The 2015 ‘En Primeur Season’ has just started in the Bordeaux wine region of France.
Every year in April, the wine critics and buyers from all around the world converge into the Unesco-classified Bordeaux city and its surrounding vineyards to taste the last vintage’s ‘baby wine’.
If you’re not familiar with what ‘En Primeur’ is, remember a couple of concepts around this important event for the world of fine wine:
- En Primeur Tasting: in April, all top Chateau and estates around Bordeaux prepare samples of their last vintage’s wines. So this year’s 2015 En Primeur season, vintage 2014 is given for tasting. The wine finished the alcoholic fermentation in October, and the malolactic fermentation in November/December. In April, it’s only had a few months of barrel aging but trained palates can already determine (to a certain extend only obviously) how good the wine will be after its whole barrel maturation process that will last 18 to 24 months. Because all wines are tasted by major critics and buyers at the same time, the En Primeur tasting gives the first early indication of how good the previous vintage has been in terms of quality.
- En Primeur buying: not only can you taste wine during the En Primeur season, but you can also buy it, if you fill so inclined, a year and a half before the wine will be bottled, and about two years before you can actually get hold of the bottle.
Traditionally, this system was a way for collectors and fine wine drinkers to get hold of famous Bordeaux Chateau wines for an affordable price. All they needed was patience: 2 years before being delivered the bottles, 10 to 15 years before the wine reached its full maturity potential.
Over the past 15 years however, the En Primeur system has become more of a speculative market over the price of Grand Cru wines. The main En Primeur buyers are now investors, negociants and speculators. To buy En Primeur now and make sure you’re buying at the right price, you not only need to know which wine you want to buy. You preferably need to have tasted it to make sure it is good and it has aging potential so its value is likely to increase over time, not decrease. But you’d also better know about the estate’s reputation on international markets, and how good the Chateau’s management is, to make sure the reputation will stay high as well as the price. It has become very much like buying shares on trading exchanges.
It is not uncommon that despite buying the wine while it’s still in the barrel, and despite having handed over money to the producer two years in advance, the price of the bottle on the market when you receive the bottles is actually lower than what you’ve paid for it.
Still, En Primeur season is a great opportunity for the wine industry to gather around some of the most extraordinary wines in the world. the world’s wine critics, importers, distibutors, merchants or negociants in what becomes for a week at least the capital of fine wine: Bordeaux.
Also an opportunity for photographers to take some wonderful shots in the vineyards and the tasting rooms, for us all to enjoy.
Read more about 2015 En Primeur season as Alexander Westgarth of westgarthwines.com gives his thoughts in his Guest Post: Will 2014 En Primeur Wines Pass the Bar ?
Both images are courtesy and copyrighted to CIVB at bordeaux.com. Featured image on top was taken by M. Anglada for CIVB.
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