Another wine jargon phrase to add to the list…..So what is en primeur?

En primeur is essentially the process of buying a new vintage of wine before it is actually bottled and generally made available for people to buy. Think of it as buying a new house or flat ‘off plan’ – i.e. when you can see the plans for the flat but it has not yet been built.

This happens mainly with Bordeaux wines, but also wines from Burgundy can be bought in the same way, as well as wines from Italy and the US.

Bordeaux en primeur kicks off in the April following the harvest the previous year.  All the top wine critics taste the wine while it is still ageing in oak barrels and try and predict how it will taste when bottled, as well as in years to come as the wine continues to develop (many top wines will last for well over 20 years).

How do they do this? Simply by tasting, tasting and tasting! Wine experts will have tried many different vintages of many different wines and through experience can place how a wine tastes now and how they expect it to develop over time. It’s all about the quality of the fruit, the structure of the tannins and the overall balance of the wine.

The advantage to the public is that they (theoretically) get to buy the wine at a lower price. The advantage to the vineyard is that they get the cash now for a wine they will produce for sale in the future.

Does it work? This is open to a huge debate and is a question which we will discuss more in future blog posts! Sign up here to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss it.

Do you have an opinion or a question? Email us at paul@thecuriousgrape.co.uk