Château Cos d’Estournel 2019, rated 98 points by Decanter’s Jane Anson, was released this morning (3 June) at €110 per bottle ex-Bordeaux, with the estate also pledging to donate €1 from every bottle sold to hospitality workers.
The price is down by 23.5% on the 2018 release, according to Liv-ex.
There has been an early trend for price cuts among big-name châteaux in the Bordeaux 2019 en primeur campaign.
UK merchants, including Berry Bros & Rudd, Millesima and Fine & Rare, released Cos d’Estournel 2019 at £684 per six-bottle case in bond, equivalent to £114-a-bottle.
Decanter’s Bordeaux correspondent, Jane Anson, rated the wine one point higher than the 2018 vintage, after tasting a barrel sample ahead of the campaign.
She said it was a ‘powerful and enjoyable Cos’ that ‘feels extremely sophisticated’. Following heatwaves in the summer, late September rain ‘helped bring the Cabernet back into a more classical line’, she added.
Michel Reybier, owner of Cos d’Estournel since 2000, told Decanter.com that 50% of the estate’s 2019 grand vin had been released en primeur. The same proportion of the second wine, Pagodes de Cos, has also been released.
Reybier described 2019 as a ‘miraculous vintage’ that overall got the right weather at the right time, despite heatwaves at certain points in the growing season.
In his time at the Château, he said, ‘it is perhaps the vintage that most reflects the terroir.’
On the 2019 price, Reybier said that ‘the market was expecting a drop’, given the economic impact and general uncertainty related to the coronavirus crisis.
Analyst group Wine Lister said in a note this morning that the price ‘makes the 2019 9-21% cheaper than other recent “greats” – 2018, 2016, and 2010’.
However, it also added some market players had been looking for ‘discounts of more like 30%’ across this year’s en primeur campaign general.
Liv-ex said the highly rated Cos d’Estournel 2016 was available for an 11% premium on the 2019 price, in sterling currency.
Cos d’Estournel has pledged to donate one euro from every bottle of its 2019 grand vin sold en primeur to the hospitality industry association UMIH – the l’Union des Métiers et des Industries de l’Hôtellerie.
Reybier said that wineries had a responsibility to show solidarity with restaurant, hotels, bar and cafe owners and workers that have been badly affected by the coronavirus crisis. ‘We must help them,’ he said.
Also released today was:
- Cos d’Estournel Blanc at €92.4 per bottle ex-Bordeaux, equal to the 2018 release price;
- Pagodes de Cos at €30 ex-Bordeaux.
- In Sauternes, Château Guiraud was released at €30 ex-Bordeaux. It did not release a 2018 first wine.
- Malescot St Exupéry in Margaux was also released at €30 ex-Bordeaux, down by 26% on 2018, according to Liv-ex.
