What is en primeur?
Throughout the year, fine wine merchants will gear up to offer new wines, new vintages ‘en primeur’.
When en primeur is mentioned, it principally refers to the late spring to early summer when the latest wines of Bordeaux are released.
This is one of the main ‘campaigns’ in the fine wine calendar but it’s not the only one.
Other ‘en primeur’ campaigns have evolved more recently as the global market for fine wines has grown and made sourcing certain bottles a little harder.
There are now dedicated sales periods for the wines of Burgundy, the Rhône, Italy and elsewhere as a result. The one for Bordeaux, however, remains the ‘OG’ en primeur campaign.
The point
What does it mean, though? In essence en primeur is the opportunity for collectors to buy the new vintage before it’s been bottled, at the best possible price.
En primeur is, therefore, a more elegant, Gallic way of saying ‘first dibs’. It’s also why it’s sometimes referred to (mostly in the US) as wine ‘futures’.
If you choose to buy en primeur you are essentially ensuring that you receive an allocation of wine, from a particular producer and at the ‘best’ (‘cheapest’) price possible.
If quality and therefore demand is high, what you pay for may cost someone else considerably more, later down the line on the open market. That’s the theory at least.
It is, therefore, an investment in that you are putting money into stock that you will not immediately receive and that you may need to keep for quite some time either until it is ready to drink or, if you’re lucky, the price has appreciated.
We’ll cover wine and financial investment elsewhere but I would strongly caution you here to always buy wine with a view to drinking it first and foremost.
It should be an investment in pleasure first and for financial gain very much lower down the list of priorities.
Subtle differences
Each campaign happens at a different point throughout the year and when you receive the wines changes depending on what you’re buying.
In many instances, the wines being offered are finished and are just about to be bottled and there will be a gap of a few months between payment and the wines actually being shipped to the UK (or your country of residence).
This is the case with Burgundy for example. The harvest happens, the wine is made over the course of the following year and then the producers offer their wine when it’s finished.
So the 2023 vintage of Burgundy was being offered in January 2025 and it will be delivered later this year.
Some Spanish and Italian wines by contrast may already be several years old when they are first offered.
This is because there is a tradition in these countries of certain wines being kept back in the winery, sometimes for up to five years or more; Rioja Reserva and Gran Reserva wines are a case in point.
The special child
The real outlier is Bordeaux, the biggest en primeur campaign of them all.
In this instance you are paying for wines that are not finished and that you will not receive until almost two years later.
It happens like this.
The wines are offered for you to buy the spring/summer following the harvest the previous autumn.
The wine then spends the rest of the year and some of the following in barrel and then is bottled and shipped to you, nearly three years after the harvest date.
For example. This year, it’s the 2024 vintage of Bordeaux that will be offered and any of that wine bought now will not be delivered until the autumn of 2027; after the wine has finished its élévage in barrel at the estates.
As such, this year it is the 2022 vintage that is being bottled and shipped to those who bought en primeur in 2023.
Clear as mud, see?
You can and should always ask merchants when exactly certain wines you buy en primeur will be shipped if you’re not sure.
Don’t forget
Any wine you buy en primeur when it is shipped to the UK, will be kept in your name by the merchant you bought it from ‘in bond’, which is to say without duty or VAT being paid.
That, therefore, is what en primeur is in a nutshell, the chance to buy new wines when they are first offered and at the best price.
It doesn’t always work out quite like that but we’ll look over that in the section on ‘why buy en primeur?’
Next we’ll cover how en primeur works and some of the associated costs and logistics involved.
Things to remember
If you buy en primeur there is a gap between payment and receiving the wine, there’s no shame in asking if you want clarification of when that will be.
A great majority of wines sold en primeur are then designed for further cellaring before consumption, some very top wines you may leave for as long as a decade.
VPQ