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Honest Grapes to hold online ‘Bordeaux Summit’
UK merchant Honest Grapes is to hold an online summit on Wednesday 15 April to discuss the impact of the global Covid-19 lockdown on Bordeaux en primeur and how wine collectors view not only the annual process but the region itself.
The summit will be held on Zoom at 6.30pm (GMT) and both the trade and collectors are encouraged to sign up and listen in and indeed fill out a survey to add some of their own impressions.
The results of this survey, designed to gauge the current mood among both experts and collectors towards the current fine wine market will be revealed during the summit.
The panel will be headed by Honest Grapes’ wine director, Tom Harrow, and he will be joined by Bordeaux winemaker and commentator Gavin Quinney; Nick Martin, director of fine wine trading exchange Wine Owners and Rupert Millar, fine wine editor at the drinks business.
One of the main topics of conversation will be the current status of the en primeur system, not only its overall status following recent campaigns but also the possible outcome of the current Covid-19 pandemic.
What do we know of the quality of the 2019 vintage, what pricing might the market expect and could this be the year that the system receives a major shake-up, as suggested in a recent report on db?
Then there is the question of Bordeaux’s continuing role as the ‘staple’ of fine wine collections. With Burgundy, Champagne, Italy and even American wines rising in prominence, where does Bordeaux fit in the collections of tomorrow and will it always be pre-eminent?
To sign-up to the summit and watch and fill in the survey, click here.
From a trade perspective – This will be a huge wake up call for Bordeaux who’ve been royally rinsing en primeur customers for donkeys years, to a point where anybody outside immediate grower/supply chain is almost guaranteed to lose money through participating. I don’t think anybody gives a hoot about BDX 2019, trade or private buyer. The world is awash with cheaper physical wines. End buyers are not only susceptible to wines being available cheaper 2-3 years after EP purchase (and which has largely been the case recently), but FX exposure is now more of a risk than anytime in the past when it comes to selling, which can see a potential wine paper profit eradicated by an FX loss. It normally takes a cataclysmic global event to create a ”correction” in any market pricing, and not just the fine wine market. We’ve seen the effects this pandemic has had on equities, bonds, commodities, interest rates and fund prices (knock on) This could be the big Bordeaux call. Suck it up, your run has just ended. Time to be humble again to EP buyers and the supply chain that used to make a living from it. Time warp back to 2008.