Opus One 2023 leads a mixed autumn 2026 La Place campaign

• Opus One’s 2023 release stands out as the strongest of autumn 2026’s La Place campaign so far, with Antonio Galloni’s highest-ever score for the estate.
• Solaia’s 2023 vintage has launched at RSPs well above the market price for back vintages.
• Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance 2023 is also releasing above back vintages, ahead of its first critical reviews.

Autumn 2026’s La Place release campaign got underway last week, following the spring En Primeur season that itself proved a mixed bag for buyers. Approximately a dozen international releases are out so far, spanning Tuscany, Chile, South Africa, the United States and Bordeaux itself, and the results are far from uniform: one is a clear standout, and there are equally clear examples of estates missing the mark.

Our own price and critic score tracking across the vintage history of three of the campaign’s biggest releases – Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance, Solaia and Opus One – points to a campaign where pricing discipline, not critical acclaim alone, is what will separate the winners from the rest.

Autumn 2026 La Place releases open on a mixed note

This year’s roster includes some of the biggest names in fine wine. As usual, the autumn La Place campaign is smaller and quieter than the spring equivalent. In what looks like a transitional year, highlights of the campaign include:

•     Opus One (Napa Valley)
•     Masseto (Tuscany)
•     Solaia (Tuscany)
•     Penfolds Grange (South Australia)
•     Stag’s Leap (Napa Valley)

The spring campaign’s mixed reception has left buyers watching this round more closely than usual for signs that pricing, not just quality, is being taken seriously.

Notable absences include Beaucastel’s Hommage a Jacques Perrin and Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses, while Bibi Graetz left the platform altogether in 2025.

Merchants and buyers are still calling for a focus on value, a refrain negociants have been repeating since before the spring campaign began. It is too early to fix on a theme for autumn 2026, but the releases so far suggest pricing discipline will decide which wines find buyers and which sit on merchants’ shelves.

Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance 2023 arrives at a premium price

Klein Constantia’s Vin de Constance 2023 is priced at £290 for six 50cl bottles – equivalent to £870 on our standardised 12x75cl basis. Vin de Constance is the Constantia valley’s revival of a historic Cape dessert wine. On search rankings, it sits behind only a handful of the very highest-profile Sauternes and amongst the top 200 most searched-for wines overall.

The 2023 has not yet been widely reviewed, so investors buying now are pricing ahead of critical confirmation rather than in response to it. Vin de Constance’s critic scores have ranged from the low 90s to just short of 98 over the past decade, so a strong debut score for the 2023 is plausible, but not guaranteed – and buyers are, in effect, betting on it.

For portfolios that already lean on Bordeaux and Napa, Vin de Constance offers geographic and stylistic diversification. That case works best, though, when the entry price isn’t already ahead of the wine’s own trading history, which is exactly the position the 2023 puts investors in.

Solaia 2023 launches above recent vintage value

Solaia has been released at an RSP of £3,300 per 12x75cl case, though it is already being advertised as low as £2,700 – a gap wide enough to suggest negociants are testing what the market will bear. The wine is one of Tuscany’s standout wines, a blend built around Cabernet Sauvignon rather than Sangiovese, and search-interest data ranks it as the fifth most searched-for Tuscan wine.

At £3,300, only the two Wine Advocate 100-point vintages – 2016 and 2015 – carry a higher market price than the 2023. That is a high bar to price against, and the comparison with more recent vintages is less flattering: our data puts the 2020 at around £2,160, meaning the 2023’s RSP sits more than 30% above it. Even at the discounted £2,700 already being advertised, Solaia 2023 remains a meaningful premium over other vintages. For investors weighing entry points, discounting alone does not create value if the underlying vintage still doesn’t clear the bar set by its own back catalogue.

Negociants may be betting that Antinori’s branding carries the release regardless of the numbers, but on our data, investors have better entry points among Solaia’s own back vintages already trading in the market.

Opus One 2023 stands out as the campaign’s strongest release

Opus One’s 2023 vintage is the highest-profile release of the campaign so far, arguably the best value. It is Antonio Galloni’s highest-scoring vintage yet for the estate at Vinous and the wine also scores well at Wine Advocate – though the 2019 and 2018 vintages score higher there, the 2023 is reviewer Joe Czerwinski’s highest scoring release at the publication.

Opus One is the Napa Valley joint venture between Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s Mouton Rothschild, first released in the early 1980s, and it remains the most searched-for US wine.

Our data shows significant growth (circa 300%) over the past two decades, though it has been more muted in recent years. The 2023’s release price, at roughly £2,820 for a 12-bottle case, sits comfortably within that range or other recent releases.

The wine’s standing on the secondary market reinforces the case: Opus One finished 9th in the 2025 Liv-ex Power 100 rankings and 20th among the exchange’s most traded wines. Over the past decade, it has built a reputation as one of the most consistently traded wines from outside Bordeaux. This track record supports its case as a portfolio anchor. For investors, a record score landing on stable pricing is a strong combination.

Another important La Place release this year has been Masseto, which has released at £1,440 for a three bottle case. Its 2023 scores sit below most of the vintage’s own back-catalogue, well off the 98–100 scores it picked up in 2010, 2015 and 2016, and it’s priced in line with higher scoring recent vintages from 2017-2022 reducing its appeal.

The pattern for autumn 2026 is still taking shape

So far, autumn 2026 has produced one clear standout in Opus One, with other examples showing estates pricing ahead of the value negociants keep promising, and a campaign that overall reads as smaller and more cautious than the spring. Whether that caution turns into genuine repricing, or whether estates hold their nerve on RSP regardless of what the secondary market says, will only become clear as more of the campaign’s headline names come to market in the coming weeks.

Investors weighing entry points into this campaign should treat pricing discipline, not headline scores alone, as the signal worth following. We’ll be watching closely, and reporting back as it does.

FAQ: Autumn 2026 La Place releases

What is the autumn 2026 La Place “hors Bordeaux” campaign?

It is the annual non-Bordeaux release window on La Place de Bordeaux’s negociant network, covering international estates such as Opus One, Solaia and Klein Constantia. This year’s campaign began at the end of last week and has produced around a dozen releases so far, spanning Tuscany, Chile, South Africa, the US and Bordeaux. It follows a spring En Primeur campaign that was itself a mixed bag for buyers.

Why did Bibi Graetz leave La Place de Bordeaux?

Bibi Graetz departed the platform in 2025 after negociants, squeezed by the market conditions that emerged from 2023 onward, became unwilling to commit stock to wines outside Bordeaux itself. His exit is one of several notable absences from this year’s autumn roster, alongside Beaucastel’s Hommage a Jacques Perrin and Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses.

Is Opus One 2023 good value compared with earlier vintages?

On our tracking, yes: the 2023 releases at roughly £2,820 per 12-bottle case (£1,410 for six), well within the range the wine has traded at for the past couple of years. It is also Antonio Galloni’s highest-scoring vintage yet for the estate at Vinous. That combination of a high score and fair pricing is an attractive offer.

Which major estates are missing from this year’s autumn campaign?

Beaucastel’s Hommage a Jacques Perrin and Philipponnat’s Clos des Goisses are both notably absent this year, and Bibi Graetz has left La Place altogether. Their absence, combined with a generally smaller roster than the spring campaign, is part of why we’re reading autumn 2026 as a transitional year.

Is now a good time to buy into the autumn 2026 releases?

It depends on the wine: our data suggests Opus One 2023 offers a rare combination of a record critic score and stable pricing, while Solaia and Vin de Constance 2023 carry premiums over recent vintages that aren’t yet backed by critical confirmation. With only ten of a dozen-plus releases reviewed so far, we think it’s too early to call a verdict on the campaign as a whole.

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