Will 2015 Rhône justify higher prices?

The 2015 wines of Beaucastel and Vieux Télégraphe have begun to be offered by merchants but will their eventual scores justify higher prices?

The Châteauneuf du Pape from Beaucastel is available at £450 a dozen according to Liv-ex. This is a 19% increase on the merchant release price for the 2014 last year (£378), in no small part due to the weakness of the pound currently – a problem affecting prices of all new releases.

Vieux Télégraphe’s Châteauneuf meanwhile is being offered for £390 per case of 12. Neither wine has received any major critical score so far although Jeb Dunnuck’s 2015 Rhône harvest report for The Wine Advocate is due to be published later this week.

In quality though the wines are already being compared extremely favourably to two of the Rhône’s most recent ‘great’ vintages, the 2007s and 2010s.

Certainly, other 2015 Rhône wines have sold well so far since they began appearing. Will Hargrove of Corney & Barrow told the drinks business that the Tardieu-Laurent wines “really flew” when offered and the Clos des Papes “sold out” last week.

He admitted that the prices of the Tardieu-Laurent wines were slightly up but felt that they still “merited” it. He continued that he and his team “expect the 2015s from the big names to sell well.”

Goedhuis’ Rhône buyer, Catherine Petrie, told db: “We have seen between a 15% and 20% increase across the top Southern Rhônes so far, the result of modest ex-cellar increases combined with sterling’s position.

“However sales have already surpassed last year’s. This is a reflection of both the recognised high quality of the 2015 vintage and the still relative good value of the top Rhône names within the wider fine wine market.”

Beaucastel and Vieux Télégraphe will certainly need some good scores to make them more attractive. Although not overly expensive by the modern standards of fine wine prices, the 2015 Beaucastel is more expensive than its back vintages going back to 2005 with the exception of the ‘great’ 2007, 2010 and 2012 vintages.

Likewise, Vieux Télégraphe is roughly the same price as its 2005 which has 95 Parker points. On the other hand, its output seems to have been rather more uneven since the release of its very highly rated 2010. Will the 2015 mark a return to form for the well-known southern estate?

Despite extremely consistent vintages on the whole and excellent winemaking talent, the Rhône remains a region that stubbornly refuses to perform particularly well or consistently in the secondary market.

According to the Liv-ex Fine Wine 1000, the Rhône 100 sub-index is the weakest performer over the year to date (as of September) and it also had one of the weakest month-on-month improvements from August to September. On the other hand, the index is now showing positive monthly results. There was a time not too long ago when it was consistently out-performed by its fellow, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and Italian sub-indices and was showing rather serious decline.

The struggles of Rhône in the fine wine market were covered by the drinks business last year.