The Bordeaux 2015 en primeur campaign, now in its endgame, should turn out to be the most exciting and profitable for many years. It is certainly the most talked-about – and the most divisive.
Last week saw a flurry of major releases: Cos d'Estournel ($135 per bottle ex-negoce), Margaux ($432), Angelus ($284), Pavie ($284), Haut-Brion ($433), Mouton ($432), Ducru Beaucaillou ($135), Vieux Château Certan ($169). Almost all the major 2015s are under the current market price of the 2009s and 2010s.
While some wine merchants, both in the US and the UK, are gloomy about sales, there is no doubt that 2015 has galvanized interest in Bordeaux – although no one is pretending sales will ever get back to the heady heights of the 2009 and 2010 vintages.
What is most apparent is that this has been a vintage of communes. The en primeur tastings of April were barely over before Margaux, Pessac-Léognan and the Right Bank were being talked up as the star appellations of the vintage. And it satisfies one of the key criteria for greatness: it's good at all levels. Everyone agrees the Cru Bourgeois 2015 is excellent, well-priced, and will be wonderful in bottle. "I have bought lots because I know I'll be needing it in the future," said Mathieu Chadronnier, managing director of the huge Bordeaux negociant CVBG Grands Crus.
For some, the success of Margaux, the Graves and Saint-Émilion and Pomerol has been borne out in sales. "These regions did well," Max Lalondrelle of Berry Bros told Wine-Searcher. "In other regions we sold much less than last year. Giscours and Brane Cantenac are perfect examples of a great success in 2015 – mainly to do with the fact that they are Margaux properties."
Lalondrelle said he has sold five times as much 2015 Giscours as the previous vintage (15,186 bottles compared with 2982), and three times as much Brane Cantenac (3894 compared with 1300).
"When you take the equivalent properties outside Margaux, the opposite happens; 2800 bottles of Leoville Poyferré in 2014 but 1812 in 2015. Nearly 7776 bottles of Talbot 2014 against 1500 this year."
Berry Bros is one of the only wine merchants prepared to give sales figures, and again, they are illustrative of the gap between the perception of 2015 as a great vintage, and the reality of how much people are buying. "This is going to be a quiet vintage for us," Lalondrelle says. "We'll sell between £12m ($17.1m) and £15m ($21.4m) when it's over. We sold £16m ($22.8m) of 2011, and £15m of 2012."
But the right wines at the right prices have flown. BI (formerly Bordeaux Index) is always upbeat. "We've had a great time," the merchant's marketing chief Giles Cooper reports, immediately citing the $32.70 Cantemerle as an example. "We've sold 250 cases, and we did 10 of the 2014. There are all kinds of nuggets like that."
Cooper's even positive about wines like Pichon Baron ($108), which had some of the highest scores of the vintage but is considered hopelessly expensive by the likes of Farr Vintners' Tom Hudson ("we haven't found many customers for it") and others.
"Yes, it's expensive," Cooper says. "But it's 20 per cent cheaper than '09 or '10. That's good enough for us."
Still, prices are a problem. "We feel that people would have bought a lot more if there had been more value for money," Will Gardener of Nickolls and Perks near Birmingham told Wine-Searcher. In common with most, he's had a good campaign at the value end – Cru Bourgeois has been particularly successful – but others have "pushed the price a bit far".
Then there is the fact that people are still suffering from burnt fingers. "2009 and 2010 are not ancient history," Hudson noted. "The first growths from those vintages have lost 40-50 percent of their value. There's nothing wrong with the wines in 2015 but we haven't been able to get behind them. We would have loved to say to our customers: 'These wines are not only great but they are sensibly priced, so buy them', but we can’t."
Many merchants cited "risk" as the reason they are not taking full allocations this year but buying on demand. "It's just too risky," Hudson said; and Lalondrelle: "We take a position on the few wines that represent low risk."
Both cited the upcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union and the consequent uncertainty about exchange rates as one of the reasons for their hesitancy.
In Bordeaux, negociants are bullish. Chadronnier said 2105 was "clearly the best campaign since the 2010". He agrees it's slow, but is unworried by that, as "achieving sales takes a long time nowadays. I expect this to go on until September."
Demand is healthy worldwide, he says, and interest has revived in the US. "It's not a big market but it is the market we are seeing back this year, after being totally upset in the last four years."
There's truth in that. The phones aren't ringing off the hook, but "this is the first vintage to generate genuine excitement since '09 and '10", according to Devin Warner, president of the Chicago Wine Company, who has sold lots of the reasonably priced early releases like Smith Haut-Lafitte and Giscours, but as the campaign wears on says he is just "picking up scraps".
Others are more low-key. One major US operator – speaking off-record – lamented the "obscene" prices of Angelus and Pavie, but took solace in the fact that at least they were late releases and so didn't queer the market for everyone else. In Washington DC, Mark Wessels of MacArthur Beverages told Wine-Searcher he was "gloomy".
"What could have been a good campaign has turned disappointing and frustrating," he said, one of the main reasons being the slowness of the campaign. "We lost the momentum we had in early May when the positive reviews came out. This is the age of the internet – customers want to read about the wine and buy it 10 seconds later – they don't expect to read about the wine and then wait four to eight weeks before it's offered. Yes, I sold some 2015 Pichon Lalande on June 15 – but I would have sold a lot more if they had offered it on May 15."
Pavie's Gerard Perse hit back, saying price was only one criterion for customers.
"It's a pity that some distributors do not offer Château Pavie to their customers on the grounds that they find the price too high. Too high compared to what?" he asked.
"These distributors have they ever tasted the 2015? Are they regular buyers of Château Pavie? I think people who are best able to judge the prices are the final consumers. The customers who buy 'en-primeur' wines , who appreciate and recognize the quality of wines produced at Château Pavie, will get in touch with other distributors. Château Pavie is certainly a wine with its own characteristics, optimum ripeness, and so forth. While some retailers are wondering, Château Pavie sells well, even very well; just check Livex to realize it. Nevertheless, everyone is free to judge as he wishes. I just find that these regrettable words ignore, intentionally or unintentionally, the work done in the properties, judging only on a single criterion."
The verdict in a nutshell? Bordeaux is back in the game with the best vintage since 2010, but you don't need to rush to buy.
