All About En Primeur


What is En Primeur?

The French term ‘En Primeur’ refers to the practice of selling wine as futures before it has been bottled and shipped. The wine trade has purchased wines in this fashion for a long time but the system of offering the wines to consumers and collectors only dates back to the early ‘70s and really came to prominence in the early ‘80s when a string of fine Bordeaux vintages, coupled with newly emerging critics, such as Robert Parker, started to make early vintage assessments readily available.

En Primeur Today

These days, the whole process had become a well-oiled machine. The international fine wine trade makes an annual pilgrimage to Bordeaux for a week in April to taste the fledgling wines and form a view of how they are forming. The samples tasted will be taken from the barrel and represent an approximation of the final bottled blend. At around 6 months of age, they provide experienced tasters the opportunity to gain useful insights into their nascent properties and potential for development. Merchants and critics will then produce their reports and notes. Usually starting in May, the first chateaux will start to release offers of their wines. With hundreds of wines to work through, there can sometimes be days when several chateaux release at a time and things get pretty frantic. In a popular vintage, that can require some quick decisions to secure allocations.

How does it work if I want to but En Primeur?

Once you’ve digested the information from your favourite critic(s) and merchant(s), it can be useful to let your merchant know which wines you will be most interested in, subject to price. When the wine is released you can request some and if you are successful in securing it, you will be invoiced for the In Bond value of the wine. Approximately two years later the wines will ship and you will be contacted to confirm your delivery / storage preference. The options are to store under bond with the merchant you bought from, have them delivered to another bonded warehouse or take delivery to home, in which case duty and VAT will become due. Importantly, the VAT amount is only calculated based on the original purchase value and not the current market value of the wine.

Why buy En Primeur?

Most of the Bordeaux released En Primeur will require many years, if not decades, to reach its prime. With this in mind, buying the wine on first release and holding it in your own storage (private cellar or bonded account) offers the peace of mind that you have the best provenance possible when it comes time drink.

Release prices at En Primeur should present the opportunity to purchase at the lowest price the market will see for a given wine. This isn’t always the case and pries can fall as well as rise but given a long enough view, chances are you’ll look back at a wine bought En Primeur when it’s approaching maturity and be glad you secured it when you did. With the most in-demand, small production wines (particularly Pomerols, for example), the wines can be like top Burgundies and almost impossible to find later on.

There is a strong argument that the optimum bottle size for long-term maturation is in magnum. If you want to secure half bottles, magnums or larger formats, En Primeur is the only time you can be confident of securing these as they can be hard to find on the secondary market and may attract a premium if they are scarce.

Buying En Primeur can be fun. You don’t have to buy only the elite premium brands, with the very highest scores to get involved. As long as you are buying wines you want to enjoy drinking, it can be a great experience building a collection that will reward for many years to come.


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