En Primeur
Contact: Laura Taylor T: 01353 721 602 E: laura@privatecellar.co.uk for our en primeur offers
En Primeur is a French wine trade term for wine which is sold as a “future”, i.e. prior to being bottled and for delivery at a future date.
For many wines and certainly the most sought-after, the en primeur price is usually the best price you will pay and buying when the wines are first offered on the market ensures not only that you secure the wines that you want but also enables you to buy in different formats: halves, magnums and so on. By purchasing a wine en primeur you can be assured of your wine’s provenance, direct from the château, domaine or winery, where it will have been stored in perfect conditions.
When buying en primeur, you pay the opening price (an “In Bond” price which includes the cost of shipping) as soon as the wine is offered on the market. When the wine is shipped, you can choose to store it in the Private Cellars Reserves Limited account at London City Bond Vinothèque under bond or you can pay the prevailing rate of Duty, VAT and delivery and have it delivered to your home.
For our storage information, terms and conditions, please click here
At Private Cellar we extensively taste wines from the new vintage in Bordeaux and Burgundy every year and have up to the minute information on the latest quality reports, wines and prices. We also offer wines en primeur from other regions, including the Rhône Valley, Germany, Portugal (vintage Port) and California. En Primeur wines are usually offered one or two years after the harvest, usually as follows:
| Bordeaux | The spring following the harvest |
| Burgundy | Approximately 15 months after the harvest by most growers |
| Rhône | 12-18 months after their harvest |
| Italy | Italy varies from region to region with the top Piemontese wines and Brunello di Montalcino being released up to four years after harvest and the top wines of Tuscany approximately 2½ years after harvest |
| Port | If a Port vintage is declared it is usually released 18 months following the harvest |
| California | The wines from Joseph Phelps Vineyards, including Insignia, are usually offered in November each year |
To ensure that you are added to our en primeur mailing lists, please telephone 01353 721 602 or e-mail Laura Taylor with your details.
Please visit our Offers Page for our current en primeur offers.
The Bordeaux Campaign
Perhaps the most famous en primeur campaign takes place each year in Bordeaux when each château releases its wine to the market place, the wine is purchased by the négociants (French merchants) who take their own margin and then offer the wine on to their customers (wine merchants, world wide). We place our orders, take our margin and offer the wine on to our customers.
There is no set date when prices have to be fixed and allocations released, although the First Growths (Châteaux Haut Brion, Margaux, Lafite, Latour, Mouton Rothschild and Cheval Blanc) usually come out with their pricing at the same time, but generally we will expect prices to trickle out throughout April, May and June. There is much angst locally over who releases their price first, to set the market, and speculation as to whether their neighbours follow or flout the pricing trend. Meanwhile the merchants, in Bordeaux and across the world wait...
Allocations all along the chain are based on loyalty and if you refuse to buy one year, you probably won’t get your allocation the following year. In earlier decades, merchants might hold the wine that they didn’t sell en primeur and increase their margin to cover their “holding” costs, their clientele would tend to be loyal too, having one merchant who they bought from year in, year out and there was much less speculation and use of wine as an investment, so people were buying across the quality spectrum to accommodate different entertaining requirements. With the reduction in availability of the top wines, the narrowing of margins, the transparency of pricing through the advent of the internet, many more players on the market and the growing band of speculators, merchants are no longer prepared to buy non “blue chip” stock in a lesser vintage, priced too high at the outset, which they may have to finance for years, with little or no hope of making a margin to cover those costs. Add a recession to the mix, and En Primeur may start to become unviable.
However, whilst the UK and US have traditionally been very important markets for Bordeaux the Bordelais are now seeing the potential of new markets developing in Russia and the Far East. There is no doubt that there is a buoyant market for mature wines in Hong Kong and Singapore but there is a that a strong indication that the en primeur market will take longer to establish there and if the négociants were banking on the Far East buying the stock of 2007 that the Anglo Saxon markets turned their backs on they will, I suspect, have been disappointed leaving many négociants overstocked with huge volumes of over-priced wine.
The next Bordeaux campaign will be in the spring of 2010 and whilst early reports are of a very good vintage, we will hold our judgement until we taste the wines at the Union des Grands Crus tastings.
For our storage information, terms and conditions, please click here
To ensure that you are added to our en primeur mailing lists, please telephone 01353 721 602 or e-mail Laura Taylor with your details.
Please visit our Offers Page for our current en primeur offers.
