Are You All Set for Bordeaux En Primeur 2025?

Analysis of Twenty Years of Bordeaux En Primeur Release Prices

Spring is only spring to the majority of the wine drinkers.

To those who are devoted to Bordeaux, spring is more than that. It is the opening of the Bordeaux En Primeur season.

Last week, all the common-or-garden variety of the wine trade travelled to the most glamorous wine region bar none to have the first sip of that deep, dark, glamorous juice straight from the new and shiny barrels. That is you. Then you come home galvanised by all the wine, all that beautifully French talk, and all those beautiful people with stained teeth laughing. And then there are the Instagram pictures and the LinkedIn takeaways. You write that this is a nice, fresh vintage—the hallmark of this vintage, arguably. Is this a great vintage? You cautiously wait for the critics to declare it so, and then boast.

At the same time, collectors’ interest in Bordeaux En Primeur is as dead as a bucket of ashes, to paraphrase Hemingway. It is no longer clear why anyone needs to buy early.

And then, there’s me, who spent the last week (and the previous two as well) desperately trying to make sense of the last twenty years’ worth of Bordeaux EP release prices, turning the data upside down and sideways. My laptop exploded, and my sanity went with it.

Just before that happened, here’s what I found out.

I analysed the historical En Primeur release price (ex-merchant) in € for 126 Grands Crus Classés and their closest equivalents in Pomerol and Saint-Émilion (although Pomerol remains patchy in terms of data).

The pressing question I wanted to answer was: have the prices of Bordeaux EP increased over time?

But before I could answer that, I needed to manipulate the data. I took the average, the trimmed average (i.e. excluding the top and bottom 5% outliers), the median and the average of the top 10% of châteaux. The last two produced the most interesting results. Then, I needed to adjust the release prices to make them comparable. Without getting too much into the more tedious details, I made three adjustments:

1. Inflation → I converted the data from nominal to real terms, meaning each vintage has been adjusted for inflation. Simply put, €50 was worth more 20 years ago than it is today.

2. Carry → I adjusted the data to account for interest rates. In other words, the release price only makes sense if I consider the cost of capital over time. I tested both two-year and five-year forward adjustments, and the results did not materially change.

3. Quality → Much of the trade’s focus—and pricing—centres on quality. I therefore normalised release prices using Decanter vintage scores.

The results are shown in the chart below:

• The blue bars show the median release price: the “middle” price—half of the wines are more expensive, half are cheaper. This avoids being skewed by extreme outliers.

• The red bars show the average price of the top 10% of producers, isolating prices at the very top end of the market.

The median shows what is happening across Bordeaux as a whole, while the top 10% reflects how the most sought-after estates behave.

The first observation is straightforward. Neither series follows a clear upward or downward trend. Prices rise, fall, and rise again—but without a consistent long-term direction once those major factors are stripped out.

What this highlights, in particular, is just how dynamic Bordeaux En Primeur pricing really is. Price cuts during vintages such as 2008 and 2019—shaped by the global financial crisis and the pandemic, respectively—were reversed very quickly, with prices rising again the following vintage.

I believe this degree of flexibility is unique to the Bordeaux market.

Zooming in on individual vintages, 2024 was not as cheap as it was often portrayed. For the median producer, it sits closer to the more expensive vintages than the cheapest, while for the top 10%, it ranks as the fourth cheapest.

This gap also reveals that the spread between cheap and expensive wines is much wider at the top end of Bordeaux. In statistical terms, the dispersion of release prices increases as you move up the quality ladder, meaning that top châteaux push prices further than the median producer, both on the upside and the downside.

The cheapest released vintage in the last twenty years is 2008, at roughly 46% below 2024. For top producers, 2014 and 2019 emerge as the next cheapest, at around 15% below 2024, while for the median producer, 2015 and 2006 are among the least expensive.

These findings are interesting because, as a reminder, both vintage quality and economic conditions have been stripped out. This suggests that châteaux may over-discount in weaker vintages or tougher market conditions—or, conversely, overprice in more favourable ones.

Could this help explain why prices have not come down sufficiently in the last two vintages, in most cases, to justify their levels on the secondary market? Perhaps châteaux are testing demand, trying to avoid over-discounting.

If so, there is an important limitation. This analysis focuses on release prices only. It does not account for available stock in the secondary market or the prices at which it trades—both of which are crucial to determining whether a vintage is fairly priced at release.

I believe that while the wine industry is spreading positive news—particularly around prices picking up again and stronger demand in the first trimester of 2026—that is only part of the story. At best, it is one piece of the puzzle.

The broader reality is less reassuring. Luxury and consumer goods may be facing one of their most difficult years in the past two decades—and I say that in comparison with 2008. UK merchants are reporting significant losses, of a scale that begins to suggest systemic risk within the industry (I am working on this separately). At the same time, the traditional drivers of growth for luxury and consumer goods are largely absent: Russia—out. The Middle East—uncertain (as Bernard Arnault warned about the risk of conflict escalating into a “global catastrophe”, while his team in earnings calls remains reassuring). China—weak, with little sign of a meaningful recovery since 2022. The US—highly uncertain. The UK—merchants under pressure.

I was not at En Primeur week, but in conversations with négociants, the tone has been cautiously optimistic—largely driven by those same two factors: prices stabilising and demand improving. One point that did emerge, however, is telling. The issue is not necessarily seen as a commercial crisis, but a debt one. Banks are increasingly asking businesses to reduce leverage as the value of land and wine—used as collateral—has declined. We discussed this in my conversation with Lily Feng at Jera Wine.

While this analysis does not span a long enough time series to definitively identify the “right” price for En Primeur, it does offer a useful benchmark. A 15% discount from 2024 would not seem unreasonable given the current conditions in the market.

That said, I have little doubt that in the coming weeks and months we will hear the case for why price increases are justified.

Data Limitations

Twenty years of data is not that long. This analysis broke my laptop—and nearly me—because it raised more questions than answers. What are the other drivers of release prices? Was there a time when wines were released at the “right” price? If so, what was that price, once adjusted for inflation and other factors?

What do you think?

If you have access to longer-term data and would like me to extend this analysis, get in touch: sara@inthemoodforwine.com.

Thank you as always for being here!

Sara

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