This year’s en primeur campaign was like a slow motion car crash: You know what’s going to happen, but still desperately hope that someone is going to stop it.
Way back in 2010, Bordeaux was able to credibly claim that the previous year had produced a great vintage. Wealthy Chinese rushed to buy 2009s at high prices, as did well-heeled purchasers from more traditional markets who saw top-class claret as a safe haven in uncertain financial times.
For the 2010 vintage, the chateaux felt justified in raising their prices still further - by 25% to 50% in some cases. Mathieu Chadronnier, managing director of leading negociants, CVBG Grands Crus, was quoted by Jancis Robinson MW in the Financial Times as saying, “There are high hopes that this will be the year that mainland China becomes a significant player.” British merchants were more sanguine. According to Ms Robinson, British consultant Susie De Paolis predicted that the 2010s would still be available at the same price two years later.
De Paolis was right and Chadronnier was wrong. The Chinese bought less 2010 than 2009, and then made matters worse by then cancelling some of their orders. One of the things that apparently bothered them was the lack of appreciation in the value of the 2009s they had bought. Another was a growing awareness that the Bordelais were taking them for fools.
When the less than starry 2011 and 2012 vintages came along, at inevitably reduced prices, the Chinese did not return – and nor did many of the Anglo Saxons. They heard the traditional allocation threat - “If you don’t buy this year, you won’t get a sniff of the next vintage” - and simply called the blackmailers’ bluff.
If 2013 had brought a great, small harvest, everything might have turned out fine, but it didn’t. With a tiny number of exceptions, even the best wines are light and for early drinking. Like 2007, it is characterised as a ‘restaurant’ vintage.
Today, while the chateau owners blame at least some of their woes on the UK press and negative chatter on Twitter, they can’t close their ears to the chorus of disapproval from people who really do matter: the local negociants and overseas merchants. It was not, after all, a journalist who revealed the loss Cos d’Estournel en primeur buyers have made in every vintage since 2008; that information was revealed by Liv-ex.
The current mess in Bordeaux was preventable in a way that did not require the chateau owners either to slash prices and jeopardise their brand value, or to hold firm and alienate their customers, as they have clearly done. They could have come clean about the vintage and say that they were not selling a grand vin this year, focusing instead on a really fine second vin. This would have given the market time to digest the previous vintages, and prepare the way for the following high-quality 2014 or 2015 grand vin. As it is, if they are struggling to find buyers for the 2013 grand vins, it’s hard to imagine there being any market at all for that vintage’s second wines.
The Bordelais seem to imagine that en primeur is a fundamental pillar of their temple. They need to be reminded that the campaign as we know it today is only 50 years old and was created between the producers and negociants in order to solve the cash-flow difficulties of financially-straitened chateaux. Today, one of the negociants, Ginestet, has spoken for many by declaring that it no longer wants to be the chateau-owners’ bankers. At the prices that are now being demanded, even the finest vintages like 2009 and 2010 are no longer guaranteed to be worth buying in barrel and, as many have pointed out, there is almost no reason at all to buy lesser vintages.
Three poor harvests is a mere blink in the history of Bordeaux, but it’s an eternity in the 21st century. Soft drink manufacturers know that, today, coffee, Coke, fruit juice, beer and mineral water are all in direct competition. The Bordelais are in an unprecedented battle for “share of cellar”. Not so long ago, the priciest wines in the world were Bordeaux; now they’re Burgundies. Critics in publications like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times are suggesting that Barolo 2010 is a better wine and a better investment than any recent Bordeaux vintage, and to judge from the buzz at Vinitaly, Chinese buyers are already taking that advice seriously.
