Updated 2024 Bordeaux En Primeur Vintage Report

Updated 2024 Bordeaux En Primeur Vintage Report

The unfolding (unravelling?) 2024 Bordeaux En Primeur campaign
Simon Larkin, 16th May 2025

I have read many ‘calls to action’ telling clients this wine or that wine is a ‘must buy’ and, at this release price, they should ‘back up the truck’. I have also read numerous notes from merchants as well as certain critics that seem to suggest this is a vintage of notable calibre. In fact, looking at critics’ scores this vintage is a minefield, as there are comparatively few wines with any form of consensus aside from a notable success like Les Carmes Haut-Brion or Château Lafleur. To me, some scores look very high – and anyway, most consumers are confused as to whether the scoring system relates to all wines ever scored, all wines from a specific region ever scored or indeed, whether they relate solely to perceived quality within a vintage context, i.e. 2024.

There simply is not much interest in a modest vintage (of course there are some exceptions) for future consumption. Clients are being cautious, having followed Bordeaux in recent years and seen the recent market turbulence that has led to much lower prices, even on excellent vintages like 2019, 2020 and 2022. Other clients are viewing the heavily discounted 2021 vintage favourably in comparison to the 2024s – asking themselves, are there better buys in 2021 and was it a finer vintage? Both of which are pertinent questions.

Despite the lack of consumer interest, the Bordeaux Château owners are doing the right thing (in the main) in reducing release prices considerably. Some Châteaux haven’t quite understood the necessity of reducing price meaningfully – there are always slow learners – but many have understood that the 2024s needed to be cheaper than the market price of any previous vintage. To my mind, the problems run deeper than could be fixed by simply discounting prices. There is too much unsold stock queuing up in the market that will take several years to clear down, and that isn’t just in Bordeaux, but in export markets all round the world. One issues is that younger drinkers and collectors, who could easily have been drawn to Bordeaux, view it as expensive and have been priced out of the market, rather than encouraged to take their first steps into it. A case bought En Primeur at £300 per 6 bottle case and stored for 7 years will come in at around £80 per bottle on the table at the point of consumption. Given the competition in terms of value from so many other regions around the world, it is easy to see why Bordeaux may not prove a target for someone new to collecting wine. And if they were specifically interested in Bordeaux, wouldn’t they be better off picking off discounted wines from back vintages where another collector had paid the storage for the last seven or eight years and then sold the case on?

The crucial point is that what makes Bordeaux attractive isn’t just price. In 2024, the quality isn’t there to warrant purchasing, in the main, and the wines will be available in several years’ time. For an En Primeur release to succeed, the compulsion to purchase which is built on fear of missing out, and an opportunity to buy a wine at an advantageous price need to be there. The Bordelais had hoped that buyers would buy their ‘brand’ each and every year almost automatically. This idea of brand loyal purchasing almost irrespective of price is so out of kilter with the market reality, and it may be a hard lesson for Châteaux to learn that clients aren’t as easily led as they believed they were. In short, the problems in the Bordeaux market will still be there next year, and I very much doubt, even if 2025 were to prove to be a very fine vintage, that the market would stomach any increase over and above the 2024 releases. 2024 is quite simply the wrong vintage and the wrong time. 2025, if a higher quality vintage and much the same price, could lead to the engagement required to rekindle some greater interest in En Primeur, but that remains a whole year away. In the meantime, back vintages with a degree of maturity are drawing some of the attention that may otherwise have been caught up in En Primeur releases. 


Bordeaux 2024 – the wrong vintage at the wrong time?
Simon Larkin, 23rd April 2025
 
Bordeaux 2024 En Primeur is now upon us and it comes as the fine wine market looks to settle after a period of considerable instability. The timing is awkward given where the market is right now, and the calibre of the vintage is far from attention-grabbing. Given how the prices of various far superior Bordeaux vintages have tumbled and how many superior wines are available in the market at corrected prices, is 2024 a vintage that anyone needs to purchase?

2024 isn’t a great vintage. Rain in and around harvest always makes for tricky conditions – it comes down to a decision as to whether you wait and see if conditions improve or whether you bite the bullet and harvest in advance of rain. You risk under ripeness if you harvest too early and dilution if the inclement weather doesn’t ease, if you elect to wait. In a bygone age such decisions would be more fraught, today with all the analyses that leading Châteaux have to hand, it is easier to navigate such conditions to make a decent wine. That said, wine is made in the vineyard and if the raw material is lacking in some way, you can’t make up for it in the winery. In 2024, cool conditions in the run up to harvest did little to help push on ripeness so 2024 has delivered lighter wines, with lower alcohol and higher acidity – the heat required to build sugar in the berries and reduce acidity did not materialise. And the resultant ripeness is such that almost all estates will take care in extraction not to work the skins too much for fear of extracting anything unripe. Consequently, the sorting of fruit was critical in 2024, and yields will be relatively low as estates discarded fruit that was nowhere near the required ripeness. 

2024 was a wet year for Bordeaux – allegedly the wettest since 2000. Spring was warm which led to an early budburst, bringing with it the risk of frost. Mildew remained a risk on account of the dampness and warmer than usual temperatures. Flowering was relatively unproblematic, but April temperatures were already cooler than usual, and this pattern extended into July with regular rain. Fruitset was disrupted and mildew remained a constant threat throughout the majority of the summer.  Mid-July signalled a greater sense of hope with finer, warmer weather bringing some degree of hydric stress to most vineyards across the region. After a period of instability, it looked like things might finally be settling down - the skins of the berries started to ripen in the final two weeks of July, which were hotter than the norm. Veraison (when the berries change colour) was completed by midway through August – a month which was characterised by noticeably cool evenings. This meant that the tannins developed, but sugar accumulation in the berries was very slow. This slower than normal ripening cycle continued into September, and it started to become clear that for quality to blossom, fine late season conditions would be needed to see the fruit through to full ripeness. Around the 20th September the rains returned. Most estates harvested their Merlot just before the rain, with Cabernet harvest commencing around the 30th September. Those terroirs that benefitted from free draining soils were able to hold off that bit longer. As simplistic and generalised as this brief summary is, it all adds up to there being significant variation between communes and estates. Châteaux were largely unable to wait for their Merlot or Cabernet to achieve full ripeness at point of harvest. In short, 2024 is a year that got going quicky in warm conditions, slowed considerably due to cool, wet conditions, perked up again off the back of several hot weeks, but didn’t have the dry, warm run in to harvest to bring about full ripeness as inclement weather returned. 

I have already read marketing missives from merchants desperately trying to focus on some positives, and understandably so. You will no doubt read plenty of commentary talking about the welcome reduction in alcohol and the brightness of acidities, but you have to remember that these come as a consequence of modest rather than complete ripeness, and a number of wines consequently show touches of green, unripe fruit. You will hear plenty about the fact that there is no such thing as a poor vintage in Bordeaux these days, and certainly the disasters of yesteryear can be navigated more easily, but despite all the modern advances you cannot improve on the raw material. Yes, an estate could shade things in their favour during the growing season, if they were quick to react to mildew pressure, or by retaining cover crops between rows to deal with excessive moisture, or even by leaf-plucking to expose the fruit to gain a modicum of extra ripeness. But these steps cannot compensate for the difficult conditions encountered, they are very small percentage gains. 

For the campaign to work in any shape or form, pricing has to come down sufficiently to make 2024 a cheap vintage as neither the vintage quality nor the economic backdrop will permit anything else. You look at negociant lists and you see how much unsold young Bordeaux is stuck in the system and it is considerable. The negociants are obliged to accept allocations and yet they are paying interest to fund their stocks in a falling market. Their appetite or ability to take on inventory from the 2024 vintage isn’t there – they need this vintage to sell through and not queue up on their books. China has not been active in en primeur for some time, at least not significantly, and the US is struggling with the tariff situation, so neither of these markets is likely to be particularly active in this year’s en primeur campaign. For Atlas, Bordeaux En Primeur has almost always centred on no more than 20 successful wines. We see many other merchants have come to the same conclusion in recent years.

There has been plenty of chat in the trade about prices returning to 2014 levels. To put that into perspective, that would mean Château Lynch-Bages releasing at 50 euros (in 2023 it released at 60 euros, down from 88 euros in 2022). I am not singling out Lynch-Bages for any particular reason, just using it as a recognisable example. At today’s exchange rates this would equate to around £300 per 6 bottle case in bond as an offer price. At this level, it could probably be considered about fair, when you consider the superior quality 2021 is available in the market at £390 per 6 in bond as is the superior 2017. However, we know there is an oversupply of vintages like 2021 in the market, and such prices could soften further. Equally, 2021 is a superior vintage with more staying power too. Would you not do better to pick off stocks of corrected vintages in the market? So, if price reductions match 2014 release prices it could be argued that they will be considered fair, but even with fair pricing, are they worth buying now? Unfortunately, probably not, as it is the wrong vintage at the wrong time with available stock of more attractive vintages at favourable prices, although there may potentially be the odd exception. If they are ahead of 2014 levels, then I think the Bordelais will have a real problem on their hands. Obviously, not all Châteaux have the ability to drop prices by a set percentage – those lower down the pyramid do not have the scope for 50% reductions, hence looking back to 2014 releases levels may well act as a fair barometer.

I cannot conclude this piece without returning to the actual reasons for purchasing en primeur. The following questions are crucial to its appeal: Does this price represent the best price at which the wine will be offered? Is there a financial advantage to buying now?  Will the wine sell out and therefore not be available in the market when it is drinking in say 5/6 years’ time? Of course there are other minor reasons to buy en primeur, but if these key questions aren’t satisfied, then there is no compulsion to act early.  And in a market that has seen values of great vintages fall, the gulf between the price of a great year like 2019 and an average year like 2024 has narrowed considerably. Sticking with Lynch-Bages as an example, the 2019 is available for £435 per 6 bottle case in bond in the market. 

In summary, 2024 is releasing at a very awkward moment – the consumer or collector has access to innumerable opportunities to buy back vintages at favourable prices and a tough vintage, even if released at a fair price, is unlikely to be much of a call to action with such a backdrop. An exciting vintage with the current pressure to drop prices might have been a completely different story. To me, 2024 appears to be the wrong vintage entering the market at the wrong time.

Simon Larkin MW
23rd April 2025 

 

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