Price of visiting Mouton Rothschild

WINE TALK
21

Sounds like simple supply and demand. Most wineries want/need more sales and tasting visits (i.e.: dedicated tasting room, tours, etc.) can help. A nominal fee is intended to weed out the less serious customers. The higher the wine price, the higher the fee might need to be. Confirmed serious customers/groups might have the fees waived or reduced.

I own 1 x 375ml bottle of Mouton Rothschild and am unlikely to ever buy another bottle. A quick glance at their 2018 shows it retails for approx $750 - $850 in the US. To sustain that price, I suspect they have a lot more demand than supply. The 350E tasting/tour price doesn’t seem as outrageous based on the single bottle price. The message seems pretty clear that they don’t need you or your family to sell their wine. You’re being weeded…as would be true of the majority of fine wine consumers.

Personally, if/when I visit Bordeaux, I’d be much more interested in some of the names on Howard’s list (and lesser known labels) for wines I actually own a few bottles of and might actually consider buying again.

I’ve been priced out of so many of the wine world’s greats, semi-greats and wannabee-greats that it only bothers me marginally and infrequently. It’d be a different story if I was still building a cellar.

RT

22

When I was in Bordeaux last year, at one of the chateau with no sales outlet ( I forget which one), I was told that chateau sales would be “complicated” by the exclusive (?) arrangement to sell via the negociants system. Yet some chateau have retail shops, and a few will sell kind of quietly (if asked, but no shop per se). True? I do not know.