Bordeaux 2013: Figeac, Langoa Barton, Branaire Ducru

Another flurry of releases this morning with Figeac, Langoa Barton, Branaire Ducru and Domaine du Chevalier.

Saint-Emilion estate Figeac has stayed at the same price as last year, €48 per bottle ex-négociant.

Estate manager, Frédéric Faye, recently told the drinks business that in terms of pricing Figeac was “listening to the market” and that it was important to “put consumers first.”

Has the château done this? It’s 2012 was £525 a case and has since slipped to £479, back vintages to 2004 have kept their value though so the 2013 is cheaper than most other wines on the market.

On the other hand, the 2013 has either the same or lower scores than the 2012 – which is cheaper – so it may attract some buyers but unless you’re a die-hard fan of Figeac you may look elsewhere.

In general the Right Bank so far has offered the most meagre of price cuts, the biggest actually coming from Pavie and Angélus at 8% – though that was only down to €165 p/b and on the same day as Mouton released so they didn’t really go anywhere.

Clos Fourtet and Troplong Mondot have cut 2% and l”Evangile and Figeac haven’t cut at all.

There were rather more reductions back on the Left Bank this morning, with a clutch of quite attractive looking properties below €30 p/b.

Langoa Barton cut 5% to €28.50 p/b; Branaire Ducru went down 13% to €24.90 and Domaine du Chevalier’s red cut 8% to €27.50.

Yesterday was dominated by the release of Haut-Brion. The first growth followed Mouton and Margaux and cut 10% to €215 p/b. As the first growths are among the very few wines to find a secondary market so far, this looked like a good move.

However, as Liv-ex pointed out, Haut-Brion has rather more low-priced back vintages than its fellow firsts and so “looking at Haut Brion’s back vintages would seem to make sense.”