For those unsure about what buying wine 'En Primeur' ('EP') is all about, this page will provide you with some useful facts and discussion about the whole affair. Though a lot of EP buyers are clued up collectors looking for the best deals on top flight Bordeaux, with the right guidance it can also be fantastic, engaging and lucrative fun for newcomers. If you are thinking of getting involved, please take some time to consider the facts below and also do some wider reading. Everyone tends to have their own take, depending on the nature of their involvement! Crucially, it's vital to find the right merchant who you can trust to deliver your wines. As a collector turned merchant, I take that responsibility incredibly seriously as I know the whole success of TBC rest's on it being a reliable source. Whoever you choose, your 09 EP purchases will not be arriving until 2012 so you don't want to be stressing about receiving them! Do NOT buy any wine from cold callers promising high returns. There's a lot of unscrupulous characters out there praying on those who had heard that wine is a solid investment, but don't know the full score. Understanding the process is not difficult in itself but the buying choices are variable and require a bit of insight, knowledge and willingness (bravery?) to jump on at the right time. I only myself decided to buy EP with the 2004 vintage and since then I've been lucky enough to be involved (or not) with an excellent cross section of  Bordeaux vintages. After assessing the physical and fiscal development of these wines, and benefiting from them in different ways, I progressed to launching the first TBC EP campaign with the 08's. I've been glad to be able to step it up a notch for the 09's. I'll relay more of my experience so far but before I do, here's a basic explanation of the principle…

EP is a wine release system for the Bordeaux Chateau whereby they sell extremely young wines to the Bordeaux trade as "futures". The trade then sell these on to consumers for a small mark up. These infant wines are still maturing in barrel and 2 years away from actual bottling. Barrel samples of the young vintage are assessed by critics, journalists and trade, then hotly debated. As top Bordeaux is expensive, and is known to rise in value, many people wish to buy it as early as possible at the Chateau "release" price. The idea being that it will never be cheaper than this and very likely be more expensive, even double/tripling in price. The early influx of funds was traditionally a welcome cash injection for the Chateau (and trade) who needed to fund next years considerable vineyard expenses. Whether they are we healed or not, all the higher end Chateau use the EP system as a successful marking tool.

Many wine enthusiasts, investors and merchants have taken advantage of this system and made good returns from flipping their purchases a few years down the line. However it isn't always advisable to buy this early. The wine has a long way to go in terms of physical development and can be misread by even the greatest of palates. It can also be unrealistically priced by the Bordelaise, which is a rather irksome habit of theirs! Prices can hit the market and fluctuate up and down or simply remain the same, making an early purchase unnecessary. It's basically a classic supply and demand situation, often ramped up by the top Chateau only releasing a proportion ('tranche') of their wine. They obviously want to get in on the higher prices later and do their best to fuel the demand by limiting availability. However, this can be a dangerous game to play when you have wine to sell and you need income from it! Buyers can always pass on an incorrectly priced wine or vintage, leaving Chateaux and trade with too much inventory. The Chateau secure their position by only giving an 'allocation' of their wines to merchants who bought in previous years - pass on a bad year and you'll miss the next fab vintage like 2000, 2005 (or 2009!) There's a lot of short and long term gain to be had from receiving good allocations of these wines.

Though there's obviously a serious financial (greedy?) side to this, it's loads of fun observing the play and trying to call it right. I personally allow the height of my desire to actually consume the wine (!) to influence my buying decisions. Others couldn't care less about the juice and are purely sharking for good investments. The Chateau have hardly discouraged this despite their claims of purely 'expressing the soil'! I too must confess that, now as a merchant, I enjoy the duty of identifying the most suited EP wines for both purposes. Many consumers also get involved with both too-having risen in price, the resale wines end up paying for the drinking ones. TBC is itself perhaps one stage further on than that as I actually used EP purchases to start a small business. Collectors act as mini merchants and often re sell their EP wines to the very merchant who supplied it to them. I simply decided to be a merchant myself though I had a far wider remit than just selling futures. Anyway, you'd be surprised how many times great Bordeaux can be successfully marked up!

When the demand is there things can go crazy like any stock market. Thankfully though, what I found as a novice was that, regardless of all the investment gambling and scary risk taking, EP still works as a simple opportunity to buy your favourite Chateau when there are plenty of new cases around at a decent price. Even with tranche releases, there's always a finite number so once you've grabbed what you want, you can sit back and wait for you merchant to bring the wine into the UK. A gentle pre-ordering system that becomes very satisfying if the wine increases in value! If it doesn't, you've still got some great wine to drink. Non investment Bordeaux still makes delicious drinking. Perhaps you didn't need to buy it early but that's not too much of a problem when it's washing down a juicy steak! It's actually quite rare for prices to descend from their EP level though that can and does happen. Usually when prices sink it represents a return to release levels following a surge. That's obviously a tad annoying for EP players but if you are prepared to hang onto wines for years, they become much sounder investments! In the best vintages, good returns can be made sooner but when the Bordelais completely misjudge demand the market will do it's thing and find it's own lower price. Collectors are very accomplished at swerving these wines and vintages though…it happened to me once and but I was only down a wee bit! It doesn't take too long to become savvy and good merchants advise correctly when to avoid the hype. Still…as I say, be careful not to circum to over aggressive marketing!

This brings me onto the issue of 'provenance,' a valuable commodity with the re-selling and ownership of Bordeaux. When eventually bottled, the EP wines imported directly from Bordeaux into Government Bonded warehouses like London City Bond have a desirable 100% provenance. Some collectors will not buy any wines that been released from these warehouses into the realms of being "Duty Paid". Many do though, and there is a very popular auction scene for classed Bordeaux. Of course serious collectors may have their own cellars to keep these expensive wines at the right temperature & humidity. You can never be sure where an auction wine has really been, though the catalogue will give some info. Cases of wine are now starting to be fitted with provenance technology that records the sort of temperatures they've been subjected too. Very handy, but I personally haven't found many problems with auction wines. Bordeaux in bottle, with a sound cork, is pretty robust but if you are thinking of selling on I would recommend opening a professional storage account for your EP wines to settle down in. TBC will doubtless be offering this facility by the time the 09's appear in bottle.

So how will the TBC 09 campaign work? Well, firstly if you sign up to the TBC mailing list, you'll receive regular email offers from me. These come to you after the wine has been offered to TBC via La Place de Bordeaux, a network of independent French merchant-negociants. Different Chateau have exclusivities with different negoce so TBC needs various negociant accounts to make sure it's in the mix for a good cross section (ie-my favourite!!) releases! As well as offering you the EP wines and, (should you decide to buy) confirming your ownership of them via invoicing, I'll be also securing wines for TBC stock and my own private cellar. Not everything that I offer will be my personal choice, but I'm more than happy to secure other peoples favourites. I always try to give an unbiased opinion and the most significant ratings for the wines. Building your own Chateau allegiance is some of the best fun about it and I'm obviously happy to take as many orders as possible! Having said that, I'm always keen to advise to the best of my knowledge how I think a release is likely to physically and financially develop. I've been pretty good at it so far but I'm not an all seeing oracle! My best bottom line advice it to be prepared to drink it! It's only time that can realise the top returns and that's the carrot that buying EP dangles!

Here's how previous campaigns worked for me...

2004- Without doubt a tricky vintage but the wines were correctly priced low by the Bordelaise. They therefore started to look very attractive when the highly priced 2005's hit the market and many of the med to high tier wines made positive price movements after a couple of years. However, I still regard the 04's as best for drinking rather than investing as the vintage perception is not strong enough to sustain long term stability. Similarly, the wines themselves may not last the course, with some glorious exceptions! Generally I have found that they are superb to drink now so why wait!
 
2005- Stunning wines from the one of the best vintages in modern times. On release, they seemed expensively priced by the Bordelaise, but time has proved that they mostly got it right. The wines are fabulous and very much for the long term with classy tannic structure. They have also increased in price considerably and though these did correct in line with the recession in 2008/9. They are back on the rise now but choose carefully! Generally good for all involved and will continue to be. I bought heavily into this vintage and I'm very glad that I rode the stress of doing that!

2006- After the giddy heights of the 05's, the Bordelaise tried to hype up a good, but unexceptional vintage. Consequently, they over priced on release. However, the wines sold though to the trade regardless and there is still a lot of it remaining unsold in merchant cellars. I bought very sparingly on release and decided to wait it out, guessing that they would be the same price or lower with time. At present I'm very happy to just own my favourites for (eventual) drinking in this kind of vintage. However there may be a future in terms of investment and some corrected prices are starting to look attractive now.

2007-Not a vintage for the longterm in any way! However, the Bordelaise, pleased that they had been able to sell the so-so 06's to the trade at good prices (for them!), pulled the same trick and massively overpriced an inferior vintage to 06! This was a major error by them IMO. The trade, keen to keep up allocations, dutifully bought a fair few which they are now stuck with! The fallout is still being debated as it's obvious that the only way for the 07's to sell is by heavily reducing the prices…but who takes the hit? In a positive light, many of them still make delicious short term drinking and when the inevitable reductions occur there will be some bargain opportunities for consumers. I haven't bought one 07 yet, but have enjoyed tasting many! At the time I was very keen to get on the ladder as an En Primeur merchant but seeing as TBC would have been instantly ruined by heavy 07 buying, I was forced to wait it out another year. Thank god I did!


2008- Hurray! Bordeaux returned to sensible pricing after messing things up for the wine trade in the past two years. To be fair to them, any business has a right to achieve the best price possible for it's wares and that's all they were doing…but it could also be argued that they were biting the hand that feeds them! Anyway, 2008 was generally a hard year in the vineyard but some excellent weather in the later growing season helped produce lovely, if variable wines. The Bordelaise, now worried about a major boycott due to the 06 & 07 issues and the global recession, responded with (dare I say it!) cheap prices for very decent wines! I saw it as a good opportunity to join the circus and jumped on in a restrained manner, knowing that the recession would limit sales. In hindsight I should have jumped in further as the 09's are likely to be expensive again which will make all the 08's look very attractive possible investments. There is some debate as to their longevity but I'm quietly confident. There's still plenty more life in this vintage anyway…it'll be fun being involved though I wish I had more wine!
 
2009??? As you may have gathered by now. The 09's are pretty awesome in quality, especially on the left bank! There was a near perfect growing season and the Chateau have been able to produce rich and supple wines with heaps of velvet tannin and fruit. What a prospect we have for the future! I've tasted some three or four times now and I've been increasingly blown away. However, the top drawer conditions have led to a few over extractions at some (mostly Right Bank) properties so it's perhaps not as uniformly successful as 2005. The prices will be expensive but the personally I think that's fair enough when the wines are this good. Quality has to be rewarded though I wish that also worked the other way round more regularly! There still could be some ridiculous over egging of prices and therefore the big question for consumers is 'will they rise like the 05's did or simply remain at a high static level?' 'Should I buy these wines early? I think my advice at this stage will be to say a cautious 'yes' but to take each release at a time. The 05's proved that high pricing can look cheap a few months down the line but there is still a price limit for everything. Some Chateau will be high but fair, but some will be off the charts and I would advise to regretfully decline those estates for now...unless money is no obstacle! If prices are too high, you may actually be better buying 2005's and 2000's for investment purposes. Crucially for me, as a drinker first who likes to dabble at sensible investment, there will be bargains at the lower and mid tier (eg- as I write- Lanessan, Vieille Cure, Lilian Ladouys, Angludet, Capbern Gasqueton) as this is the beauty of a strong vintage. I think it's well worth buying some of these for drinking and also a few higher enders. The key thing is insuring ownership of some profound wines as they are likely to be in short supply in future! We should be able see the laughably priced wines coming and make a decision to swerve, or pay up with resigned, open eyed, fortitude!

May the best Vin win!!