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Battle for domination: Opus One vs Dominus
In the passive ‘battle’ in the secondary market for price appreciation and collector recognition between California heavyweights Opus One and Dominus, who has the upper hand?
With both estates having recently released their 2014 vintages, Liv-ex has gone over the pair’s vintages for the last 10 years to see how they have performed comparatively.
The results can be seen in the table accompanying this piece but, in brief, although in the all the vintages from 2005 to 2014 Dominus has a higher average score from The Wine Advocate than Opus One (97.3 to 95.5), Opus One has a higher average case price (£1,596 to £1,019 per six).
The only exceptions to this ‘rule’ is the 2011 vintage where Opus One has a better score than Dominus and the 2013 where Dominus (with 100-points) has a higher case price than Opus One.
What could be behind such a state of affairs?
One reason might be production. Opus One typically produces 25,000 cases a year to Dominus’s 5,000.
Yet surely rarity leads to greater demand and higher prices as many Burgundies show. Why isn’t that the case here?
Another point may very well be distribution. Opus One is distributed thought La Place de Bordeaux and thus receives a lot of attention when the latest vintage is released whereas Dominus, as with other Moueix family properties, is not and so its arrival is met with much less fanfare.
That’s not to say it struggles to sell, far from it, but as with certain other fine wines from around the world, small production doesn’t necessarily lead to automatically greater demand as the wine can be snapped up and squirreled away by die-hard fans before anyone else gets a look in.
That said, in September the 2004 vintage of Dominus saw its value rise 9.7% from £1,491 to £1,636.
For those looking to bolster their cellars with some US wines, Dominus arguably looks “good value” argues Liv-ex while the 2010, 2012 and 2014 vintages of Opus One – the ‘cheapest’ three of the last decade – are all currently trading on the Liv-ex Exchange.