From Sigi Hiss
, at 17. April 2009 14:18
By Jancis Robinson - The trouble with the 2008 vintage Bordeaux that I tasted last week, along with many from Britain and Asia though fewer from the US, is that it looks really rather good - certainly very much better than the wildly overpriced 2007s, even though last year’s summer was scarcely more propitious.
In at least one important way, it would have been much more convenient for many interested parties, and especially the top Bordeaux châteaux owners, if 2008 had been even less successful than the 2007. That way, in recognition of these extremely straitened times, they could easily have dramatically reduced the opening prices traditionally announced at this time of year, or even abandoned altogether the relatively recent tradition of the primeurs campaign, whereby proprietors manage to sell the new vintage two years ahead of delivery. There would be no loss of face and no knock-on effects on the prices of other recent vintages.
Proprietors of the very few dozen most sought-after wine names in Bordeaux are still flush with the proceeds of their sales of the last few vintages. The 2005s were a soaring success and the wines are now sitting in temperature-controlled storage around the globe, losing value after an extraordinary peak in prices last year. The ambitiously priced 2006s were much less popular with final consumers. As for the rather scrawny 2007s, partly because they were offered this time last year while prices of the 2005s were still sky high, and partly because of the “tradition” that Bordeaux’s principal middle men, the négociants, keep their allocations only by continuing to buy, the châteaux owners managed to sell their 2007s and move them notionally (they are yet to be bottled) as far as the merchants’ warehouses around Bordeaux. But a vast proportion of these 2007s are still sitting on the merchants’ books, unloved, unwanted and, if Bordeaux gossip is to be believed, threatening the very existence of several négociants. More than ever in Bordeaux wine everything, but everything, is for sale.
The global economy is such that it is difficult to see these 2007s finding a ready market in the near future - especially at the inflated prices at which they were offered, which made them costlier than many a fine mature vintage. The only ready markets for the 2007s seem to have been emerging wine-consuming countries, such as South Korea, whose big companies’ leap into the fine wine market most unfortunately coincided with a vintage such as 1997 that more experienced buyers could see was overpriced.
As I reported three weeks ago, the British fine wine trade, usually the most active buyers of Bordeaux en primeur, insisted that there will be no primeur campaign at all this year unless 2008s are priced considerably lower than the 2007s. Despite this, Bordeaux châteaux owners were trying to convince us tasters last week that they could not reduce the price of their 2008s because that would be an insult to those who had bought the 2006s and 2007s.
But on Monday, Hubert de Boüard of St-Émilion, whose empire has been rapidly expanding lately, took everyone by surprise by announcing an opening price for his Ch Angélus, at 40 per cent less than his 2007 was offered, making it, along with the 2004, the cheapest vintage available (though still more than £700 a dozen for those paying in sterling). Since then there has been stasis (...)
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