Ditton Wine Traders’ fine wine blog

The Bordeaux En Primeur campaign is not far away now. Or is it?

Most wine professionals are about to head to Bordeaux for the barrel tasting of the new vintage.In this blog, I have commented on the campaign before, on the 21st of February and the 17th of March. It has always been clear that 2008 is going to be a very difficult vintage to sell. This weekend, some more reports were published. FT.com published an article titled "UK loses thirst for Bordeaux wines". Several sources are quoted saying that UK traders are selling stock back to Bordeaux and are now heavily dependent on export to Asia as domestic demand falters. Simon Staples from Berry's says 20% of their Bordeaux are going back to Bordeaux, the reason being that sterling is so weak.

Jancis Robinson, the acclaimed UK wine critic, also wrote an article, in the Financial Times again. Titled "Wine's age of uncertainty", Robinson paints a rather gloomy picture of the Fine Wine market in general and of the Bordeaux En Primeur campaign in particular. We already knew that – although likely to be better than 2007 – 2008 is not a good vintage. The fact that the economic climate is not very helpful and sterling being weak making a decent campaign in the UK unlikely (unless prices drop dramatically) is no news either.

The big news in Jancis' article for me was that Farr Vintners will not be going to Bordeaux to taste the new vintage. London based Farr, voted best en primeur merchants 3 times running and traditionally one if not the biggest UK En Primeur buyer is quoted as saying that they won't even bother going becauce there's zero demand for unbottled Bordeaux that costs more than most mature vintages.

I found that quite astonishing. I know there's always big pressure from the UK on Bordeaux to keep their prices reasonable but this is a huge step up. So much so that I called Stephen Browett of Farr Vintners to verify the story. He confirmed that – as long as there are no sign of prices being drastically reduced – they indeed will not go. Please allow me to predict a few possible scenario's:

1) Bordeaux chateaux do drop their prices to a level that there would be a decent campaign. Not likely to be to such an extent that the UK would be able to offer decent prices to its customers, again courtosy of sterling. Now, the UK is the biggest export market, but not the only one. Other markets don't have the same currency issue as the UK. But which markets are these? Asia is not used to buying futures. Although this scenario I think would be the best outcome, it would mean that both negociants and traders will have a massive problem on their hands with their 2007 stock, 2007 being less of a vintage than 2008 and in this scenario higher priced.

2) Some chateaux will and others won't reduce prices enough. We will have a lacklustre campaign, unlikely to make anybody much money.

3) The campaign will be postponed until September, as advocated by Jean Guillaume Prats of Cos d'Estournel. This might be a smart move as it buys time, but is not very likely to do much good, unless you believe we will be in a much better position, financially speaking, than we are at the moment.

4) There will not be an En Primeur campaign...

So, the plot thickens. Whatever the outcome, for us consumers it will be good news as it is very likely that prices will come down, either of 2008 or 2007 or both. If you want a good benchmark on prices, do visit our "wine & champagne" page. Don't hesitate to ask us for a quote on wines not listed!