How does Bordeaux en primeur work?

Tasted in April, paid now, delivered later

The harvest is in September and October. The following April the trade comes to Bordeaux for a week of tastings. In 2026 the week ran from April 20 to 23, and the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, which organizes it, counted about 5,000 trade visitors of 76 nationalities. The 2027 week is set for April 19 to 22. What they taste is a barrel sample, a wine 6 to 8 months old whose final blend is not yet settled.

Then the estates release, over the following weeks and sometimes into June, in tranches: a first quantity, then a second, and so on. A few hundred estates take part, out of about 4,600 winegrowers in Bordeaux. The campaign is the top of the region, not the region.

The bottles reach the buyer 1 to 3 years later, depending on when the estate ships. Until then the wine usually sits in bond, in a warehouse where the duty is suspended, and duty and tax fall due only when it comes out.

Everyone in the chain carries a different risk

Five parties share the trade: the estate, the courtier (the broker), the négociant (the Bordeaux merchant house), the merchant who sells to the customer, and the buyer.

	What they do	What they risk
The estate	Makes the wine, sets the release, decides the volume	Selling too cheaply in a great year, or not selling at all
The courtier	Brokers the sale, advises both sides on the release	Reputation, which is the whole of a broker’s capital
The négociant	Buys the allocation and distributes it worldwide	Holding stock nobody wants if the release is misjudged
The merchant	Offers it to customers with a closing date	Paying for wine before it exists
The buyer	Pays now, receives later	That the bottled wine later sells for less than the en primeur price

The estate is paid before bottling, and that is the reason the system exists: the money funds the cellar 2 years before the wine can earn anything.

Allocations, where the pressure lives

A négociant does not order what it wants; it is allocated a quantity, and the allocation is the relationship itself. Keeping it has meant taking the weak vintages along with the strong ones, and at times taking other wines from the same owner alongside the one in demand.

Why it keeps being declared dead

Because it has failed again and again in living memory. The 2008s, sold in spring 2009, ran into the financial crisis, and the 2011 releases were sluggish. Of the 2013s, sold in spring 2014, the buying director of Berry Bros & Rudd said that interest had completely died. The April tastings of 2020 were cancelled and the campaign ran in June, and in the campaigns that followed merchants cut their budgets and one merchant sat out entirely over tariffs.

The 2025s, released in spring 2026, tested the system again. After the cuts of the 2024 campaign, several First Growths raised their prices by 20% or more, by Wine Spectator’s count of US retail prices. Liv-ex, which rated the vintage’s quality highly, called the campaign one of okay prices and tepid sales, and not the death of en primeur.

In 2012 Château Latour (opens in a new tab) left the system outright. Its 2011 was the last vintage it sold en primeur, and it releases each wine through the same négociants when it judges the wine ready to drink.

For an estate with no other way to pay for 2 years of wine in its cellar, nothing has replaced the system. It is declared dead, and then it sells the next vintage.