(Wine-Searcher) - Wine merchants are optimistic that the wines being sold en primeur are realistically priced, for a change.

The first wines of the most-anticipated Bordeaux vintage for many years have been released at prices slightly higher than last year – and there's an air of suppressed excitement among UK merchants.

Bordeaux 2015 is widely touted as a "very good to great" vintage. It is too patchy for critics to rate it as the vintage of the century, but for certain communes – like Margaux – it was certainly a great year. Saint-Émilion and Pomerol are also considered to have excelled.

The first releases include Château Coutet in Sauternes, Saint-Émilion's La Couspaude, Pomerol's Gazin, the two Cru Bourgeois properties Château Capbern (Saint-Estèphe) and Chasse-Spleen (Moulis), and a handful of wines from the J-P Moueix stable in Libourne (everything except the top Pomerol crus Hosanna, La Fleur-Petrus and Trotanoy, and the Saint-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé Bélair-Monange).

Most price rises are between 8 per cent and 15 per cent on 2104, a range which Edouard Moueix of J-P Moueix told Wine‑Searcher he considers "sensible and normal" for the vintage.

Château d'Angludet, a Margaux cru bourgeois of some renown, is now on the market at £215 ($314) a case, some 28 per cent above last year, which some merchants suggest is "pushing it a bit".

Pomerol's Château Gazin comes out at €45.60 ($51.75) per bottle ex-negociant, a 15.2 per cent increase on the 2014 release. To the consumer this works out at £485 ($709) a case in bond.

At this price, Will Hargrove at Corney & Barrow told Wine‑Searcher he can recommend the wine "without hesitation", while Matthew Hemming MW at Averys in Bristol suggested the price was high, "though it's a strong wine in a powerful vintage and it's selling out in France".

"Pomerol is the sweet spot in this vintage," Hargrove has told his clients, although the trading platform Liv-ex warns: "Buyers seeking value might look towards 2012. Robert Parker considered the 2012 vintage to be 'excellent' for Pomerol overall and awarded 95 points to Gazin 2012. It is available at a 13.4 percent discount to the 2015."