chateau lafite rothschild

In China Selling Empty Bottles of Chateau Lafite Rotschild Is A Booming Business

Filed under: Wine

We already knew that Chateau Lafite Rothschild was hot in China but apparently the Bordeaux is so popular that counterfeiters have been scavenging the empty bottles to refill them. The Telegraph reports on the shadowy and lucrative world of China's bottle dealers. The article quotes one dealer who offers the equivalent of over $400 for a good vintage bottle of Lafite Rothschild in top condition. His firm collected empties from bars and restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing.

Alcohol forgeries have long been a problem in China with premium spirits, such as Maotai being frequently faked. Ice wine is also a popular target for fraud. Wine dealers and fine restaurants are taking precautions, inspecting bottles careful for signs of tampering before buying but some older wines tend to be re-corked making unmasking the refilled bottles even more of a challenge.

Tags: bordeaux, bordeaux wine, chateau lafite rothschild, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, china, wine fraud

Chateau Lafite Rothschild: Exquisite Wine from Bordeaux

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

It's safe to say that Halloween isn't celebrated in Asia with quite the same vigor as it is in the U.S. But this year, the last week of October brought some scary wine prices to Hong Kong: a lot of three bottles of 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild went for $698,076, or $232,692 per bottle---setting a new world record for the most expensive bottle of wine sold at auction.

"I happened to have one, from a different source, a few weeks before the auction and it was fabulous," says Jamie Ritchie, CEO and President of Americas and Asia for Sotheby's Wine. "We served it blind and the nearest guess on the age was 1959. What really made these bottles rare is the fact that they came directly from Chateau Lafite's cellars and were the oldest wines in the auction---you cannot get better provenance than that."

That provenance has been a part of Chateau Lafite for hundreds of years, part of the reason it's the winner of the Luxist Editors' Choice award for best in wine. Lafite's current incarnation dates back to 1868, when Baron James de Rothschild---a patriarch of the famous European banking family of the same name---purchased the Lafite estate, which had already been producing wine for at least a century.

Tags: awards-main, best wine, bordeaux, bordeaux wine, chateau lafite, chateau lafite rothschild, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Jamie Ritchie, luxist-awards, sothebys, winners-wine, winners-wines

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Chateau Lafite Rothschild Puts Chinese Symbol on the Bottle

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Wine

We've heard a lot recently about the growing appetite for wine, especially French wine. Decanter reports that the 2008 vintage of Chateau Lafite Rothschild (the Luxist Awards winner for Best International Red Wine) will bear the Chinese symbol for the figure eight on the bottle. The symbol is in celebration of Chateau Lafite Rothschild's partnership with CITIC, China's largest state-owned investment company on the peninsula of Penglai in Shandong province, an area said to be China's Bordeaux.

A spokesperson for Lafite Rothschild commented that the "shape of the symbol seems to offer a perfect representation of the slopes of the vineyard and commemorates the launch of our Chinese wine project." The small symbol might also help the wine be even more popular in China, the figure eight is considered very auspicious. The Decanter article also mentions the speculation that Château Mouton-Rothschild may choose a Chinese artist to design the label for its 2008 vintage.

Tags: chateau lafite rothschild, chateau mouton rothschild, china, rothschild