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Lafite-Rothschild 1787

Château Lafite-Rothschild, Bordeaux, France

Château Lafite-Rothschild
Bordeaux France
  • 0
    Points
  • The 2 127 best
    of 3 290 954
    wines globally
  • 3 Pros of
    4 recommend
    this wine
1057 0
  • Taste
  • Moment

  • Country ranking ?

    1 877

  • Producer ranking ?

    139

  • Decanting time

    20min

  • When to drink

    yesterday

  • Food Pairing

    none

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A Piece of History

BY JOHN BAINBRIDGE

Assuming our occasional role as an eyewitness of historic events, we recently made a point, on a visit to London, of attending an auction, at Christie’s, of “Finest and Rarest Wines,” the crowning feature of which was a hand-blown amber-green bottle engraved “1787 LAFITTE TH. J.” and believed by a number of distinguished wine experts to have been part of an order placed in 1790 by Thomas Jefferson, w...

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The Story

The Château Lafite estate run by the Rothschilds is, with its 100 hectares of cultivated land, the largest of the main Pauillac vineyards.

It is located in the highest part of the area and the view from its château, with its conical towers that appear on the label, takes in the banks of the River Gironde, which flows nearby. The wines are a blend of four different varieties of grape – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petite Verdot and Cabernet F...

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Wine Information

Chateau Lafite, 1787 – £109,300 / Even the best Bordeaux only lasts around 50 years, so why the incredible price tag for this one in 1985? This particular bottle had the initial Th.J etched into it – the markings of enthusiastic oenophile Thomas Jefferson.

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Average Bottle Price

2024 2020
211 000€ +26.3% 167 000€

This data comes from the FINE Auction Index, a composite of average prices for wines sold at commercial auctions in 20 countries. The average prices from each year have been collected since 1990. This chart plots the index value of the average price of the wines.

Latest Pro-tasting notes

<10 tasting notes

Tasting note

recommend

No

Verdict

Possible fake

Written Notes

On the eve of the French revolution, Lafite was at the height of its winemaking legacy, as witnessed in the exceptional authorship of Thomas Jefferson, future President of the United States. While serving as ambassador for the young United States Republic to the Versailles Court, this multi-faceted individual - farmer, businessman, politician, lawyer, architect, diplomat, and founder of the University of Virginia - acquired a passion for winemaking and thought about developing it in his own country. He stayed in Bordeaux in May 1787, and five days would be time enough for him to visit the major Chartrons merchants and gather a mass of information that he would report in his travel memoirs. He detailed the hierarchy of the growths, highlighting those that would go on to be the four leading wines. Château Lafite was among them. Jefferson remained a steadfast customer of Bordeaux wines until the end of his days. Lafite 1787 was the first of the ‘Jefferson’ wines to come on to the market when a single bottle was sold at Christie’s London auction house in December 1985. Starting bid was around £2000, then the bidding went quite quickly up to £7000, then to £10,000 until finally two bidders, Christopher Forbes and Marvin Shanken, were left in the running. The winning bidder was Christopher Forbes. The final price was £105,000, at the time a world record auction price for a single bottle of wine. This, probably fake 1787 Lafite showed moderately dark brown colour with lots of sediment flakes. Very evolved acetic nose delivering hints of preserved fruits and cooked vegetables. Medium-bodied palate with dominance of acidity and sweet tones. High content of volatile aromas with acetic finish. Still amazingly good structure... still no idea was it real or not:)
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Information

Origin

Pauillac, Bordeaux

Vintage Quality

Outstanding

Value For Money

Poor

Investment potential

Excellent

Fake factory

Every second bottle is a fake

Glass time

15min

Inside Information

When an enterprising young man named James Christie opened his sales rooms in London in December 1766, his first auction consisted of the estate of a “deceased nobleman” containing “a large Quantity of Madeira and high Flavour’d Claret.” The records don’t relate how much these delightfully described “high Flavour’d clarets” fetched but as the whole sale realized a grand total £175, it is a sure bet that if Christie had known that two hundred years later, in 1985, his now famous auction house would sell one bottle of wine for £105,000, or $160,000, he might have held back a bottle or two to enrich his future heirs.

This bottle was a Bordeaux, a 1787 Chateau Lafite, and, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, 18 years later it still is the world’s most expensive bottle of wine. Its great age alone would have ensured a good price but what gave it its special cachet, especially to American collectors, and ensured the record price tag were the initials Th.J. etched in the glass.

The bottle had belonged to Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and one of the most revered of its founding fathers. A philosopher, scientist and statesmen, the aristocratic Jefferson was also an avid oenophile. When he was ambassador to France he spent much of his time visiting the vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy, buying wine for his own collection and on behalf of his friends back home. He is also associated with two other bottles of very pricy wine, a 1775 Sherry ($43,500) and the most expensive white wine ever sold, a 1787 Chateau d’Yquem ($56,588).

Of course none of these wines are actually drinkable now; it is unusual for even the best Bordeaux to last more than 50 years, and 200 years is beyond any wine’s limit. The allure of these high-priced bottles of vinegar, and other wines of its ilk, is purely in the joy of collecting, not consuming. The 1787 Lafite was explicitly bought as a piece of Jefferson memorabilia, not as a bottle of wine, and it now resides in the Forbes Collection in New York. These wines are rather like old stamps, something to be collected, horded but never used, and they command such high prices not because of their utility but because of their scarcity and consequent appeal to collectors.

Compiling a list of the World’s Most Expensive Bottles of Wine is not as simple as it might first appear. How do you compare the price paid for a double magnum–that’s four bottles–to a single bottle? Do you rate them on the same scale or do you divide the price of the big bottle by four in order to determine its per-single bottle price?

 

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