Jane Anson’s column
Love it or hate it, en primeur has a key role to play
Recently I took part in an online event (is there any other kind?) with the Commanderie de Bordeaux in Edinburgh. It took the form of a chat with The Sunday Times wine writer Will Lyons. We were talking about all things Bordeaux, and he said something that really struck home – that some wine writers seem almost embarrassed to be covering Bordeaux, and that the only time he ever gets trolled as a critic is when he is covering the en primeur season.
It’s no secret that highly respected critic Jancis Robinson MW has spoken about her conflicted feelings in exactly this area. In 2017, she wrote about ‘the madness of en primeur’, and has said more recently that she feels uncomfortable about the role journalists play in the ‘en primeur circus’.
So why do we do it? First up, I’m not a defender of Bordeaux simply because I specialise in writing about its wines, but I do recognise its importance. Not just in its value to the wine trade – 2019 figures from CIVB, the Bordeaux wine bureau, showed the region generated €3.9 billion in revenue for the year – but more importantly in its grip on the imagination of wine lovers. Its most prestigious wines represented 55% of bid-to-offer market share on Liv-ex during 2020, and even during the Covid lockdowns, the most searchedfor grape varieties on wine-searcher.com were Bordeaux blends – and three of the top 10 individual searches were Bordeaux first growths.
En primeur is a way of focusing all this action. Having the wines tasted and discussed during the same few weeks each year by large numbers of trade and critics is not dissimilar to a film festival awarding jury prizes and audience prizes – part of the build-up and distribution model, yes, but useful all the same. Personally, I apply the same approach to trying the wines, and uncovering what has happened over the previous growing season to give certain estates an edge – as I would, I hope, if I were a tennis journalist covering the ATP tour.
And just like studying the ATP rankings, Bordeaux en primeur can provide an excellent opportunity to learn the basics of Bordeaux in a short period of time – a shortcut to understanding what’s hot and what’s not, where the values are and which new names are worth following, as well as how the top players are performing.
Of course, it’s not the only way to buy, but for much of the world it remains the key moment of purchase. It’s the main way that Bordeaux wines are bought by big retailers, distributors and monopolies across France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, northern Europe and large parts of Asia. These businesses use this moment to make large purchases not just of classified estates, but of crus bourgeois, St-Emilion grands crus and similar.
It’s why I suggest looking beyond the highestscoring wines when reading en primeur notes from any publication. In my case, I don’t award 100 points at this stage, because the wines are unfinished, but I will name wines that have the potential to be upgraded when re-tasted in 16 months’ time. I try to explain why they have done particularly well, whether it’s because of the weather conditions they faced, or a change of ownership or winemaking style. Reading the notes is a way to keep up to date with the region.
I also suggest looking out for signpost scores – for me, that means the 94pt wines, and again the 89pt wines. The former account for many of my favourite wines in any vintage – not necessarily the most structured, but consistently highquality, often mid-level names that are punching above their weight. The 89pt level is a way to track down less expensive wines. I score more than twice as many wines at 85-89pts as I do at 95pts or more. Wines from the Bordeaux Côtes or Graves regions, for example, rarely stray into
Gold territory (95+) – but they might be the best early-drinkers you can find.
Is en primeur perfect? Far from it – the high prices of 2009 and 2010 led to market losses that are still being made up for a decade later; and if the big-name châteaux don’t price attractively, I would strongly suggest waiting to buy in bottle, unless there is scarcity involved. But to say en primeur has no value is simply not true.