En Primeur Latest News

Wednesday, 20th May 2009

Bordeaux 2008 En Primeur ROUND-UP

We have seen a very eventful en primeur campaign this year. In March we heard rumours that Chateaux would be increasing their prices because quality was clearly up on 2007 and quantities produced were significantly down. Farr Vintners was one of the strongest voices in insisting that, regardless of quality, prices had to be reduced and we even delayed our tasting of the wines until we had a commitment that this would happen. The campaign opened with a very important 40% price decrease from Angelus which was followed by even larger reductions from the First Growths led by Chateau Latour. The biggest event in the campaign, however, turned out to be the publication of Robert Parker's tasting notes in "The Wine Advocate". Whilst many of us thought that 2008 was a good to very good vintage with a handful of outstanding wines, Mr Parker produced a string of rave reviews and compared it, in many instances, to 2005. With the backing of the "Emperor of Wine" behind it, the vintage has really taken off and we have seen a very successful en primeur campaign. The good news is that, despite the high scores, virtually every single Chateau continued the trend of reducing their release prices. We now offer a round-up of the availability of the most important Chateaux: