UNDER THE SURFACE | Where now for Bordeaux En Primeur?
Bordeaux's last few En Primeur campaigns have revealed a certain apathy among wine lovers, and not even reduced prices in the last two years have repaired the damage done by overpriced vintages of the past. Guy Woodward takes the temperature of the UK fine wine trade to see if a solution can be found
When London Members were surveyed for the Club’s first-ever Fine Wine Trends Report earlier this year, one topic in particular attracted a certain strength of feeling. And it wasn’t positive…
‘Bordeaux En Primeur prices have to come down – greedy producers have ramped them up too far and killed demand,’ said one. ‘It makes no sense to pay for storage for ten years when prices for older vintages are lower,’ pointed out another. ‘The EP system is f***ed and it may never recover,’ read a more succinct appraisal.
‘Private collectors have lost
on their purchases over the
last few years, and they are
unlikely to be persuaded back
to buying by marketing
emails alone’
Such opinion very much tallied with the general UK market sentiment over recent years. Robert Mathias MW, buying director at merchant Lay & Wheeler, says: ‘We've had very similar feedback from customers who feel that producers haven't been making a big enough effort, or there's too much stock in the market.’ As Peter Mitchell MW, his counterpart at fellow merchant Jeroboams, pointed out: ‘Despite the last two vintages having seen a big drop in release price, all the talk is that En Primeur prices are still too high.’
More tangible evidence of the malaise came from St James’s stalwart Justerini & Brooks, which was still sending out emails hawking the 2024 first growths two months after their initial release: ‘The 2024 En Primeur campaign didn’t ignite much enthusiasm,’ it wrote in its understated way, before pointing to a general 'apathy among collectors'.
All this despite the fact that the quality of the ’24 vintage was better than expected, in a style suiting modern tastes – fresh, aromatic wines to be drunk young – and offered via a carefully choreographed campaign in which prices were 30% lower than the 2023s, which had themselves been discounted by a similar amount from 2022. The trouble is, says Mitchell, those ’22 prices were ‘bonkers’ compared to the price of mature vintages.
Industry consultancy Wine Lister reports all five of the most recent en primeur vintages having fallen in value from their release price. Global exchange platform Liv-ex puts the number at seven vintages (see chart below) and says it’s part of an even wider pattern. ‘Private collectors have lost on their purchases over the last few years, and they are unlikely to be persuaded back to buying by marketing emails alone,’ it cautions.
It's not just in the UK that the market is down. Jean-Christophe Estève of Bordeaux merchant Sovinat told local newspaper SudOuest that 2024 was ‘one of my worst en primeur campaigns in 40 years’. François Dugoua of top-end négociant Ulysse Cazabonne argued that producers were ‘paying for the excesses of past campaigns’, meaning the ‘connections with our long-standing clients in Europe and France have been broken’. Sud-Ouest’s conclusion? ‘The entire [en primeur] system needs to be redesigned’.
But how would that look? Finding producers willing to advocate tangible change is a challenge, but Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse of St-Emilion’s Château Beauséjour put her head above the parapet: ‘It’s clear that some evolution is needed,’ she told 67 Pall Mall. ‘The market and consumer landscape today are very different from even a decade ago, and the En Primeur system can’t remain static if it’s to stay relevant and competitive. The model has to adapt, both to the current economic climate and to changing consumption habits – especially among a younger generation that feels less connected to this kind of system.’ Whether there is sufficient will among her counterparts to make this happen is another matter. ‘Opinions are divided,’ says Duffau-Lagarrosse. ‘Some believe change is essential if the system is to survive and thrive, while others remain cautious, perhaps wary of a transformation that could permanently alter the traditional balance.’
One thing that most observers agree on is that the amount of wines offered en primeur is likely to shrink. ‘In the past, merchants would offer almost every wine that came out,’ says Matthias. ‘These days, putting up 100 wines makes no sense. We've got to focus on the 20 or 30 that deliver volume and value and actually represent an opportunity to buy.’ And that's largely first growths and bluechips, he says. ‘As lovely as they are – and they really do offer exceptional quality for the price – I can't see a particularly good reason to be buying wines like Gloria or Cantemerle or Sénéjac at £20-30 when they're still going to be £20-30 in five or ten years.’
The problem is that it’s just this level of producer that has come to rely on the early sales offered by en primeur. While Château Latour withdrew from the system in 2012, now offering its wines for release only when it deems them ready, it could afford to do so. Others need the cash. As Jean-Christophe Mau of Bordeaux négociant Yvon Mau told Jancis Robinson MW on her website, châteaux who pull out of the system risk running into cash-flow problems while they sit on stock. ‘Négociants can refuse to buy, but châteaux can’t turn off the tap,’ he said. There’s also a certain pride at play, with lower-profiles names wanting to be part of a process that shines a spotlight on the region for two or three months every year.
Ultimately, any change to the system is unlikely to happen overnight. As Mathias observes, ‘Bordeaux is a big old ship to steer, what with the capillary system of La Place and the negociants. While we have our point of view in the UK, that's not to say what works in the UK works in the US, or Cambodia, or Hong Kong. Yes, the UK market is important, but it's not the only one.’
Nonetheless, Wine Lister reports several suggestions from UK merchants to enhance perceived value and generate more excitement around future campaigns: ‘cleaning’ the market prior to release; offering second wines only once in bottle; encouraging producers to work with only a select number of UK merchants; and reaching out to a younger audience through subsidised tasting events or via incentives for buying multiple cases.
Both Mathias and Mitchell sense a desire among producers to rethink how they deal with the market. With potential casualties in the supply chain, this could come by reducing the number of negociants with whom they work. But it could also see châteaux engage more closely with the end consumer. ‘There’s been a feeling among quite a few collectors that, because of the negoce system, producers have not been that engaged, and have taken them for granted at a time when there’s tons of really good wine out there from other sources,’ says Mitchell. ‘As a result, the next generation don't feel as connected to Bordeaux. It’s what their parents drank, and younger consumers don't want to wait on something for 10 years, with the associated storage and inflation costs.’
Jeroboams held a tasting for its customers last months entitled ‘For the Love of Bordeaux’, which several producers travelled to attend. As a result, says Mitchell, customers went away feeling better about Bordeaux – especially as the quality of the wines is not in question. ‘We had critics like Matthew Jukes and Oz Clarke saying how fabulous it was to see someone actually championing Bordeaux. Everyone's so down on it right now, but it still makes ridiculously good wine. And a lot of the wines that aren't first growths remain tremendous value.’ Berry Bros & Rudd held an En Primeur tasting of the 2024 wines for its clientele this summer, at which producers showed an older vintage alongside the current release. Jean-Charles Cazes of Château Lynch Bages suggested such an initiative could become an annual commercial proposition, with producers offering library stocks of an older vintage at the same time as the new wine.
Among the comments in the 67 Pall Mall London Fine Wine Trends Report, one Member pointed out that, ‘At least with Burgundy [en primeur], you get to try the wine before you buy it.’ Could more Bordeaux producers replicate the Berry Bros event and show their nascent wines at consumer events in London and elsewhere? There would be huge challenges, says Mathias, given the wines are still barrel samples. ‘Until it's in bottle, it's quite difficult to taste, and it's all subject to change. Then there's the practical aspect of how well such a sample travels [Cazes didn’t even bring his 2024 wine to the Berry Bros tasting for that exact reason]. Whereas with Burgundy, you’re tasting more or less bottled wines.’
Mitchell says this raises a wider point. ‘It will never happen, but what they really should be doing is what everyone else in the world does, and that’s selling the wine when it's ready to drink – or at least when it's in bottle. Even if they sold the wine a year further on, when it was a final blend that had had a year in barrel, that would make a lot more sense.’
Colin Hay, Bordeaux correspondent for trade title Drinks Business, argues that there is a broader issue still, and that En Primeur is the symptom not the problem. ‘Even where price reductions are striking, demand for young top-end Bordeaux has been modest,’ he says. ‘Bordeaux’s problem today is not about En Primeur being broken. It’s about the lack of global demand for young fine wine and Bordeaux’s historic reliance on precisely such a market. And, of course, the wines inherently needing time in bottle to mature. As Jancis Robinson says, ‘Traditional customers are getting older and have full cellars. They are not being replaced. Such younger people as are interested in wine have so many more wines to choose from than the slow-maturing reds of Bordeaux.’
Robinson calls the threat to the En Primeur system ‘existential’. Given such portents, what can we expect next year? ‘The 2025 vintage will be interesting, because all the signs are that it’s going to be an exceptional year,’ says Mitchell. ‘But a lot of the mutter from the châteaux is that it’s also going to be quite small, which I worry is a sign they’ll try to push the prices up.’
‘The chat coming out of Bordeaux is that it's going to be more or less the same price as 2024, or maybe a small 5-10% increase.’ says Mathias. Mitchell adds: ‘If they price it in line with ’24, I think it will sell pretty well. If they discount it a bit further, it will sell very well, because consumers will think that the Bordelais are actually listening.’ Stephen Browett, chairman of Farr Vintners, whose trade in En Primeur has shrunk hugely over the last 15 years (see chart above), doesn't think producers are in a position to do anything else. 'Now that everyone is aware how screwed up it is, the hope is that there will be an opportunity for consumers to buy the potentially great 2025s at low prices. It should certainly be a buyer’s market, with proprietors unable to set high prices. We shall see…'
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