below £5,000 p/cs) it seems to have caught buyers’ attention.

Its price rose 2% from £1,260 to £1,285 and snagged 2.3% of trade in July. Margaux’s price rose 2.1% from £4,951 to £5,054 and La Mission’s price rose 7.3% to £3,819.