Decanter Fine Wine Index: A 100-point Opus One among the wines offering value to collectors

A visit to the Opus One website reveals the slogan: ‘Two families. One Vision’.

Which somewhat reminds one of the opening lyrics to Queen’s 1986 hit, It’s a kind of Magic:

‘One dream, one soul

‘One prize, one goal

‘One golden glance of what should be

‘It's a kind of magic’

Joking aside, Opus One was very much a pioneer in its fusion of classic Bordeaux and upstart Napa Valley winemaking heritage.

Born of a collaboration between Baron Philip de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild and Robert Mondavi, it was meant to harness the potential of the ‘New World’ with the know-how of the ‘Old’.

Furthermore, it was based around not just the Bordeaux blend but also the idea of the Bordeaux estate, a winery surrounded by its own vines in a single appellation/American Viticultural Area (AVA).

This was unlike a common model used in Napa Valley, both then and now, of buying grapes from across multiple sites/AVAs.

The pair had begun discussing the project in the early 1970s after a meeting in Hawaii. The first wine, the 1979 vintage, was released in 1984 and a dedicated winery in Oakville was opened in 1991.

The wine was priced high right from the start, and quickly became a marker of the swelling tide of ‘icon’ and ‘cult’ wines beginning to emerge from various corners of North and South America in this period.

With its French connections, however, Opus One was one of the rare few to have widespread distribution beyond the US.

As such, it remains one of the Napa Valley labels most non-American fine wine enthusiasts will know best.

Secondary market overview

Looking back over the winery’s last 10 releases, it’s worth pointing out the glaring omission of the 2020 vintage.

This is not an error! After the devastating forest fires in the region in 2020, Opus One decided not to release any wines from that vintage due to smoke taint issues.

The winery’s output in terms of both scores and prices remain incredibly consistent. A case of 12 bottles costs just under £3,000 on average, with an average score from Decanter of 97-points.

This compares favourably with some of the leading Bordeaux estates that have been examined so far.

The average score is the same as Château Cheval Blanc and Château Haut-Brion, and it’s considerably cheaper on average than all of the First Growths and Cheval Blanc.

Fine wine marketplace Liv-ex includes Opus One in its ‘California 50’ index. Like so many other indices, it is far from the peak it attained in 2022.

However, among all the other wines in the index (Harlan, Screaming Eagle, Ridge Monte Bello and Dominus), it is the vintages of Opus One that have seen the most gains over the past year.

Opus One vintages

For any buyer looking to add Opus One to their collection, an obvious starting point would be the 2022 vintage.

A solid 97-points from two Decanter critics – Georgie Hindle and Jonathan Cristaldi – it is also the cheapest vintage currently available, with a Market Price of £2,590 (12x75) according to Liv-ex.

Two older vintages may also be of interest. The trio of 2018, 2019 and 2021 yielded three vintages Decanter rated 98-points across the board.

However, the 2018 is currently available at a discount of around £100 per dozen versus the other two, a neat little discount for a wine called ‘striking, elegant and precise’ by Hindle.

Curious buyers may want to not hang around. The wine recently gained 4.2% month-on-month according to Liv-ex. Maybe others have spotted the gap too?

It feels odd to say that there’s a 2013 vintage rated 100-points. But while that particular vintage was rather less than legendary in Bordeaux, it was one of the all-time greats in Napa.

Opus One’s 2013 is striking enough to have earned it a triple-digit score from Jane Anson.

At a tasting in 2019 when she described it thus: ‘Dark deep rosemary spice and black olive paste deepens the flavours through the mid-palate and you just have to hang on as this goes spiralling through, drawing the flavours out to a lengthy finish.’

And at £3,050 per dozen, it does not command a serious premium over other available vintages either.

The 2012 vintage was equally famous and, of the two, is currently the more expensive (though its Decanter score is only 97-points).

Like the 2018 though, the 2013 gained 4.2% MoM according to Liv-ex, meaning it may be a vintage drawing attention again.

And finally, it will be interesting to see the price of Opus One 2023 when it's released through La Place de Bordeaux this autumn.

Rated 98-points by Jonathan Cristaldi in his recent review of the vintage, a price equal to or even below that of the 2022 would surely make it an attractive proposition?

Opus One: Selected tasting notes

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