Bordeaux 2012: Buying En Primeur
As with last year, I have included some words below on the wisdom of buying en primeur. The intention is really to guide and protect newcomers to the system. Nevertheless, in a vintage such as 2012, the point of buying en primeur seems very questionable. Only a small number of wines, if well-priced, would be worth the early expenditure, if only to ensure good provenance for your own drinking. Even so, prices are unlikely to rise greatly, and the very wisest action in this vintage is I suspect simply to wait it out, and see which wines really perform once they are in bottle.
All the same, I present this advice for those thinking of taking the plunge. It is advice that will be just as appropriate in the 2013 or 2014 vintage as it is with 2012. In short, en primeur is a method for purchasing wine early, in which the latest vintage is offered for sale before the wines have even been bottled. You pay for the wine often more than a year in advance of receiving it, in the case of Bordeaux usually about two years. Invitations to buy Bordeaux en primeur appear during the spring following the vintage, once the world’s wine trade and press have visited the region for a week of tasting – as I did last week – in order to judge the quality of the wines.
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