I think the estates would do well to reread Neil Martin’s piece from a couple years ago. Lots of great contributions from everybody here too.
You read me wrong, so I’m leaving it at that.
And ironically many of the bag holders from 2019 wouldn’t necessarily - right now - agree jr was overly successful for them as consumers
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Lots of great ideas in your post. But chateaux dropping prices on vintages they’ve already sold is not going to happen. Negociants holding stock at a higher rates would would instantly lose money. Merchants holding stock lose as well as the consumer.
Negociants have an 18% margin to work with. While chateaux don’t approve of discounting, negociants do it all the time. Discreetly, but it happens.
One difference in EP is that previously Chateaux held all the cards and almost every negociant always took their full allocation. At close to zero cost of money, why not? Today negociants are taking what they can sell as they can’t afford to hold stock.
Different packing of formats or vintages could be of use. I’m not sure how much demand there is for that measured against the volume produced. But, who knows?
There’s also outside forces moving against buying non-essential lifestyle purchases. like wine. Economics, Iran, the upcoming French elections, the stock market, tariffs. and more that might add more of a reason to wait.
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EP stopped working for me as a consumer about 20 years ago, when pricing removed most of the financial advantage of buying now and waiting 2-3 years for delivery. There have been a few exceptions, like 2019.
But has EP stopped working for the châteaux? Whether La Place as a whole is a failure depends on what happens next. I’ve heard about the demise of EP at least a half-dozen times over the years, often with the warning that this time is different, there will have to be fundamental change. Yet somehow the producers and négociants muddle through, prices are lowered, the wine goes somewhere, and La Place remains en place.
Only 30% being sold EP sounds like a much greater motivation for change than I’ve heard before. So where will all that wine go? And what happens next? Should be an interesting year.
Discounts can mitigate much of that, but how much can those sitting on the wine offer?
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So, Euro Berserker Day?
tbh the problem is there will always be another reason to wait. You can make a good argument en primeur has been broken since 2017 vintage, barring the somewhat successful (highly successful at the time, but now in hindsight not super successful) 2019/2020 vintages. There will always be more reasons to justify waiting and hoping for a ‘recovery’, but at some point, one looks like a man holding a lot of tulips.
Ultimately the question I always ask - do chateau even really care for en primeur? If they dont, I’d rather we drop the pretense of en primeur entirely. Personally.
the big problems in the last few years, imho:
1 - UK retail are now only ordering to demand. They arent being forced to take bundles or allocations, “this is what you’ll buy, and be grateful, peasant” comes to mind
2 - negociants arent taking excess stock anymore either, without confidence of being able to place it
3 - what HAS sold in years like 2023 still has ended up plummeting on the secondary market, at least in the UK; even the chances they’ve had to “win back” hearts and minds have been missed, and every time that happens, you turn off more customers
The problem is fundamentally at some point you need to win all these customers back - even if pretty attractively priced, its not clear to me if there are enough people willing to go swimming again.
I would also say Bordeaux has been a lot more resilient to their own downfall in the last few years compared to what I have expected. But ultimately, as I said above, if you manufacture 1000 of a thing every year, but only sell 100 of them, sooner or later no matter how much you fiddle it, you will have a problem.
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The chateaux care a lot about EP. It’s consumers lack of interest that matters. If you ask me, 2010 forward is when EP fully lost its way.
For EP to work for the consumer, prices need to offer incentives to buy early. With few exceptions, there have not been reasons to pay early.
It will take time, and economic pain to producers and to a degree, to negociants and perhaps courtiers as well, but my guess is that EP will change to find a place in the market over the next 3-5 years.
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The actions from the chateau over the last decade haven’t suggested to me they really care about EP, tbh.
With regards to price, yeah, I agree. That’s been my position every time you and I have butted heads about EP for this entire decade 
I think changing to an EP that fundamentally rather than coincidentally works will take a seismic shift that I’ve never yet seen Bordeaux willing to go after. Every year then first releases come out recently and if there’s even a vaguely lukewarm interest prices creep up quickly over the campaign. 2019 started at 30% off and quickly cloned to what, 10% off at best? By the time it ended? And Mouton allegedly freed the guy who decided to release Mouton 19 under 2000/6 EP..
These are two completely different things.
I think that commercially, different formats are essentially worthless. I love half-bottles, can’t find them, even as somebody ex-ITB. Nobody buys them so producers don’t make them. Magnums have some places, but COVID put paid to large formats. Yes, billionaire banquets still need their Jeroboams of Yquem, but otherwise…
I think vintages / verticals can be a major part of the answer to the Bordeaux Doldrums. Few people have cellars. Few people want to buy wine to drink 5 - 20 years later. I think that those with relatively low costs and high discipline can build and expand their markets with verticals.
I remember your 2023 special cases - the big négociants should take note - that’s the type of pro-active cleverness which has been missing. It’s obviously more hassle for them, but since the wine is in barrel, it’s just a question of adapting the supply to encourage the demand, hardly rocket science.
Quite right - but what if a château decided to issue credit notes to all the different négociants? It’s just about doing a deal which everyone can benefit from - apart obviously from the people who bought EP in the first place. But since they are already victims of price drops post bottling, it wouldn’t change much.
I have never seen halves either apart from at auction, but if they don’t offer any, apart from at EP, how do they know they don’t sell? At retail over here, the one Bordeaux exception is D’Yquem - I do occasionally see halves, and they do sell, as do halves of Port, for the same obvious reason. You’re absolutely right about the lack of cellars and patience - the proportion of people living in flats as opposed to houses grows all the time - what better way to attract that clientèle than with verticals of halves? What fun to be able to do comparatives using halves, which mature quicker (well I think so anyway!) than bottles?
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I dont have a scalable solution but I would say I know because of how SHL engage on our Discord community, they get disproportionate consideration from the gang; we’ve had free bottles from them at tastings, etc, often going to dinner with the chateau when they come over to london. Emotional connections ultimately do help, but its hard to make that a scalable solution. Either way, its created probably a few dozen SHL buyers that wouldnt have had it on the radar before.
I was an importer for almost 40 years. I love halves. I bought them when available and in a few cases had my producers bottle them on a special order. At least in the United States, at least in my markets (we were in 40+ states, with a good % of restaurant sales), they did not sell. I prefer not to count my losses from closeouts of half bottles over those decades.
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Two of the ladies in my family love their cosmetic line as well which I think is called Caudalie. The Cathairds stay close to their end consumers.
It’s simple economics. In order to tempt to consumer, you have to make it worth his while. And the only thing that currently is tempting is to be able to get any format that you want. That is something not available once the wines hit the market.
There has been absolutely no financial gain from buying futures now, or for at least 20 years. Even the 2019s which were offered at incredibly low prices, have not shown a marked enough increase to beat interest rates. I am not sure what the solution is, or to be more honest, I don’t think there is one. It is broken, and no amount of tinkering will excite the consumer.
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Personally, I seldom buy different formats. I was responding to posters in this thread that liked the idea.
Left Bank producers could put together small verticals, harder in the better Right Bank estates.
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Even if you made the negociants whole, you have the same issue with merchants holding back stock, and what about end users that put their faith in their purchases?
Producers don’t like making half-bottles as it’s expensive, they need to change the bottling line and overall, the demand is not that strong. One other point,I’ve asked a lot of estates about half-bottles and most don’t think they age well, so their wine does not show or age like it should.
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The 1855 Classification was based on market pricing of 1855. We can judge today based upon market pricing in 2026.
Estates that are priced above their 1855 class include Lynch-Bages, Beychevelle, Palmer (duh) and Pontet-Canet. I would argue that 1855 class probably diminishes the pricing of these estates’ products, just as all the Premier Crus probably benefit from elevator shoes.
Honestly, in my head, I’d like to see:
1 - A decisive decision on what people (the chateau) actually want commercially. Do they want to offload risk, and in that, provide opportunity for reward for customers, or do they want to maximise their reward. Both are legitimate strategies.
If the former, then I think you need to run things like UGC tastings around the world BEFORE the en primeur season. Build the hype, host tastings in the US, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, whererver else is on the UGC circuit, and then do a big EP blitz. More people who haev tasted the wine will create more opportunity to fall in love with it rather than looking at it through a cold hard commercially sensitive lens
OR
You decide that you want to maximise your return, and you scrap en primeur. You do what Palmer and Latour do; release when you perceive the wine to be “ready”.
Holding costs soar in the meantime, but then you set the price of your wine on the open market; you aren’t being undercut by a UK secondary market, for example. Clearly only the richer chateau can afford this (and, likely, its a business model LVMH wouldnt want to sign up to, though its effectively what they do in Champagne so maybe?) - it also increases the importance of second wines, half bottles, etc
I doubt either happen anytime soon.
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