Appellations
En Primeur Bordeaux 2010
What is En Primeur?
Also known as Wine Futures, En Primeur or Primeurs is the process of buying wine before it is bottled.
Wines are purchased by the case of 12 bottles and are delivered in the UK 2 years after release, eg.
2010 primeurs will be first sold in May/June 2011 and will be bottled and available for delivery in 2013.
There are several reasons why buying En Primeur can make sense:
- To buy wines at the best possible price. Opening prices are usually (and sometimes considerably) cheaper than prices once available on the open market.
- To buy wine of perfect provenance, and to know the full history of the wine. Wines are shipped by us direct from Bordeaux to bonded storage in the UK.
- To buy rare wines that are available in very limited quantities or which may not be available following release.
- To choose a different bottling format for your wines, eg. half-bottles (especially for sweet wines), magnums, double magnums, imperials, etc, which are much harder to find later on.
"Embarrassingly Good" – The 2010 Vintage
Our trip to Bordeaux in February confirmed in quality, 2010 looks set to follow 2009 as another of Bordeaux's greatest vintages. Even downplaying the hype, the spectacle of En Primeur is now played out across the world to an eager audience of wine lovers and market monitors. Buyers from Asia, the US and Europe could well all be trying to secure new and bigger allocations of the best values, hottest brands and Chateaux with best pedigrees.
As with all great vintages we already know that competition to secure allocations will be fierce. We want to make the process as simple as possible so in response to your requests, we have put in place a 4-part system, to help YOU let us know what you want from this campaign, and to help US satisfy your expectations.
Wishlist
Tell us which wines are of most 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 all wine 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.
Pre-Orders
In a fast and furious campaign where wines sell out in Bordeaux very quickly, we need to act quickly. By placing a pre-order you are committing to buy individual wines IF THE PRICE FALLS WITHIN OUR ESTIMATED RANGE. The incentive reward is that you secure wines at our first price, ahead of Wishlists and other buyers. We guarantee that we will always offer a more competitive price than the largest established UK merchants.
Waiting List
Frequently wines sell out fast but by calling in a few favours in Bordeaux, we can (sometimes) find additional quantities. If a wine is sold out, let us know your interest so that we can tell you as soon as it comes back on our books.
The Relaxed Approach
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.
Allocations
As with 2009, demand could well outstrip supply and we already know that quantities will be limited on some wines. Where we are over-subscribed, we will allocate according to the following criteria:
- Balanced pre-orders
- Previous en primeur buyers (balanced orders)
- Regular buyers throughout the year
- En Primeur orders
En Primeur is always an exciting time once the pace gets going. We'll do our best to deliver news as it happens and in the meantime, let us know if and how we can help.