Bordeaux En Primeur – First Sanity then Parker Madness

July, 2009

Whilst most of us cannot afford the serious prices normally charged for the top clarets, the prices in recent years have entered the stratosphere making even the most ardent collectors and wealthy investors flinch. As a result there was a great deal of posturing prior to this year’s en primeur campaign with many in the British wine trade calling for a return to sensible pricing that relates to quality. 

Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler MW, wine buyer for Private Cellar Ltd, has provided her perspective on this intriguing bit of wine theatre in a follow up to our feature in March previewing the en primeur campaign: Bordeaux En Primeur - From Frenzy to Fiasco? 

She highlights the effect of American wine writer Robert Parker’s reviews on this jittery market.     

My post-tasting commentary on the 2008 primeurs has to be split into two parts, BP and AP – Before Parker and After Parker.

BP

Almost immediately on our return from Bordeaux, 1er Grand Cru Classe Angelus released its wine to the trade at €59 a bottle – a massive reduction on the 07 which had been €100 per bottle. 

However, the trade was not impressed and the sales languished – why, when they had apparently made such an effort on price? The 2004 came out at €58.5, so it was a good effort to match the pricing of the 04, however the intervening years had seen some spectacular prices (€155 in 05, €124 in 06) and there was a general feeling that we were being taken for mugs. 

The big surprise was Château Latour coming out very soon after this with a price of €130 per bottle, @ 40% the 07 price, and, it is rumoured, below what the first growths had supposedly agreed to come out at. This set the market going and, as it was a First Growth, the wine sold well and rapidly, and was followed in very short order by Lafite and Mouton Rothschild at similar prices (Haut Brion held on for longer and came out higher when it saw the market reaction to the other first growths). 

The cynic will say that a fraction of wine was released at this price in order to garner good publicity, however even if this is the case (and it probably is) the fact remains that the properties set the tone of the releases by introducing such a massive cut on the 2007 for wines that are, in most cases, superior. 

The campaign rolled out fast at this stage – wines piled out rapidly, with reductions from 10 – 45%, depending on their relative pricing. Some sold, some didn’t, more or less in line with how they tasted – suddenly, all was well with the world, here was a primeur campaign where the equation between wine quality and price was back in balance, and drinkers could buy familiar wines which had recently been inaccessibly priced, confident that they were paying the right amount. At this stage, Lynch Bages sold in small quantities, Gazin was repeatedly offered, Leoville Barton disappeared from the market in very short order due to its popularity. Now we come to AP – the announcement of the dreaded Parker notes. 

AP

The rumour came that he was due to publish at the end of April – releases dried up overnight. Breath was held corporately – could he possibly have anything good to say, which wines was he going to push, which would be ignored or, worse, slated? There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the vintage in general would be damned with faint praise, given its troubled growing season and the wild swings in levels of ripeness and acidity in the various areas. What no one expected was for Parker to praise the vintage to the skies, to say that it was a fabulous one which, in certain wines (first growths amongst them) may well eclipse the fabled 2005. 

Pomerol in particular came in for some of the highest praise, with scores in the high 90s for many wines which traditionally hadn’t been marked highly before. Inevitably, the properties which had already opened and which obtained high scores suddenly found their wines in great demand – this despite the fact that they had failed to sell during the previous few weeks – whilst those properties which hadn’t already opened had a dilemma. Did they come out at prices similar to their neighbours, whose sales they had just seen go through the roof (which meant that those dratted négociants and wine merchants might make a decent margin), or did they edge the price up a bit closer to the 07 so they could claim a reduction in price, but just not as much as others, and take the margin for themselves? The answer was, of course, the latter. 

Suddenly, a drop of 10% from the 07 prices became the max, 1- 3% the norm. Some even increased. Sales in the UK dropped off dramatically as, once again, that niggling feeling of being taken for a mug returned. This essentially marked the end of the bustling phase of the primeur campaign, and we returned to the more recent style of primeur – scrabbling for individual cases of wine whose merit was more the score they had achieved from Parker than the actual tasting note of any UK merchant. A humbling truth. 

For the next edition I think we need to wait 7 years to see how the wines are developing – personally, I think Parker is wrong rating some of the wines as at least as good as 2005, or even better, but it will be a long time before I can say ‘told you so’! 

Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler MW

Private Cellar Ltd