Watch out for snake oil merchants offering 2009 Lafite

As I anticipated I'm getting a number of reports of people being offered cases of 2009 Lafite as well as other 2009 First Growths. The price for Lafite is up to £12,000 a case and possibly in one instance much more.

Remember that the prices of 2009 Lafite and the other First Growths have yet to be released. Nor is it is known how any cases of these wines will be available. Even long established, reputable companies expected to have difficulty in securing good allocations of these wines. Most of these companies will insist on their customers buying other lesser wines if they want to acquire Lafite or similar at opening prices. Understandably customers are not allowed to cherry pick.

Remember that it is very unlikely that companies that have been recently set up will be able to get hold of the top wines when they are first released.

If you are going to buy en primeur deal only with well established companies.    

Warning from Bordeaux Index

Bordeaux Index issues warning over Chinese Bordeaux 2009 frauds

Press Release: London, 26th April 2010 – Top London wine merchants Bordeaux issue first warning of illicit trade in unreleased vintage.
 
The quality of the Bordeaux 2009 vintage currently has the world of fine wine in a state of high excitement, with many experts declaring it the ‘vintage of the century.’
 
However, top wine merchants Bordeaux Index (http://www.bordeauxindex.com) today issued a word of warning, revealing for the first time that private clients have already been persuaded to order and pay for 2009 Bordeaux wines that have not even been released yet – from rogue traders based in the Mainland.
 
Such is the quality of the 2009 Bordeaux, many seasoned fine wine buyers – and growing numbers of investors new to fine wine – are expected to buy the vintage ‘en primeur’ (whilst it is still in the barrel). This maximises the potential return on investment, which according to Bordeaux Index could be as much as 20 percent within one year.
 
The vast majority of en primeur Bordeaux 2009 is yet to be released, and no wines of any significant merit have yet hit the market. With this in mind, Bordeaux Index Sales Director Sam Gleave was very surprised to learn that trade in certain high-profile fine wines was already booming – despite those wines not yet being released.
 
“We’ve long had concerns that a vintage like the 2009 Bordeaux could result in fraudulent futures trading,” says Gleave. “We urge buyers interested in the 2009 Bordeaux to deal exclusively with reputable merchants ONLY. Anyone offering top 2009 Bordeaux today is a fraud.”
 

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 The wine most likely to be offered will be 2009 Lafite. I understand from Sam Gleave that just as in the UK people are in China are being offered 2009 Lafite well before the price has been released. The danger is that the companies doing this have no chance of securing any 2009 Lafite, will pocket the cash and will have disappeared by the time the 2009s are due to be delivered. 

Cold calls offering 2009 Lafite@£3995

Several companies are already offering First Growth Bordeaux 2009s, although it is unlikely that prices will be released before the end of May at the earliest. I have been contacted by several people cold called with offers on Lafite 2009.

In the most recent the cold call was to DD on their mobile offering Lafite 2009 at £3995. The caller said that they were just back from Bordeaux and that the 2009 vintage is fantastic and a great wine investment opportunity. Although the caller mentioned the company’s name, DD couldn’t be absolutely sure afterwards what it was.

The company had worked with Bordeaux – it wasn’t clear whether the caller meant the châteaux or the négoce – helping them to manage the cash flow. This was why they had been given a priority allocation of Lafite and could offer it at £3995 a case.

 
DD told me that he thought it very odd that they were only offering one wine and so early in the en primeur campaign. At the end of the spiel DD asked some questions that the caller couldn’t really answer. “The spiel was cracking up, so I told him I wasn’t interested,” DD told me.    

A senior broker for one of the UK’s most respected merchants said “Whoever is offering Lafite now at that price is a charlatan and should be locked up. This campaign is going to be bloody and stressful. Allocations will be tight and we will allocate the best wines to our best customers. They look after us, so we look after them. No Tom, Dick or Harry can phone up and expect to buy a case of 2009 Lafite. This is standard practice across the trade.”