A First Look at Bordeaux 2023

Can en primeur sales provide hope for fine wine sales worldwide?

There’s been a lot of hoopla surrounding the Bordeaux en primeur events this May. Avid wine collectors and industry veterans often make the annual spring tasting of Bordeaux’s recent vintage a calendar highlight. With so much dire press about people drinking less wine, all eyes have been on Bordeaux to see if the 2023 vintage will be special enough (and priced at just the right number) to entice people into consuming more luxury wine.

A quick review for the curious: En primeur (also known as “futures”) sales entail tastings and sales of the current vintage’s wine before its public release date. Depending on the location, tastings can be done with samples of an almost-ready bottling or even barrel samples. The en primeur wines usually take a little longer to mature, so this is an effective way for big name chateaux to generate some cash flow while the current vintage continues to develop, whether in bottle or in barrel. Bordeaux is the premiere location for en primeur sales (I’m so sorry for the pun, it just kinda happened), and Burgundy’s en primeur sales are also a major event in a wine lover’s calendar. We’re now starting to see some en primeur sales for wine regions like Piedmont, Tuscany, the Rhône Valley, Napa Valley, and Germany; any region with big differences from vintage to vintage is a good candidate for this type of sale.