Bordeaux EP 2023

I've bought EP regularly for a while now, largely due to the fact that if you don't buy EP you often don't see the same wines hit the shelves over here once the campaign has finished. I did buy some 21s but ignored the 22s (due to price). Am tempted by the 23s I must admit. Might go for my perennial favourites:
Pontet Canet
La Lagune
St Pierre
Bourgneauf
GPL etc..
 
I've bought EP regularly for a while now, largely due to the fact that if you don't buy EP you often don't see the same wines hit the shelves over here once the campaign has finished. I did buy some 21s but ignored the 22s (due to price). Am tempted by the 23s I must admit. Might go for my perennial favourites:
Pontet Canet
La Lagune
St Pierre
Bourgneauf
GPL etc..
It sort of flew under the radar as a release but I thought La Lagune was quite a fair price.
 
Well, it really is a small world indeed .... A good friend of mine who lives in NZ but was born and raised in Bordeaux, is also best friends with Mathieu Bessonnet, the winemaker at Pontet Canet. My friend very kindly organized for Mathieu to call me last night, from the vineyard itself no less to have a chat about PC. Luckily Mathieu’s English is a lot better than my French.

We talked about the 2023 PC which Mathieu was very pleased with. Picking the Merlot early was critical he said. I mentioned I hadn’t bought any 2022’s and he described it as a ‘New World vintage’ in that if you like Napa Cab Savs etc, you will like it (glad to have skipped it). He is already worried about the 2024 vintage due to the weather so far, but I wonder if that’s just the nervous winemaker talking. We also had a chat about NZ wines, and he mentioned that he is a big fan of the Felton Road Pinot Noir (Central Otago). Not sure if it is the Block 3 or 5. My friend is heading over to Bordeaux in a couple of months, so I may try to grab some for him to take over and share with Mathieu.

Anyway, nothing earth shattering above, but just thought I would share in case of interest.
 
It sounds nigh on perfect but the price does not work - unless you believe the 2023 will be a very significant step up in quality from the likes of the 2004 - which as we have seen from recent notes sets a benchmark for that vintage among the seconds.

It is sad that the Bordelais are so tone deaf with their pricing, even someone as savvy as Lilian Barton, borne of an arrogance and repeating the mistakes of the past. Price discovery was never a strong suit of the French economy.
 
It sounds nigh on perfect but the price does not work - unless you believe the 2023 will be a very significant step up in quality from the likes of the 2004 - which as we have seen from recent notes sets a benchmark for that vintage among the seconds.

It is sad that the Bordelais are so tone deaf with their pricing, even someone as savvy as Lilian Barton, borne of an arrogance and repeating the mistakes of the past. Price discovery was never a strong suit of the French economy.
I agree… they don’t seem to see… but it’s not just the Chateau it’s the negociants as well who are telling the appetite of the market and price accordingly… let’s face it we are talking at big profits for the chateau itself above $10 a bottle… and who knows how the #voodoomagic really works with this. Maybe it isn’t the Chateau but the negociants being blind to matters. This chatter makes me think of how Coche-Dury works,
 
It is sad that the Bordelais are so tone deaf with their pricing, even someone as savvy as Lilian Barton, borne of an arrogance and repeating the mistakes of the past. Price discovery was never a strong suit of the French economy.
Very true. In days of old - perhaps until the 2005 vintage there was a much stronger element of price discovery in the whole circus, which led to many successful campaigns. Somewhere around 2009 we moved to active price manipulation. The Bordelais started to think like Bunker Hunt and haven't ceased to do so since.
 
2019 was generally regarded as both a first rate vintage as well as a more sensibly priced one. Both of my modest but decent cru-Classé purchases are available now for less than I paid in that EP campaign. It's pretty hard to se the case for buying anything EP anymore, except for format. It continues to surprise me that few retailers make much of the different format offers at EP, especially halves.
 
Very true. In days of old - perhaps until the 2005 vintage there was a much stronger element of price discovery in the whole circus, which led to many successful campaigns. Somewhere around 2009 we moved to active price manipulation. The Bordelais started to think like Bunker Hunt and haven't ceased to do so since.
Richard this tone deafness and the problem of lack of price discovery started much earlier than that in Bordeaux. I really noticed it in the mid to late 90s. After a run of desperate vintages, the 1995 vintage was hyped with prices moving up substantially, and then the 1996 vintage followed and those price increases were maintained and built on. I remember it well because Oddbins was in on the game, and doubled the price of a bottle of Mouton from £29.99 for the 1994 vintage to £59.99 for the 1995 vintage. The higher prices for the 1996 vintage in particular were justified because this was the best vintage since 1990.

The next vintage, 1997, as we know was a weak vintage, yet the Bordelais did not bring down their prices. Even though we had a global financial crisis at the time. We can debate whether this was primarily the fault of the chateaux or the negociants at the time but today Jono I think the chateaux are the problem because the negociants are in a desperate financial state (see the two Drinks Business articles copied earlier in this thread). So of course the ludicrously over priced 1997s didn’t sell no matter how merchants tried to spin them and the wines just sat there. As always the price mechanism tends to prevail in the end and a few years later I remember Farrs selling 1997 - and - 1998 Ducru for £220/12ib - 1998 was also a difficult vintage on the left bank.

I think 2005 was a lot different. Yes the pricing was very ambitious, and I remember we were all complaining at the time, but this was against the background of a strong structural increase in global demand for Bordeaux, much - but by no means all of it - reflecting the emergence of China as a big player in the global economy and the global wine market. And in a sense the large increase in prices in the Bordeaux EP campaign lifted all boats - all prices moved up because of this structural demand element. By far the most egregious pricing was for the 2009 vintage when the 2009 FGs released for £9k, and prices subsequently halved before bottoming, but it took many years for that to happen.
 
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It’s a big world though and the higher the prices the less they have to sell to break even.

Every year on a thread like this a lot of people, myself included, complain about the price, but a few years later people are looking at the same vintages again as they are cheap compared to the current vintage. Backfilling is not the answer if you want the prices to come down long term, but I’m sure that’s what the majority of us do - my buying now is 70% Auction and 30% current vintage..
 
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