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Hors Bordeaux 2024: don’t write it off before it’s begun

02 September 2024 By Colin Hay

An increasingly key test of fine wine market sentiment is La Place’s September hors Bordeaux campaign, yet is no secret that market conditions remain pretty dire, and that those conditions will have significant consequence for the form and fortune of the campaign and those who depend upon it – but don’t be tempted to write off the autumn collection before it has even been unveiled.

The campaign itself begins in earnest this week, the first week of September, following the release of Domaine de Baronarques’ wines on the 29 August. It will conclude, at least as far as the hors Bordeaux wines are concerned, on the 25 September with a little flurry of Chilean offerings. Palmer’s historic release of the 2014 vintage, 10 years on, follows the next day, bringing the new offerings to a close, even if the hard work of selling these wines will just be starting.

Coming, as they do, after the troubled – and, for the courtiers, négociants and châteaux of La Place, troubling – 2023 en primeur campaign, it might be tempting to write off the autumn collection already, before it has even been unveiled. But that, I think, would be a mistake, for two reasons above all. The first is the sheer quality and diversity of the wines now released through La Place each autumn. How those releases fare – immediately and in the months to come – will provide clear clues as to the global fine wine market’s prospects for the year ahead. That alone warrants our close (if perhaps anxious) attention. The second is that, partly (if only partly) for the same reason, the market situation that these wines face is not the same as that of their ostensible Bordeaux peers released last spring.

Above all, coming as they typically do from the qualitative summit of each of the regions from which they hail, they will not be released into a market already awash with discounted stock of previous vintages of a similar quality. That was, of course, also true for some en primeur releases – but, crucially, not for the majority of them. And that simple fact changes significantly the scenario here and, with it, the prospects for these wines upon release.

The effect of all of that is that, whilst I do not envisage price reductions approaching those that, of course, failed to instil new interest in en primeur in the spring, I do envisage significant interest in the majority of these wines – even in market conditions characterised, above all, by the lack of demand for new releases of young wines.

A more coordinated campaign

The structure of the campaign is a little different this year, reflecting a rather greater (and very welcome) degree of coordination between the leading courtiers. Following on from a week of ‘historical releases’ (wines like Opus One, Almaviva, Masseto and Solaia that have been sold through la place for over a decade), the majority of the new releases will now come to the market by region – Australia and Italy (Tuscany, Piedmont and Sicily) in the second full week of the campaign (9-13 September), California, Spain and France (Burgundy and Champagne) in the third (16-20 September), before Argentina and then Chile in the final week (23-25 September). ‘Riesling week’ will see releases, for the first time, from a number of Mosel and Rheingau legends and will take place in mid-October (21-23 October).

Wines like Giodo and Poggio di Sotto will continue to stick to their now well-established December release dates. These I have yet to taste and they do not appear in my otherwise comprehensive set of tasting notes, which will be published region-by-region.

Arrivals and departures

Given the prevailing market conditions and mood music, it is hardly surprising that there are few new arrivals on La Place this year. But there are some and they are all pretty impressive.

They come in one of three forms:

the further extension of an existing portfolio of wines (Favia’s Oakville; the new additions to Bibi Graetz’s exquisite monocépage Balocchi series; Bòggina A from Petrolo and Clos Apalta’s Prélude);
a new wine from a previously unrepresented appellation or region (Georges Vigouroux’s Le Grand Malbec from Chateau de Haute-Serre in Cahors);

and, perhaps most excitingly, and as already alluded to,

the arrival of a little cluster of wines from a new region, with Schloss Johannisberg, Dr Loosen and Gunther Steinmetz bringing top Riesling from the Rheingau and Mosel, respectively, to join Malkus Molitor’s Domäne Serrig (whose first release was last year).

Less surprisingly perhaps, there are departures too; but fewer than you might imagine. One or two properties have withdrawn from La Place altogether; one or two more are offering this year only a miniscule second release of one or most older vintages; one or two more are essentially forgoing the opportunity to bring a wine to La Place during the current campaign as they ponder the future of their love affair with the distribution system.

A rather larger number of properties remain ‘present and releasing’, as it were, but with a recomposed and typically smaller négociant pool. But such changes are, from the market or consumer’s perspective, of no great significance. There is nothing unusual nor terribly alarming about the shuffling and/or down-scaling of négociant pools.

The wines themselves

And what of the wines themselves? With wines being offered to the market now from 13 different countries across the globe, it is difficult to generalise – but after tasting more than 140 wines being released in the autumn collection, I am happy to state categorically that I have never tasted before a more impressive set of autumn collection releases.

That is in part because of the quality of the vintages on offer, as we move from the troubled 2020 to 2021 vintage in Napa, or from 2020 to the fantastic 2021 vintage in Australia. But it is certainly not just that. For it would be difficult to suggest that 2021 and 2022 are better Tuscan vintages than their 2019 and 2020 predecessors. But they seem to have produced just as many utterly fantastic wines.

More significant surely is the sheer quality of the wine-making displayed here and the capacity of the leading courtiers and négociants, often working in tandem, to select wines of the highest quality, even where they come from less famous addresses.

That said, and while I am an unalloyed fan, there are at least some sceptical voices being raised in the tasting rooms of Bordeaux. I have heard it said, from certain highly respected critics coming to Bordeaux to taste these wines for the first time, that they sometime miss what they characterise as the rustic austerity and associated personality of certain regions – notably Southern Australia and the Napa Valley. The implicit suggestion here is that these are very European-styled wines, often with a clear historic or current link to Bordeaux. They have been carefully selected by the guardians of contemporary European vinous taste. And if that is what they are saying (at least to me, and in private for now) I don’t think they are entirely wrong.

But, I am the Bordeaux correspondent of The Drinks Business – and that’s my taste too. It is certainly true that finesse, elegance, poise, precision and freshness characterise almost all of these wines – more and more so in fact. There is, if you like, a certain stylistic convergence here; they are cut from the same stylistic cloth. But that, for me, is a very good thing.

And now that you know where I stand, that leads me, neatly enough, to some of my highlights of the autumn collection. There are many and the devil, of course, rests in the details of my tasting notes (see here). But without scouring those tasting notes again, the following spring immediately to mind as stars of the autumn campaign.

The Italian monocépage Merlot wines: Masseto, Galatrona, Giorgio Primo, Sette and Bibi Graetz’s Balocchi No. 9;
… but also Siepi, Solaia and Colore;
Some of the perhaps lesser known Napa Valley wines, notably those from Morlet, Favia, Peter Michael and Pym Rae;
… but also those from their rather better known neighbours Paul Hobbs, Inglenook and (in Sonoma) Vérité;
From Spain, Yjar and Matallana (from Telmo Rodríguez), VivaltuS and Marqués de Riscal’s Tapias;
From Chile, Seña, Viñedo Chadwick, Clos Apalta and Vigna Maquis;
From Argentina, Cobos, Cheval des Andes and Adrianna Vineyard’s Mundus Bacillus Terrae;
From Australia, Cloudburst’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Penfold’s Grange and Wynns’ John Riddoch;
Turning to the whites, it is difficult to look past the new German Rieslings coming to la place for the first time from Schloss Johannisberg, Dr Loosen and Gunther Steinmetz, alongside those from Markus Molitor’s Domäne Serrig;
Beyond Riesling, too, there are plenty of highlights from an impressive set of releases, notably Domaine de la Chapelle’s Hermitage Le Chevalier de Sterimberg, De La Riva’s Macharnudo San Cayetano and Inglenook’s Blancaneaux;
And, from Champagne, I would single out Clos Lanson 2010 and, inevitably perhaps, Philippponnat’s Clos des Goisses 2015.