THE WEEK OF THE PRIMEURS!
The week of “En Primeur” is a very special event happening every year, beginning of April, in Bordeaux. More than 5,500 professionals from all over the world meet in Bordeaux and taste the “baby” vintage, 2017 this year, still ageing in barrels!
Many Châteaux are participating and presenting their wines during this « future » week.
Do you know what the Primeurs are?
The primeurs are a Bordeaux event taking place in the spring. It’s a kind of fashion week but with the theme of wine. Under the auspices of the Bordeaux Grand Cru Association and various producer groups, it brings together wine professionals from all over the world to taste the latest vintage of a hundred or so properties in the Bordeaux region. Medoc, Pessac, Saint-Emilion, and many more great names are present. Many professionals from all over the world come, such as buyers, merchants and the press, and lend themselves to endless organized tastings. These missions consist of estimating the quality of the vintage in order to forecast its purchases. The role of the press and the great tasters is of crucial importance here. The notes they attribute to wines are indeed eagerly awaited.
Do you know where the primeurs come from?
The practice of sales in Bordeaux futures dates back to the eighteenth century when the Bordeaux trade went to the castles a few months before the harvest to estimate and buy the harvest. Traders were usually in charge of raising and/or bottling the wines themselves. The system of the primeurs of today is a week of tasting in primeurs which were set up during the 1970s. It was institutionalized at the beginning of the 1980s under the notable impulse of Baron Philippe de Rothschild who organized a tasting of his 1982 vintage while his wine was still ageing. Since the 1970s, the practice of sales in primeurs thus allows the trade to buy from the properties the wine nearly two years before their putting on the market at a price more interesting than the tariff of the wine sold in a bottle.
