Bordeaux En Primeur is a con trick perpetrated on a gullible public by wine merchants, chateaux and journalists, wine writer Stephen Brook argues in the latest issue of Decanter magazine.
In Decanter's Bordeaux supplement, published with the main magazine's July issue (out on 6 June), contributing editor Brook goes head-to-head with Steven Spurrier on the question of the viability of En Primeur.
Brook lambasts the system whereby the world's press descends on Bordeaux every spring to taste the previous year's vintage.
It 'is primarily designed to transfer large amounts of cash from your pocket into the pockets of wealthy Bordeaux proprietors and merchants at the earliest possible moment,' he writes.
Brook deploys a series of hard-hitting arguments to make his case, including the fact that, 'even in a stellar vintage most of those who rushed to buy…could have hung onto their cash…and saved money by doing so.'
Finally he mocks the way wines that haven't yet been assembled are sold: it's like Karl Lagerfeld presenting a sketch to clients and saying, 'I haven't decided where to put the buttons, and I may change the colour, but you get the idea. Now please give me your money…' he says.
Given the right to reply, Spurrier pulls no punches. Assessing wine, he says, is no different from assessing a horse's form before a race.
'Some turf gamblers I know never go near a racecourse… but place their bets purely on breeding and form.'
You judge the chateau in the same way: the label (ie the name of the property and the vintage) tells you the form. The wine submitted for tasting is 'representative' of that vintage and the subsequent elevage will add to, not detract from the sample. 'It is rare that quality wine changes dramatically from barrel to bottle.'
'History has proved [Stephen] wrong', he says. 'Provided the consumer pays attention, the system not only works, it also delivers.'
'Is En Primeur a Scam?' appears in the Bordeaux 2007 supplement to the July issue of Decanter magazine, out on 6 June.
Vote now on the decanter.com poll: Is the en primeur system fatally flawed?See panel, right
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Yes, indeed, Bordeaux 'en primeur' is a con. It is a giant fraud perpetuated by legions of slavish British wine 'critics' and a couple of American wine 'critics' who create the illusion of scarcity and scare gullible people with more money than sense to pay the Bordeaux aristocracy on the basis of 'blind' tastings of horrendously raw wine. Many wines sold 'en primeur' can also be found, two years later, on the shelves of my tiny, state-controlled wine store in Kingston, Ontario. So why bother to buy en primeur? Because that is what's done, so don't ask questions. It's a 'tradition.' Nonsense. It's not like we're talking about rare artisanal products--many of the wines sold 'en primeur' come from estates which make 200,000 bottles per year. I literally just drank--two hours ago--a 2003 Ornellaia. It is a fabulous wine. It is made in Bordeaux-like proportions, which is to say it's the product of a high-quality but industrial enterprise. If Ornellaia can make its way to Kingston, Ontario, then so too can Latour and Cos d'Estournel. And guess what--those wines do make it to this city of 130,000, at the same price paid by the naive purchasers of futures. Minus two years of lost interest. If the futures model made sense, then other regions would adopt it. They haven't.
Timothy Smith, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
If the statement is correct, that: 'History has proved [Stephen] wrong ... Provided the consumer pays attention, the system not only works, it also delivers'. Then why don't investment brokers buy in big time, and why do those like BBR advise sticking to a very select number of top chateaux? What percentage of wines turn out to be less satisfactory, or duds, or TCA/Brett affected, and then what about the recently discussed oxidised white burgundies that were not 'recalled'? I will wait and watch, thank you.
Ken Gillman
"Bordeaux En Primeur is a con trick perpetrated on a gullible public by wine merchants, chateaux and journalists, wine writer Stephen Brook argues in the latest issue of Decanter magazine." What nonsense! As if the Emperor would go around stark naked.
Dan Friedman, NYC Wine Report, NYC, USA
En primeur in its pure form originated two centuries ago, when merchants selected wine in barrel to bottle it themselves. Its continuation today, some fifty years after chateau-bottling became the norm, could be seen as a hideous anachronism but it is one that still fires up buyers around the world, and many - though by no means all - producers clearly benefit from the publicity and from the advance payment.
There is an important degree of lottery - techniques such as malo-en-barrique are designed to sex-up the wines in the first year - and there is a low level grumble over the authenticity of the samples on which expensive decisions are made. How truly representative are they when many of the wines are not even blended, and of what proportion of the production?
En primeur is a distinctive and original proposition that adds glamour to the world of wine. But even its adherents would have to admit it is archaic. Think of the world's specialist merchants, currently tearing their hair out over the achingly slow release of the 2006s ("we'll be on sale before sometime before VINEXPO"), and over the apparently arbitrary nature of pricing.
The market deserves a more robust system. One with some form of certification of samples for a start; with a confirmed release timetable, and with a certified declaration of production levels of each label so that buyers have genuine market knowledge, not held to ransome by a mysterious tranche system.
Hugo Rose MW
Although buying en primeur - futures - is an old practice, in its institutionalized Rush to Judgment form it almost certainly inflates prices and thereby picks consumers' pocket. It does so by promoting a permanent aura of value that Bordeaux's shrewdies profitably manipulate.
In America, in light of disclosures about how investment houses' back rooms shape information and numbers in order to woo and gull customers, wise investors take other routes. You can subscribe to Morningstar and track its researched, seemingly thought-through assessments and the reasoning behind them.
Why should prudent wine investors trust zonked-out pack journalists' machine-gun judgments about vintages, appellations and chateaus rendered in logistically difficult, wearying, distracting circumstances?
It takes an estate months to make a wine; judging work-in-progress wines in 45 seconds is intellectually, emotionally and physically unsound; it is sheer chutzpah. When Saul Bellow, the literary equivalent of a First Growth, published a first-rate novel, could a meaningful review have been based on the first page alone?
No sane American baseball writer can authoritatively project a team's season outcome from performance in spring training, where everything is visible. Why should wine journalists and merchants, who lack knowledge of behind-the-scenes cellar tinkering, trust that tank and barrel samples are the real, final thing, and predictable? Wine is not itself until it is bottled and sent to rehab in the estate's cave.
The psychology and ambience of en primeur week resembles that of chic wine auctions. You attend them because those putatively pristine bottles deserve your attention. You are surrounded by bidders who exude money and privilege; it's flattering to share their company. The jewel-like canapés are heavenly; so is a flute or two of Champagne. You are cosseted.
Even though visitors pay their own way to Bordeaux, the extensive freebie hospitality lavished on them in glamorous surroundings transforms their visits into semi-junkets: near-bribes. Junketeering has a chilling effect on “objectivity”: you want to please your hosts (there is always another visit).
In short, hosts and guests dance a genteel minuet to the music of scarcity, with chateaus seductively calling the tune.
Thanks to Bordeaux's spin, conventional wisdom now holds that the region no longer experiences poor vintages; this belief, which disarms journalistic skepticism, predisposes many visitors to emphasize the bright side. Broadly, a reasonably good vintage is virtually a given; hence, escalated prices find apologists. The price game is heightened by the laughably theatrical wait for tranche figures, by the manufactured suspense over shortages and allocations.
While allowing for the occasional supertaster with a decathalon palate I think the dirty little secret is that most en primeur criticism doesn't know what it is talking about. Wine, like the stock market, is at bottom a gamble; every vintage, every case, every bottle, every auction is a crap shoot. When an en primeur taster writes solemnly “Drink in 2016,” I impulsively wonder “Morning or afternoon?” Honest wine makers tell you again and again that nobody really knows how a baby wine will turn out. Doesn't this bedrock truth ever sink into critics' DNA?
I can't prove it, but I suspect that Robert M. Parker Jr.'s usually expected high scores shape en primeur hordes' thinking. He's the Authority against whom guru wannabes are measured. The wider the distance between His score and yours, the more yours are distrusted. Better to ratchet those cabernets and merlots up a point or two. Who'll know?
For wine journalists and the trade, it takes principled courage not to plunge headlong into the numbers game in order to reap, in reputation, seeming insight, market power and sales, the heady personal harvest that Parker set in motion with his 1982 bonanza.
During Vietnam, young American leftists asked rhetorically what became a famous question: What if they gave a war and nobody came?
What if Bordeaux gave an en primeur and nobody came?
Howard G Goldberg
The en primeur system is not a con, but it is certainly not in the interests of the consumer. Apart from questions about the veracity of the sample wine tasted by the lucky few, there is also the question of whether a wine made to be drunk in 2025 can really be sensibly assessed now (Mr Spurrier obviously has great form, but even Mr Parker frequently changes his ratings over time as the wine matures). But the main negative effect of the frenzy is that it only goes to increase the ridiculous importance of one man's personal taste and palate, and to encourage speculative greed. If one comes from the premise that wine is a consumable that should be enjoyed, and not an investment, this is surely the key. The market for real investment grade wine is limited to a dozen or so chateaux anyway, the rest neither representing a scarce or speculative commodity (indeed, most 4th or 5th growths are available in the French supermarket wine fairs in September at less then the en primeur price not factoring in the interest over 2 years). As for the 'luxury' end, the Karl Lagerfeld analogy is most apposite as that is what these bottles have now become - fashion icons to be sold at the highest price to the wealthiest bidder. Anything that can be done to cool down this system and the greed of the top producers, so that people who actually appreciate wine but are not Asian millionaires could enjoy it, should be encouraged. Pretending that a sodden summer, wet September and rot-filled 2006 vintage is something that you absolutely have to fork out large amounts of cash for now, when it is not even made yet, is a bizarre practise and one that favours nobody except the chateaux, negociants and journalists on their coat tails.
Adrian Latimer, Paris, France
Forget Bordeaux, the world is awash with it. Canny buyers snap up the best German Rieslings as soon as they become available; not for financial profit but for the pure joy – and it IS an almost indescribably great joy – of drinking some of the finest wines ever made anywhere. When some of these wines are made in quantities of just a few cases and wines like Latour are made in their thousands, I know where my money is going this year.
Martin Campion, Caversham, England
"Scam" is not quite correct. "Greed induced" and "foolish for the wine consumer" is, however, far too accurate. With every passing year, the benefit to the consumer buying en primeur is less and less. Except for a very few bottlings, you can always find the vast majority of these wines for the same price or even less in bottle, and buy after tasting for oneself and without any risk.
Rather than rewarding wine consumers for giving up their funds early and losing the time-value of their money, and for taking the risk that things do not go as well as predicted from barrel samples by critics, the Bordelaise now makes fools out of us by hiking prices to such a degree that the potential value to the consumer has simply vanished - and they do so with the assumption that we consumers, especially Americans, are lemmings willing to suck up whatever sub-par, over-priced vintage they produce. Gone is the value for the consumer.
Frankly, only a fool would buy 2006 Bordeaux on future, and probably even in bottle, at least at current pricing. Let them keep them, or let all the peacocks who dote on the Chateau owners at such events pick up the slack.
Andrew Skroback, New York City, USA
I suspect those opposed to or disenchanted with en primeur tastings are expecting too much from them. Even the UGC organized sessions -2 hours to taste 25-30 wines in a quiet sit-down setting - for journalists who, like myself, opt to taste blind, are imperfect. The wines are like a poorly focused photograph—you can see the outline, but not the details and we all know that “the devil's in the details.” But just because it is imperfect doesn't mean it's a “con trick,” useless, or worse a “fraud.”
All tastings are imperfect. Sure, the photograph is in a little sharper focus after the
final blend has been made and the wine has been bottled, but it' still not crystal clear. Just look at the unfilled promises of the 1975 vintage, assessments made after the wines were bottled.
En primeur tasting provides an important opportunity to get an excellent sense of the vintage as a whole instead of relying on press releases or self-serving assessments from the châteaux or brokers. With the exception of a few areas in Italy (Barolo and Barbaresco every May and Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile and Brunello every February) Bordeaux is the rare region that puts all on wines on display simultaneously. For a highly variable vintage like 2006, it allows the press to see which wines were marred by over extraction and bitter tannins and which were not. I think there's merit in that.
Michael Apstein
“For a highly variable vintage like 2006, it allows the press to see which wines were marred by over extraction and bitter tannins and which were not. I think there's merit in that”. Unfortunately, critics are quite reluctant to cause commercial damage to the various chateaux and you often need to read between the lines to try to guess (not to mention differences between critics and samples). It is clear that because of its variability, 2006 is a very risky vintage to buy early! Following a very speculative 2005 vintage where chateaux, intermediates and speculators (individuals and funds that do not consume, but buy in order to sell later) drove the price extremely high (+ there are still some unsold stocks at merchants) and turned off a lot of amateurs, the last thing needed is an expensive 2006 futures campaign that would later disappoint with regard to quality! The Bordeaux futures excesses look very much like the Beaujolais Nouveau excesses that have succeeded in killing the market! But one cannot blame the Bordeaux market actors for following the flavour of the day and its speculative excesses!! They make their decisions, they will live with the consequences! In the meantime, we, customers, need to look for alternatives…or win the lottery!
Antoine Songeur
What a great debate! I can't afford these stratospheric wines and I'm certainly not going to wait 20 years to drink them. Leave the en primeur circus to those with the inclination and the money – that leaves the field clear for the rest of us to find better value and more interest elsewhere.
David Richardson, London, UK
I note that virtually all the contributions against En Primeur sales are from private consumers. They have missed the point, which is that the En Primeur system works because it is a uniquely efficient system of distribution. The chateau sets their price and La Place usually takes accepts it, as they risk losing their allocations if they do not; La Place sells to the merchants world-wide (Joanne, one of the biggest on La Place, has customers in 132 countries, could any chateau achieve this and if so, at what cost?) who may or may not take up the offer, but also risk losing allocation if they do not; the merchants in turn offer the wines to their customers, who they are not in the habit of ripping off. The customers are the ONLY people in the chain under no obligation whatsoever to buy the wine that this distrubution system has presented to them. It is a pure example of supply and demand. Such consumers might as well complain about the cost of Hermes ties, or prices in London restaurants, where the same non-obligation to purchase applies.
Steven Spurrier, London, UK
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Yes, indeed, Bordeaux 'en primeur' is a con. It is a giant fraud perpetuated by legions of slavish British wine 'critics' and a couple of American wine 'critics' who create the illusion of scarcity and scare gullible people with more money than sense to pay the Bordeaux aristocracy on the basis of 'blind' tastings of horrendously raw wine. Many wines sold 'en primeur' can also be found, two years later, on the shelves of my tiny, state-controlled wine store in Kingston, Ontario. So why bother to buy en primeur? Because that is what's done, so don't ask questions. It's a 'tradition.' Nonsense. It's not like we're talking about rare artisanal products--many of the wines sold 'en primeur' come from estates which make 200,000 bottles per year. I literally just drank--two hours ago--a 2003 Ornellaia. It is a fabulous wine. It is made in Bordeaux-like proportions, which is to say it's the product of a high-quality but industrial enterprise. If Ornellaia can make its way to Kingston, Ontario, then so too can Latour and Cos d'Estournel. And guess what--those wines do make it to this city of 130,000, at the same price paid by the naive purchasers of futures. Minus two years of lost interest. If the futures model made sense, then other regions would adopt it. They haven't.
