Bordeaux 2015: the shape of things to come?

The trade is barely back from Bordeaux and already there have been a couple of release prices from small estates – do their increases foreshadow what’s to come?

A handful of relatively minor estates such as La Couspaude and La Tour Figeac from Saint Emilion were released this week all bearing price increases as expected.

La Couspaude came out at €34 per bottle ex-négociant which is a 13.3% increase on its 2014 price of €30 p/b.

Although there is still some doubt as to the overall ‘greatness’ of 2015 as a vintage, a 13% increase would probably be viewed relatively favourably by merchants who all knew and accepted that there would be rises on the 2014 prices.

On the other hand, it’s not as simple as merely saying it’s a 13% rise because the Sterling is considerably weaker against the euro at the moment than it was at this point last year.

As Liv-ex points out on its blog, in relative terms therefore, taking currency into account, the price increase is actually 25% and for US buyers it’s 18%.

With merchants and critics still digesting all they tasted in Bordeaux last week and with scores from more critics yet to be released, it’s unlikely that these wines have been picked up and even less likely offered just yet.

Even with Bordeaux have something more of a spring in its step in the secondary market currently, the enormous drop off in interest in the whole process of en primeur from the 2011 campaign onwards has made merchants wary (see graph below).

En Primeur as a percentage of the trade on Liv-ex dropped from just over 10% for the 2010 campaign to 2.6% for the 2011 campaign. It has hardly improved since.

Even before the primeur tastings the general feeling was they would only “kill what they could eat” when it came to this campaign, making it limited in scope from the outset but also potentially quite successful.

If the prices set by these early releases is a taste of what’s to come there may be a sense there will be some good buys to be had.

If it means that bigger name châteaux are going to have even heftier price hikes (currency factored in as well) then the prospect of this campaign breaking the trend of recent years is probably very slim indeed.