Recently a client contacted me with a request to have a look at some photos of an apparently well-aged bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild.
The label had been damaged and the vintage was no longer discernible.
It wasn’t practical to see the bottle in person and cut the capsule to see the cork, so I could form opinions based only on the images.
How is it possible to discern – or at least narrow down the possibilities of – this Lafite’s vintage?
CAPSULE
The capsule is in the format used since the 1985 vintage, so the bottle cannot be older than 1985.
It has a white printed image of the château with “MIS EN BOUTEILLES AU CHATEAU” in black uppercase.
BOTTLE
The embossed logo on the bottle, showing the arrows emblem of Domaines Barons de Rothschild, was (as far as I know) first used for the 1996 vintage.
So now the bottle cannot be older than 1996.
The vintage can be narrowed down to a selection of post-1996 years.
The 1999 Lafite sports an engraved “1999” on the bottle along with an eclipse to mark that event of 11th August 1999.
(I can recall watching the eclipse.)
The 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 have the vintage embossed inside the logo.
The 2008 vintage has an embossed “2008” with the same in red Chinese font below, rather than the previous vintages’ embossed logo.
Lafite’s 2016 vintage features a small hourglass etched onto the front of the bottle above the label.
So the bottle could be 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, or 2008.
The owner thinks that it’s 1996 and, rather than sell it, has offered to open it with me – a nice way to toast the end of the lock-down when it comes and reveal what vintage this bottle of Lafite is.
Stuart George | Founder & Managing Director | Arden Fine Wines