Appellations

What is En Primeur?

"En Primeur" or "Primeurs" is the process of buying wine before it is bottled (sometimes known as wine futures).

2014 primeurs are the wines from grapes harvested in Bordeaux in September/October 2014, then aged in barrel at the Chateaux and offered onto the market in April-June 2015.

They will be bottled after approximately 18 months, will be shipped to the UK and made available for delivery in Spring/Summer 2017.

There are several reasons why buying En Primeur can make sense:

  • To buy wines at the best possible price. The whole idea behind "en primeur" is that opening prices are usually (and sometimes considerably) cheaper than prices once available on the open market.
  • To secure rare wines that are made in very limited quantities or which may not be available following release.
  • To ensure perfect provenance, and to know the full history of the wine.
  • To choose a different bottling format for your wines, eg. half-bottles (for sweet wines), magnums, 3 litre double magnums, 6 litre imperials) etc, which are much harder to find later on.

To make it as simple as possible, we have put in place a 4-part system, so that you can let us know what you might be looking for, and to help us satisfy your expectations.

NB: For En Primeur there is no minimum order value but we sell by the case of 12 bottles. Some wines may be available in cases of 6 bottles, depending on the wine.

Wishlist

Select the wines or Chateaux of interest to you. Do you want to receive updates on all releases or just a select few? If you love St Julien, or if you prefer to look at value wines sub-£300/cs, let us know. You can put together a Wishlist of wines selected by you to follow throughout the campaign, and add notes about your criteria. For all enquiries, please contact Victoria Bournot, Private Client Sales Manager.

Pre-Orders

Often the 'hot' wines sell out in Bordeaux rapidly so when such a wine is released we need to act quickly. Placing a pre-order means that you will be first in the queue, securing wines at our first price, ahead of Wishlists and other buyers. We use the estimated range as a rough guide, and then we set our price when a Chateau's price is known. Most importantly, we guarantee that we will always offer a more competitive price than the largest established UK merchants.

Pre-orders will only be invoiced if the price falls within the range indicated.

Waiting List

If a wine sells out, we can (sometimes) find additional quantities. Let us know your interest so that we can tell you as soon as it comes back onto our books.

Email Updates

You can also opt to receive our release updates and summaries by email. We'll be updating the website regularly with news, opinions and recommendations from the critics, and then with releases as they come.

A note on Allocations

Some wines have become even more sought-after than ever and we already know that quantities of the top wines will be limited. Where we are over-subscribed, we will allocate according to the following criteria:

  • Balanced orders
  • Previous en primeur buyers
  • Regular buyers throughout the year
  • Other en primeur orders

En Primeur is always an exciting time once the pace gets going. For more information, please speak to or email Victoria Bournot.

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