New 2021 Chateau Releases from Bordeaux

The cellar of Chateau Angelus just released their 2021 Vintage “en primeur”

When I was a somewhat younger man, back in New York City, I worked for a wine importer in Manhattan. I would sit behind a very big, very loud gray teletype machine roughly the size of Nebraska and move documents of authentication around from the wineries, through the truck companies and the Port of Bordeaux, then all the way through the Manhattan port to our warehouse.

You had to put your weight into those keys to get them to print—my hands would get tired—and every time we got a message a bell rang on that thing like a San Francisco trolley car. When the expensive wineries in France started to release their vintages in Spring and Summer it sounded like a Trolley convention.

The En Primeur (“Premiere) Season is in full swing now in France with the famous Bordeaux and Burgundy wineries selling the first “tranches,” or “lots” of the 2021 vintage. This is one of the oldest rituals in the wine business to still continue today.

You could do the whole thing with computers now. In fact, given today’s computers it would be a lot faster and more efficient to eliminate people entirely, but for the moment at least, En Primeur releases are an occasion for parties, and tastings, and elaborate celebrations.

So, a lot of the famous wineries are holding barrel tastings now to give the buyers an idea of what they are buying. An exciting time is had by all.

I used to tag along with my boss and sometimes more or less accidentally get into a major Chateau tasting. He was an American born in France, so I just ignored the entire French language, nodded when anyone said anything in French and smiled a lot. He did the rest.

The hosting Chateau would set up long tables with white tablecloths and rows and rows of crystal glasses and food everywhere. Staff would dress in black tie and move silently between the crowds, wrapping each bottle in a white linen napkin first, and then pouring exactly one ounce into what I preferred to believe were crystal glasses.

If you were a buyer, you might end up spending tens of thousands of dollars based on that one ounce so buyers were a little more careful than usual before they committed.

Down it like Tequila and they’d end up broke.

An En Primeur 2020 tasting in Croatia

https://ribafish.com/en-primeur

Buyers of all shapes and sizes came mumbling in accents from countries all over the world bending over their calculators and cursing, mostly. They were tapping out conversion ratios for the currency, freight costs, custom costs and warehousing to figure out what they would have to sell the wine for when they finally got it.

All the famous wine critics would come from all over the world too, sniffing and snorting and, looking like they could use a salad now and then. Also, passing judgment. That always seemed unfair to me, although you had to do it because as a winery owner, you needed the publicity to get your price up.

It took 70 people to work all year to produce a vintage, fighting fire, frost and drought— and then a bunch of fat people fly in and tell you whether it’s any good or not. That’s part of my reluctance to completely embrace wine critics. I did enjoy the cheese, however.

Once the winery sets the initial price per bottle, the price of the subsequent releases would depend on how the critics and buyers reacted. Generally the wines were released by the palette (56 cases— four levels of fourteen cases each) unless you’re really in demand.

Should you be in the enviable position of running an historic property, you might sell as little as three bottles at a time, and see how it goes.

It was, and is, a slightly corrupt, but oddly pure auction system—capitalism at its finest.

And, oh my, the money that was spent.

There are people who specialize in tasting from the barrels for this very reason. Mistakes are costly. You pick the ones you think will sell, not the ones you like the best.

It takes a special palate too to know what your customers will like. It also means you have to take the relative value of wine into consideration, not just the price. You can love something you either can’t afford or don’t want to overpay for. And, of course, it’s a kind of slow motion auction, so someone can buy the lot you want right out from under you if you wait too long.

You squint, you sigh, your eyes turn red.

Then you lay your money down and you take your chances.

The Garonne river in Bordeaux, France

https://www.viator.com/Bordeaux-tourism

Wine Along the Garonne

The buyers could theoretically be anybody, but practically, the seller’s have a handful of brokers whom they’ve dealt with for years. The brokers’ businesses are often handed down through families for several generations, although cash in the pocket always makes a difference in France.

Still, the wines are allocated almost entirely to the brokers whose offices line the quays (docks) on the Garonne River where they have been in some cases, for hundreds of years.

The Chateaus set an allocation for each broker. If the broker doesn’t take the whole allocation then next year they won’t get as many cases. That means in bad years you still have to buy as much as you do in good years or you get less of what you can sell.

Buyers learn all manner of ways to sell the bad years without damaging the brand name. Strangely, the bad vintages are never the one you are tasting, it’s one from the past which is of course now, sold out.

That’s part of why the broker-grower relationships are so strong, because the system takes all the financial risk off the Chateau. You have to trust who you are dealing with. The broker (or whoever he resells it to) owns the wine but it probably stays in the Chateau until it’s shipped.

In the past, Negociants in London or other cities might take delivery of the wine while it’s still at this raw stage and make the choices of what kind of barrels to age it in, what to add or not add, and all the other decisions to prepare the wine for sale.

This doesn’t happen anymore, as far as I know, because the Chateau wants control over the final product these days but in the 17th and 18th century, they weren’t so choosy.

In practice it helps to know the lingo. Here are two samples from this month’s Decanter Magazine’s review of the new releases. You can find it at: www.decanter.com.

Chateau Angelus in St. Emilion, France

Chateau Angelus 2021

“Château Angélus 2021 was released en primeur at €265 per bottle ex-Bordeaux, according to Liv-ex, up by around 2% on the 2020-vintage opening price. Merchants were offering Angélus 2021 for £3,120 (12x75cl in bond).

Decanter’s Georgie Hindle scored Angélus 2021 95 points, praising its ‘exceptional finesse.’ She said the wine represents an excellent effort, following a Bordeaux 2021 growing season that presented many weather challenges.

Angélus follows top St-Emilion wines Cheval Blanc and Pavie in joining a Bordeaux en primeur campaign that is beginning to gather pace.”

Note:

I didn’t convert into U.S. dollars because that conversion rate is part of critical details of any deal you’re making. Blow the conversion rate and you can blow your profit.

Liv-ex is a London based wine market (like the stock market) that specializes in the best and most expensive wines in the world. Since prices are bid and asked as bids and requests come in, it serves as a mirror on the value of any given wine at any given time.

Also, note that Chateau Palmer (below) is a rare biodynamic wine for the major Chateaus.

Chateau Palmer in the Margaux, Bordeaux, France

https://joaniemetivier.com/palmer/

Chateau Palmer and Chateau Pontet-Canet 2021

“Château Palmer 2021 debuted on Tuesday (24 May) at €240 per bottle ex-Bordeaux, level with the 2020-vintage opening price but with 30% less volume released this year, according to Liv-ex.

UK merchants were offering the wine for £2,844 (12x75cl in bond), which Liv-ex said was slightly above the price of Palmer 2019 and 2016 but significantly below the 2018 price.

Decanter’s Georgie Hindle gave Palmer 2021 96 points, putting the biodynamic estate among the top successes of a difficult vintage for Bordeaux in general.

‘It may be less glamorous and overtly plush and seductive than bigger previous vintages but I love the classicism on show – a focus, precision and sophistication,’ Hindle wrote.

Bordeaux Index recently highlighted Château Palmer as one of several Bordeaux ‘super second’ estates that enjoyed strong trading momentum on its LiveTrade platform in 2021.

Another biodynamic estate, Pauillac-based Château Pontet-Canet, also released its 2021 vintage on Tuesday. Farr Vintners and Bordeaux Index were selling the wine for £890 (12x75cl in bond).

Decanter rated Pontet-Canet 2021 95 points. ‘If you love Pontet, and classic Pauillac claret, this is an impressive reference point,’ Hindle wrote in her in-depth tasting note.

Wine Lister quoted a UK release price of around £74.17 per bottle in bond, similar to the 2020-vintage opening price. Pontet-Canet 2019 debuted at £60 per bottle but has risen in price by around 50-60% since release, Lister said.” —from Decanter Magazine, www.decanter.com

Echoes From the Past

The teletypes are gone now, silenced forever. Today you just take your phone out of your pocket and you can call anybody in the world that will take your call. I know that’s good for some things, but I don’t think it’s good for everything.

En Primeur is a tradition from the distant past. In some of its rituals it's like slipping back unnoticed into the 17th century.

Freight consolidation and shipping for En Primeur transactions are all handled on computers now. Although I will note that given our current supply chain problems, computers still can’t squeeze three big boats into one small space at the dock.

Or, unload them once they get there.

Even within my lifetime, people talked to people to get these things done. I would talk to Jean Pierre and Jean Pierre would tell me how his wife keeps nagging him to fix the driveway.

Now, machines talk to machines. It’s more efficient, but it inevitably drives us farther apart from each other.

Wine is about drawing people closer together.

It seems to me that the most important lesson we can learn now is what to keep from the past, what to throw away, and what to leave alone.