How it works

If En Primeur is new to you, let me explain how it all works. Around Easter time Bordeaux comes alive with merchants from all corners of the Earth making a beeline to taste the new vintage. Once the wines are tasted, notes and scores are made public and the Chateaux start to release their prices. The theory behind this practice is that the Chateau recuperates money that has been spent on the vintage and the end consumer can get the wines at a cheaper price, before they become physically available.

If you are buying En Primeur, the wines still need another 18 months in the barrel. Once they go into bottle, the Chateau will sell them onto the open market and the price is normally 10-20% higher. In 2011 and 2012, the chateaux over-priced their En Primeur offers and prices traded poorly in the after-market. In 2013, the chateaux lowered En Primeur offer prices, but unfortunately the vintage was a disaster due to the weather. 2014 potentially will be the first year for a long time where we will see reasonable pricing with a good quality vintage so we are optimistic this will be a good year for En Primeur.

Depending on the crop size of the vintage and the quality of the wine, the Chateau will decide how much to release as En Primeur, therefore, the initial release is usually in very small quantities.

Once the wines are physically available, you have a few options. You can arrange storage with us under bond Bordeaux, at $ 120 HKD per case per year, arrange shipment back to Hong Kong, which is currently $ 250 HKD per case or if the price has increased considerably, we can assist in selling your wines for you, with a 10% broking fee.

Very important

Emails

We have no idea on what day or time a particular Chateau will release, so there might be a flurry of emails over the campaign. If you are not interested in buying wines En Primeur please let me know immediately and I will make sure you don’t receive updates as they become available.

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The Insight

As for tasting notes, these will follow in due course. Influential wine critic, Robert Parker, will no longer taste En Primeur and has elected his protégé, Neal Martin, to fill his rather large shoes. At present James Suckling has released some scores and if he is anything to go by, this is really an outstanding vintage.