The 3 bottle price for Montrose from BBR was slightly higher than the 6. The price isn’t bad considering the quality Montrose has been putting out. This is a wait and see from me.
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That’s a bit ridiculous from BBR. Others like TWS and Mann Fine Wine, to pick two, are doing threes and singles with no premium
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By this point in most campaigns, K&L has usually offered up a couple of things. Not this time. Also if you put the names of any 2024 Bordeaux in their search engine and checked off “show out of stock items,” nothing comes up. Normally they have the upcoming vintage primed and ready to sell, with critic scores and a description, and sometimes notes from their own tasters. Not this time.
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They are either sitting out EP or waiting to see if a trade deal gets done. Surprised they aren’t offering with tariff language in the terms since the wines are 2+ years out anyways
Ok, but if you want to compare apples with apples when judging en primeur NM thought 2019 was better than 2024. We’ll see what he thinks five or six years from now…
I kinda take your point but I don’t fully agree with it. The score is meant to represent the best guess of quality at peak - so ultimately they’re only ever an estimator of a future event. As information updates, it’s still apples for apples. If it’s a point in time score, many barrel samples would score poorly !
The email I just got:
Haut Bailly - $75
Montrose - $108
Dame de Montrose - $32.50
Lafite - $371
Cheval Blanc - $348
Lynch Bages - $78
I understand what you say, but wines have many different ratings along their lives. They can easily go up and down depending on their stage of development. If you compare one vintage’s highest rating (over its lifetime) with another vintage’s lowest rating (over its own lifetime) the second one is bound to lose every time…
That is appealing…
Yes but comparing the most recent ratings of both wines makes the most intuitive sense
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Even when one of the rating is just “in barrel” and it is not even that different from the other rating “in bottle”?
I don’t really understand what your angle here is? I think everyone is in agreement that if nothing went wrong for your '19, it should be better than the '24. WK, Neal and Jancis thought something went wrong with the Pontet '19 (as it seems everyone at Southwold did). If you particularly love Pontet '19 then this is all great for you. Bad scores depress a wine’s valuation and you’ll be able to buy it cheap forever.
Why do you think we can’t compare barrel scores to bottle scores? Sometimes barrel scores go up in bottle and sometimes they go down. Given the winemaking change, I don’t think the trajectory of the '24 should be expected to mirror the '19
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That is precisely my angle. Someone had argued that Pontet’s 2024 was “obviously” better than 2019 and I disagreed based on the scores of the majority of critics. At least I disagreed with the adjective “obviously” which I try to use as little as possible because there are very few obvious things in the world of wine.
I have not tasted the 2024, but did taste 2019. It was ok, scored a 16, but given the quality of the vintage, it should have been better. Just below average.
It was obvious to me, so I called it obvious. I’ve tasted the 19 (and 20) countless times. The 24 is superior in the elements I prize in wine: purity of fruit, complexity, balance and palate authority/length.
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It’s his own taste + the critics he values most highly. It’s an obvious choice for him.