Will 2025 prove a ‘reckoning’ for the hors Bordeaux campaign?

This autumn’s lacklustre hors Bordeaux campaign hints there will be “a true reckoning in 2025” if negociants and producers don’t heed the market conditions, a fine wine merchant has warned.

This autumn’s hors Bordeaux campaign was a “lacklustre” affair, in spite of good critics’ scores.

According to Wine Lister, one leading UK merchant cited a lack of consumer demand, “despite best efforts to persuade”, while another reported that they had “sold barely anything this month”, and that the “year-on-year discount of 15%, when the market has dropped 15% over the past 12 months, does not represent a relative discount.”

Liv-ex noted in a recent article published by the drinks business, that “the gap between what producers hope to sell their wines for and what the market deems reasonable remains wide.”  It concluded that recent releases [of certain named wines] “have generally been far from compelling”, not because of an increase in the release prices on last year, but “because previous vintages have fallen significantly in value since release”.

Although some key 2021 releases from Italy had been successful because of the 100pt scores – “clearly a compelling vintage,” Matt O’Connell of Bordeaux Index, said, “broadly… a number of the September releases wines have seen pricing which doesn’t look attractive versus (sometimes many) existing vintages.”

Martyn Rolph head of buying at BBR said the merchant had reduced the overall number of releases that it support in the campaign and argued that the Autumn La Place campaign had yielded “mixed” results.

“Opus One was priced sensibly and sold very well indeed, as did the Bibi Graetz releases and Cheval des Andes,” he told db. “That said, there were some disappointments where pricing was high versus past vintages. In situations like this, no matter how good the wine, it’s impossible to demonstrate value to customers.”

Marc Ditcham, fine wine broker at Corney & Barrow agreed, giving “kudos” to Cheval des Andes 2021 “for acknowledging the difficultly of the market and discounting by 20% on the prior vintage”, while noting that both Telmo Rodriguez’ and Bibi Gretz was gaining interest and traction, the latter off the back of some good historic scores.

However he said that sadly, “very few estates” in the hors Bordeaux campaign had really acknowledged the current climate in the fine wine market, pointing out the irony that negociants did not seem to have passed on the lessons learnt from the Bordeaux en primeur campaign. “If customers can buy older comparable vintages at a cheaper price, then what is the impetus to buy?”

Corney and Barrow tend to offer “the trusted favourites”, he said, amounting to no more than 20 wines from the campaign “but this year we found selling what were historical sellouts difficult”.

“Money is no longer free and I think given the amount of unsold back vintages there is increased financial pressure on supporting future estates/releases,” he said. “Interest is already waning, and unless pricing improves then it’s no longer commercially viable for both sides of the Channel. If things don’t change then there will be a true reckoning in 2025.”

He added that there appeared to be “a more desperate sense of having to sell rather than the desire to sell” among the negociants themselves, some of whom are  reducing the number of wines they are working with. This could potentially lead to further confusion and frustration about who will be offering or taking their place.