Guide
Courtier, négociant, la place: how Bordeaux sells its wine
The estate rarely sells to you. It sells to a merchant, through a broker who never owns a bottle, and the merchant sells to the world.
The short answer
A courtier is a broker who matches an estate to a négociant and guarantees the sale; there are about 100 of them, and they handle 75% of the transactions between owners and merchants. A négociant buys the allocation and ships it; there are some 300, handling about 2 thirds of all Bordeaux sales to more than 170 countries.
The chain
The estate sells to a négociant. Between them stands a courtier, a broker, who knows both, tastes the wine, carries the offer, negotiates and stands behind the completion of the deal. The négociant sells on to importers and merchants, who sell to shops, restaurants and readers. La place de Bordeaux is the name for that whole machine, and it is centuries old.
| Role | How many | What they carry |
|---|---|---|
| Courtier | About 100 | 75% of the transactions between owner and merchant |
| Négociant | About 300 | Roughly 2 thirds of all Bordeaux sales, to more than 170 countries |
A Bordeaux estate typically spreads its wine across 30 or 40 négociants. That is why a first growth can reach every market on earth within hours of a release, and why no single merchant can corner a wine.
The courtier, the least visible job in wine
The profession is old enough to have been recognized by a royal decree of 1321, and it is regulated in France by an act of December 31, 1949. The courtier is not a salesman for either side. He tastes constantly, knows what every cellar holds, tells the estate what the market will bear and tells the négociant what is worth having, and takes a commission on the sale. His capital is that both sides believe him.
Why wines from Chile and Tuscany are sold in Bordeaux
Because the machine works, and it does not care where the wine is from. Non-Bordeaux estates began using la place in the late 1990s, and there are now 2 international release windows a year, in March and September, with well over 100 wines in the bigger campaign, from Italy, California, Chile, Argentina, Australia, Spain, Austria, New Zealand and South Africa. They join for the reach: a few Bordeaux houses can put a wine in front of thousands of buyers in a morning.
The difference is the shape. A Bordeaux château uses dozens of négociants; a foreign estate coming onto la place usually uses a handful and keeps the rest of its distribution for itself.
Where the 1855 classification came from
The brokers’ price books. When the Bordeaux chamber of commerce needed a ranking for the Paris exhibition of 1855, it did not commission tastings; it asked the courtiers, who ranked the estates by what their wines had been fetching. The most famous classification in wine is a broker’s ledger with a title page.
Where to go next
Sources: Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux, the broker · Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux, the wine merchant