Bordeaux 2021: Buying En Primeur
As in previous years, 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 2021, the point of buying en primeur seems very questionable, at least for the red wines. Only a small number of these, and only 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. It will be interesting to revisit the very best wines after bottling to see if their quality at that point lives up to barrel-sample expectations.
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 2022 or 2023 vintage as it is with 2021. 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 – or two and a half weeks in my case – in order to judge the quality of the wines.
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