It does not take a genius to know that Château Lafite Rothschild is one hell of a good wine. In fact, when your wine is referred to by Forbes magazine as being “perfect” then you know that you have hit the spot. Rightly deserving of its place of honour on the world leader board, Château Lafite Rothschild is more than just a wine. It’s history in a glass.

Where can you begin with such a pedigree? Is it with the years of history, dating back to 1234? That it was the first of all the first growths and has retained its place at the top for over 150 years? Or is it that it has consistently produced wine that is so refined, so compelling, so elegant that it would be no understatement to say that it is the iconic Bordeaux for the modern generation. Yes, it’s all of those things. It’s Lafite. Full stop.

There is no doubt that this is a commodity. Wines with a reputation such as Lafite Rothschild have very little to do in order to sell their stock, so it comes as no surprise that even the lesser vintages are extremely good investment opportunities. Asian demand is significantly high for Lafite Rothschild, notably for futures, which have been slow to catch on in the east. En Primeur (futures in French) bottle price for the (at the time untasted) 2017 vintage went on sale at close to €697, while Haut Brion, the other grande dame of the 1855 firsts was selling at €465 and James Bond’s favourite, Château Angelus was “just” €442. Scoring for the same vintage was 97/98 from James Suckling and 94/97 from Antonio Galloni, so if you were wise enough to invest, expect this to skyrocket over the next decade.

Liv-ex valued the Lafite estate at over €3.7 billion, three times more than the second most expensive estate, Château Latour. It currently ranks first place in their Bordeaux classification.

Nothing seems to be able to affect it: mildew, fraud, phylloxera, a world war, depression, restrictions and other crises all came and went in varying degrees, but despite the challenges, Lafite Rothschild still produced excellent vintages in 1899, 1900, 1906, then 1926 and 1929. Then came the terrible frosts of 1956 and the ruination of approximately 60% of vines to phylloxera, yet like a phoenix rising from its ashes, it produced exceptional vintages in 1959 and 1961 from vines that were just 3-5 years old. The 2003 vintage, or “the heat wave year” is again considered one of the finest ever.

Six generations of Rothschilds have owned and managed the estate, with Saskia de Rothschild recently being appointed CEO after her father Baron Eric stepped down. Despite owning perhaps the most famous vineyard in the world, the new chairwoman of Château Lafite Rothschild is surprisingly poetic about her product, “each vintage tells a different story: written by the hands of the people that made them, through wars, frost attacks and recessions.”