The Bordeaux 2025 En Primeur campaign, the annual sale of the new vintage as futures, paid for now and delivered in bottle around 2028, wrapped up in late June. It was billed as a possible vintage of a lifetime and priced more sensibly than any campaign in recent years: premiums over comparable back vintages were mostly modest, and most châteaux clearly set their numbers with one eye on the secondary market.
Even so, critic scores often fell short of 2019 and in many cases 2020, one trade platform that scored the major releases rated only around one in ten a clear buy, and the word across the trade is that plenty of wine remains unsold. The honest answer on sell-through will not be known until September, but nobody we speak to is calling it a success.
When En Primeur still makes sense
The system still has its uses. A handful of wines genuinely sell out on release and rarely resurface at the opening price, and Château Cheval Blanc managed it this year. Buying on release can also secure large formats that seldom reach the open market, and ownership from day one for those who care about unbroken provenance.
For perhaps a dozen wines a year, that arithmetic can work. The 2025 campaign offered few reasons beyond them.
Where we stand
Our last En Primeur campaign was Bordeaux 2005. We have been secondary-only ever since, and this is not a decision we revisit each spring. Selling wine we can ship this week and selling wine that arrives in three years’ time are different businesses, and we only want to be in one of them.
En Primeur is a futures market in all but name. You pay now, the wine arrives years later, and the buyer carries all the risk in an unregulated chain where every link has an interest in selling the campaign. Over the past fifteen vintages, more capital has been lost than made. Cases of 2018 and 2019 Classed Growths have traded below their En Primeur release prices, a pattern we wrote about in May, and even the best vintages have rarely earnt a return for their first buyers. We think caution is the only sensible position.
None of this is talking Bordeaux down. The wines are often superb, the 2025s may well turn out beautifully, and a campaign that prices against the real market rather than its own past releases is better for everyone, châteaux included. But a sensible price is the starting point for buying wine years before delivery, not a reason to do it.
The alternative has rarely been better value. A 2016 or 2019 from the same château is in most cases the same price or cheaper, often carries equal or better scores, has been bottled and professionally stored, can be condition-checked before you pay, and can be delivered or transferred In Bond within days rather than in 2028. And if you like the 2025s, little is lost by waiting: the wine ships in 2028 either way.
That is the wine we stock: physical, held in the UK, and priced against a live market rather than a release letter. If you are tempted by the 2025s, the current list is a good place to see what the same money buys in bottle, and we are always happy to talk it through.
And if you bought En Primeur in the 2018 to 2022 campaigns and are wondering what to do with it, we value and buy cellars too.