I’m excited once again to start a thread on this year’s Bordeaux en primeur campaign, bdx22.
The trade tastings take place in situ the week after next, with visitor numbers promising to be significantly higher than at any time since the 2018 campaign pre-Corona. Now lockdowns in China are over, I expect we’ll see a large contingent from Hong Kong and the Mainland.
As every year, i spent a few weeks in Aquitaine from the last week of July through to the end of August. It was incredibly dry. Oak trees turned brown, leaves oven-crisp, creating a bizarre juxtaposition of an autumnal landscape and searing summer heat.
It felt quite a lot hotter than 2020, though nights were persistently fresher than you might imagine, and I wonder to what extent that may have helped shape wines that Julia described as having “concentration”, “richness” and “elegance”.
Here’s a link to Gavin Quinney’s comparative weather analysis.
Producers seemed genuinely enthused by the resultant juice in vat, one whom I met up with a couple of months’ ago intending to go as long as he possibly could in purchasing in-depth through his negociant business.
So onto the perennial question of pricing. The drumbeat of greatness is strikingly loud this year. Expect parallels to be drawn with post war vintages such as '47. It isn’t going to be cheap, and it’s likely going to be quite a bit more expensive than 2020. Those who bought the rich and elegant 2019s will be feeling pleased as this campaign rolls out.
Fuelling the expected increases are somewhat lower than average yields (though I have no doubt there’ll be plenty to go around) and price escalation in other fine wine regions, notably Burgundy and Champagne.
On paper, the run-up in Burgundy and vintage bubbly pricing might seem to be holding. That’s because secondary market retail prices aren’t yet being marked down. In practise the frothy end of those markets is now virtually unsaleable at current elevated levels. Prices of wines subject to speculation and consortia who attempt to corner a market have now peaked and we’ll likely see mark-downs during much of 2023.
Benchmarking Bordeaux increases to those markets based on published market data risks ‘informing’ increases that don’t reflect the reality of what’s currently happening; those markets are characterised by an awful lot of sellers relative to buyers. Buyers who are being increasingly cautious and therefore selective.
The world’s an increasingly uncertain place, and those geopolitical and inflationary fears are a potent mix when it comes impacting sentiment. Even the top end of the market least affected by grocery and energy price hikes are still affected by the same global concerns that impact everyone else, and these damp down discretionary spend.
This is the market reality against which bdx22 will be shown. Will the quality of the vintage and market exuberance trump all other concerns? Will price increases be accepted and hold? What will that do to demand and pricing for back vintages? I look forward forward to publishing our relative value analyses based on the reviews and scores awarded by Jancis and James, and participating in the ensuing conversations with forumites!
