Bordeaux 2024: The campaign begins in earnest – and early

Merchants and critics have barely returned from Bordeaux and prices for wines have already been made public.

Château Pontet-Canet, Château Batailley and the various Right Bank wines from JP Moueix have led an early charge to declare the price of their 2024 vintage wines.

Both of the Left Bank estates have a track-record in recent years of releasing well-ahead of the curve, and were among the front-runners last year too.

This year’s tasting of the new vintage was also held earlier than usual, which partly accounts for what appears to be a very prompt start to the campaign.

With several more releases due next week, there is little time for commentators to turn around their thoughts on a vintage that is particularly nuanced.

Pontet-Canet

After cutting its price 27% last year, the St-Estèphe estate has not budged so much for its 2024, dropping just 9%.

The wine is being offered by négociants in Bordeaux for €60 a bottle, leading to a price of around £360 per six bottles in-bond in the UK.

Fine wine platform Liv-ex noted that despite bringing prices down across recent vintages, ‘poor post-release price performance of recent vintages means the 2024 is still one of the more expensive vintages on the market’.

It added that a score of 95-points from critic Neal Martin would make the release look more appealing. On the other hand, as its pricing graph makes plain, the 2020 vintage has a score of 95 and is currently available for around £280 per six.

Batailley

The Batailley 2024 was being offered by merchants for £150 per six bottles in-bond. This is down 7% on the price of its 2023 which was offered for around £162 per six last April.

Last year’s price cut was 12% down from the 2022 as well.

Corney & Barrow in its daily commentary wasn’t wholly enthusiastic, stating that the release was, ‘not quite setting a pricing marker, as you can buy their 2019 & 2021 vintages for a little less’.

It did however, ‘encourage people to give the smaller estates more leniency here as we are talking small margins for a high cost vintage’.

JP Moueix stable

The wines released by Moueix include Château Belair-Monange from St-Emilion, and Château Bourgneuf and Château La Fleur-Petrus in Pomerol.

Merchants are offering the wines for £530, £150 and £680 per six bottles in-bond respectively.

A high-tempo campaign

As discussed in our article on market conditions published earlier this week, the 2024 wines are being offered at an unsettled time.

UK fine wine merchant Farr Vintners noted on its site that: ‘Political and financial turmoil makes this the hardest market we have seen for releasing a new vintage in recent history, particularly for a vintage like 2024.’

The vintage was difficult, as our Bordeaux editor, Georgie Hindle, made clear in her initial overview.

However, there have been some more positive noises around the quality of some of the wines. Expertise and ruthless sorting in what was already a small vintage seems to have helped some of the top estates from falling into the pitfalls of a wet and rot-filled year – though quality is uneven.

Volumes are also going to be very limited. Potential buyers are being advised to draw up their wish-lists, and if the critical consensus chimes with a favourable-looking price to register their interest quickly.

This early slate of releases demonstrates that the Bordelais do not intend to sit around. They are taking their wines to market and banking on their price cuts being enough of a draw to pull in buyers right from the off.

But with so few scores and assessments from influential critics currently published, will this tactic be enough to overcome the initial inertia of a sluggish market?

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