Well, someone had to!
I’m looking forward to contribute analyses of value for each major release as last year’s Bordeaux EP campaign. We’re hearing it’ll be another early campaign and I’m excited to see the notes and perspectives on the wines and the vintage from Team Jancis when they get published next week. Many thanks to Jancis for inviting me back!
I was in Bordeaux last summer and although part of July had a heatwave, August didn’t seem out of the ordinary and nights were fresh. We’ll have to see!
My first thought of the campaign is perhaps somewhat predictable, prompted by Jancis’s Bordeaux Primeurs free for all article last Thursday, when she wrote:
It may well turn out that the price reductions that helped make the 2019 primeur campaign such a success were a pandemic-inspired one-off. As I outlined in The ‘miracle’ primeur campaign, perhaps it really was a miracle that so many Bordeaux château owners were prepared to reduce their prices.
I do hope that doesn’t prove to be the case. I’m looking at secondary market prices of 2019s and there are broadly exactly where they were at first release. Admittedly, post-primeur action doesn’t generally kick in til the wines are bottled and the critics re-taste the final blend under cork. Still, it will take a brave (or very rich 
) proprietor to jack up prices on the back of an overall tentative Bordeaux market performance over the last few years.
Wine Lister’s Bordeaux 2021 study also warns of the ongoing risks to Bordeaux’s flagging attractiveness, whilst acknowledging the effect astute pricing had on the success of last year’s campaign.
Consumers have been spending big on wine this past year. Following a very quiet period during March and April 2020 at the start of Covid, fine wine buying took off again, with an extremely strong showing at the affordable level of everyday drinkers as well as at the collecting end of the market. Italian 2016 releases were extremely sought after and buyer exuberance culminated in a febrile atmosphere around the feted 2019 Burgundies, a campaign that felt like a real scramble, even though the wines themselves were a bit inconsistent.
I’m speaking with more retailers than ever before now that my business is focused on software as a service for the wine trade. What I’m hearing from wine retailers is that the last year has been exceptional for those businesses focused on the consumer, exciting new e-commerce brands have been launched, and even those merchants who have been historically dependent on hospitality have made up for their annihilated Ontrade sales with the tsunami in consumer activity.
Will the spending spree carry on, to the benefit of Bordeaux 2020, or are there signs that the fine wine buyer is a little weary, not to mention wary? The next couple of months will tell, and I’m excited to be sharing the analyses here as the releases come out with our relative value analysis charts.
I’ll be sponsoring the London Wine Fair May 17-19 so my colleague Miles Davis will be on standby for when I’m tied up with conference and meetings with wine businesses on how they can make themselves more efficient and continue to prosper in the post-Covid world that we are gradually entering.
A step back into the familiar, yet forward into the unknown, and into a re-energised world that does feel incredibly exciting - and in some ways may well have changed forever!
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