Due to the containment, the price of the 2019 vintage could not be assessed. An alternative is looming.
Already weakened by vagaries of the weather and sales at half mast, the prestigious Bordeaux chateaux are trying to react after the shock of the cancellation during the confinement of the Primeurs Week, a unique event in France which ensures the economic stability of these great wines .
Invitations, tastings, VIP evenings, etc., each year in early April, the best Bordeaux wines allow guests from around the world to taste their latest vintage, which will not be marketable to the general public until some two years later. Buyers, traders and journalists flock from castle to castle, and note the Grands Crus, which will set the prices. Then brokers put owners and traders in touch, who buy a wine that will continue to mature in barrels.
No price, no buyers
This multi-centennial system allows some 400 estates to sell their wine before it is even in the shops and thus to ensure immediate cash flow. Without this commercial mass, the 2019 vintage, which benefited from excellent weather conditions, could not have been evaluated.
Without price, no buyers. “And we cannot envisage fixing prices until the wines have not been tasted”sums up Ronan Laborde, president of the Union of the great classified growths of Bordeaux (UGCB).
The Grands Crus then decided to meet buyers in a dozen American, European and Asian cities. “Buyers will have written, oral but also video information from our members who will talk about this vintage and explain the work done on the property”, explains Ronan Laborde.
Before abroad, the 2019 vintage will be presented “on the Place de Bordeaux” around mid-June, he hopes. Other castles will send their own samples themselves, and some have even started to have them tasted.
“It’s still playable”
The holding of these Futures, “where the attention of the markets is focused on Bordeaux”, is capital, underlines a broker of the place. “Timing is essential for our business: tasting and marketing before summer”, because “if we skip our turn, we will no longer have this attention”. And it ensures: “It’s still playable” even if “we do not yet measure whether there will be buyers”.
“In a period like this, you will have to be attentive to the price level”, notes the Bordeaux broker, “but, as usual, the market will decide”. Especially since with the restaurants closed, exports in slow motion and planes nailed to the ground, a “significant market” for the grands crus, stocks have swelled, even if the noble labels of Bordeaux have strong backs and immense cellars. “It is an exaggeration to say that the market is at a standstill. It is very disturbed, greatly slowed down with disparities according to the distribution networks”, nuances the trader Georges Hausalter.
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