Decanter World Wine AwardsBarton: 'I don't make investment wines'
- Monday 5 December 2011
Speaking exclusively to Decanter, Anthony Barton suggests that many Bordeaux properties make wine simply for investment.
‘Rightly or wrongly, my idea has always been that wine is made to be drunk,’ the owner of Chateau Leoville-Barton and its sister property Langoa-Barton tells Margaret Rand in the January 2012 issue of the magazine.
‘The price should be what suits the people who buy and drink it. Higher-priced wines are sold for investment. Some châteaux only make investment wines; they’re exclusively speculative, and there’s a lot out there.’
Leoville-Barton has always had a reputation for reasonable pricing en primeur, but Barton (pictured), among many others, put his prices up on the 2010 vintage.
‘And I should jolly well think so,’ he says. ‘They went up a quarter as much as everyone else’s. Ex-château they went up to €52 from €42. Lynch-Bages or Montrose went up 70 or 80%.’
Barton, who was Decanter Man of the Year 2007, insists that he does not stint himself, and has the wherewithal to hire a private jet if he fancies a spot of salmon fishing in Scotland, Rand says.
But, he says, if he had made vast amounts of money from the properties that he inherited from his uncle Ronald Barton, he may well have bought another property.
‘If I’d been younger I might have been interested in going abroad; South Africa, maybe. It wouldn’t have been as an investment; it would have been something I’d live with.’
- If Barton had not been a second son he would not be in Bordeaux now. Family tradition meant his elder brother Christopher inherited Straffan, the Barton estate in Ireland, while Anthony took on what at the time were two crumbling and unprofitable Bordeaux properties. But Straffan was sold in 1949, before Christopher could inherit, and is now the Kildare Hotel and Country Club. ‘The second sons have been better off for the last [few] generations,’ Barton says.
The January issue of Decanter is out this Wednesday 7 December.
Have your say!
TexaCali Ali
December 05 16:12
Wisdom. I had the great pleasure of sitting next to Anthony at lunch last Spring, he's fabulous! I wish I could have recorded our conversations to remember each drop - so interesting, splendidly clever and utterly charming. The wines are a chip of the ol' block too! Bravo.
The Sediment Blog
December 05 11:15
My assiduous cellar book contains a cutting from The Observer, 13 May 1990 – long before online archives – by Paul Levy. His concluding paragraph applauds Leoville-Barton for honest pricing, and ends by praising owner Anthony Barton: “[His] reward for his integrity will come in the future, when his claret will be one of the few outstanding ‘89s that people can afford to drink rather than trade.”
I accordingly bought a case of Leoville-Barton en primeur - which, as my post here records - http://sedimentblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/chateau-leoville-barton-1989.html – I assidously resisted drinking for the last 20 years. I now have some of the finest possible claret, bought for a sensible price - and I trust those who can afford the 2010s will enjoy a similar experience in twenty years time.
Thank you so much, Mr Barton, for your enlightened approach to pricing, from those of us who enjoy drinking wine rather than selling it on.
John Lamond
December 02 08:49
Well said Anthony Barton! I have always enjoyed his wines and the fact that they have always offered much better value than most of his neighbours' wines. Wine is made to be drunk and enjoyed! If it is made as an investment as many seem, does it matter what the juice inside the bottle is like?
Rick Geyer
December 01 17:28
Mr. Barton is one of my favorite Wine Personalities. I think he prices his wine fairly and they are real values. Both Leoville and Langoa Barton deliver quality from Bordeaux. In blind tastings his wines show well. His daughter is assuming most of the responsibility and the Barton tradition continues.