Buying En Primeur

"En Primeur" is the purchase of wine whilst it is still maturing in barrel. The main advantages of buying en primeur are:

• To purchase wines at the initial release prices. Wines re-released after bottling will usually be more expensive.
  
  
• To secure allocations of small-production wines that may not be commercially available after en primeur release.
  
  
• To own a wine from the start of its life - provenance is priceless.
  
  
• To purchase a birthyear vintage for a child, grandchild or godchild.
  
  
• To be able to choose large format wines – magnums, double magnums and imperials. Or to be able to order half bottles – especially in Sauternes.
  
  
• To purchase the latest vintages of a Chateau that one has followed and purchased over the years. This is especially important for wines where there is always more demand than there is supply. Chateaux such as Léoville and Langoa Barton, Calon Segur and Lynch Bages spring to mind.
  
  

These 2010 wines will be bottled towards the end of 2012 and will be released in the Spring of 2013.

You can buy en Primeur in complete confidence from Farr Vintners. We are Britain's biggest fine wine merchant, with a 30 year record of successful and reliable trading and have won more awards than any other merchant. We have recently been awarded a place in The Sunday Times PricewaterhouseCoopers Profit Track 100 list - further testament to our record of profitable trading. No British wine company buys more classed growth Bordeaux than we do and, consequently, we enjoy excellent relations with the leading Bordeaux proprietors and negociants.

Furthermore, we pride ourselves on offering our customers seriously informed and honest advice on what to buy and, just as important, what not to buy. It is important to buy en primeur from a successful wine merchant with a good reputation and a track record of delivering the goods (and not just at the cheapest possible price). En Primeur wines should never be purchased from "one man band" type operations! Please do let us know if one of our competitors is offering the same wine as us at a lower price but do remember that peace of mind and reliability of supply are worth far more than a slightly discounted price.

During the campaign, all prices are per case of one dozen bottles and all wines are sold lying in bond UK. Customers requiring different bottle sizes can request these by logging on to their account. Please note we will be unable to accept any changes to these instructions after the deadlines of August for the red wines and mid-July for the whites, when we will pass the instructions to the Chateaux. It may not be possible to satisfy all bottling requests but we will endeavour to meet all customer requirements. An invoice for bottling charges will follow once we have confirmation that the sizes requested are available.

Our en primeur prices include delivery from France, insurance and warehouse receiving charges, but they exclude duty and V.A.T. which will be payable only if wines are later cleared from bond. Customers who wish to buy for export, under bond transfer or under bond collection have nothing further to pay.

Please note that our usual £500 minimum order does not apply to En Primeur orders. There are NO storage charges for en primeur wines. Storage charges at our standard rates will subsequently be charged only on wines left in bond with us after June 2013, and again, we will contact all our customers before this date to advise of the arrival of wines in the UK and to obtain storage or delivery instructions.