Inside La Place de Bordeaux – Episode Seven

The Future of La Place de Bordeaux

It started in Bordeaux but has since become a major force in global fine wine. What’s next for La Place de Bordeaux?

In this final episode of Inside La Place de Bordeaux, hosts Felicity Carter and Pauline Vicard consider where La Place came from — and where it’s going. They talk to some of the world’s most insightful experts, and look into their own crystal balls, to predict what’s likely to happen next.

  • Can En Primeur stay in its current form, or will it transform into something else?
  • Will the market polarise further between the producers at the top and everybody else?
  • As climate change and better viticulture drive ever more excellent vintages, how will that transform the fine wine economy?
  • How will La Place upend the world of wine investment?

For everyone involved in the fine wine trade, this is an episode not to be missed.

With: Mathieu Chadronnier, Max Lalondrelle, Elin McCoy, Jane Anson.

In Conversation With Elin McCoy

Elin McCoy Sheds Light on How Bordeaux Has Grown and Changed

Elin McCoy is the wine and spirits columnist for Bloomberg News, where she writes for their global news wire. She has contributed to numerous other prestigious wine publications, including Decanter and World of Fine Wine, and is the author of the highly-acclaimed The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker, Jr. and the Reign of American Taste, which garnered international praise and has appeared in five foreign editions. She is also the co-author of Thinking About Wine. She has been attending En Primeur for more than two decades.

How has Bordeaux changed since you first began visiting it?

For one thing, there have been huge changes in how the press works. The journalists and writers who attend En Primeur have changed. When I started going, you barely saw any people from China or Hong Kong. There were huge numbers of people from the UK and a very focused group from the US. France was overrepresented.

And the way tastings are organised dramatically changed. A handful of properties became more and more important, and more and more properties at the high end removed their presence from the general press and trade tastings. As a consequence, retailers, importers and the press have to make a considerable number of appointments and spend a lot of time travelling from châteaux to châteaux and négociants tastings in order to taste a wide range of Bordeaux, and it requires more and more efforts to taste lesser-known wines.

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The gap now seems bigger between those at the top and everyone else.

I think the polarization between the winners and losers and the gap between the bigger names and the smaller names has certainly become wider over the period of time that I’ve gone to Bordeaux. I was first going to Bordeaux in the 1980s, and the difference between then and now has become really dramatic.

But I don’t think it’s the fault of En Primeur. I think it’s the way Bordeaux is perceived globally, and the reduction of key players involved in importing – like Chateau & Estates – has played a huge role in polarization. There’s very little incentive for importers and retailers to buy small châteaux wines. In many ways, the whole En Primeur system now revolves around 30 properties only.

There’s very little incentive for importers and retailers to buy small châteaux wines.

Elin McCoy

Every year, someone predicts the end of En Primeur. But it’s still standing. What do you think will happen?

First of all, yes, this is a topic that is talked about every year — that the system isn’t working, that this polarisation exists, that people aren’t interested in Bordeaux futures anymore. Years ago, I wrote a piece about whether it benefited consumers to buy En Primeur. Because from the point of view of the châteaux, the system is fantastic. Five thousand people come to your wine region and there’s a three-week window where everybody is focused on your wines. Everyone is talking about them. The most important retailers and importers around the world are talking about the value of investing in the vintage.

Whether you sell your wines en primeur or not, this spotlight is terrific. But now, does it benefit consumers? Well, it used to. I’m not so sure it’s very important to consumers anymore — at least in the US. I’m not so sure it’s that fantastic for people who are investing or speculating in Bordeaux. Part of that is because there’s not much of a financial advantage to you to buy two years before you’re going to get the wines. And Bordeaux is no longer as important in the wine world as it once was for consumers.

Can futures continue? People have asked that over and over, year after year, and Bordeaux [and] the En Primeur system has weathered the storm. It weathered the financial crisis. It weathered the Chinese rushing to buy and then rushing back out again when they lost so much money on the 2010 vintage. It’s weathered less interest in the US. It’s weathered Brexit.

Bordeaux [and] the En Primeur system has weathered the storm. It weathered the financial crisis. It weathered the Chinese rushing to buy and then rushing back out again when they lost so much money on the 2010 vintage. It’s weathered less interest in the US. It’s weathered Brexit. [but I think] there’s a bigger problem today than I have ever thought there was before.

Elin McCoy

But when I was in California celebrating the 40th anniversary of Harlan Estate, there were several Bordelais there, and one of them -a super observer of what happens in Bordeaux- told me that he thinks that this year is a real crisis. If there is no change, he felt there would be serious problems, and he was convinced that the En Primeur system needed some kind of reinvention, rejuvenation. It is one of the first times I have heard people from Bordeaux acknowledging this. That is making me more, I don’t know if the word is worried, but more to believe that there’s a bigger problem today than I have ever thought there was before.

It’s often said that critics must give the wines high scores, or they will no longer have access to the wines. Do you think that’s true?

I am not convinced that it’s true. What I think is that high scores bring the scorer, whoever it is, a lot of attention. And so they can promote themselves on those scores. So isn’t a question of whether a door is going to be slammed in their face. It’s more a question of what is to their benefit.

High scores bring the scorer, whoever it is, a lot of attention. And so they can promote themselves on those scores. So isn’t a question of whether a door is going to be slammed in their face. It’s more a question of what is to their benefit.

I don’t give scores. I talk about the ones that I think are of interest and I thought were good or really exceptional, because my readers want to know what to buy. I used to always include five wines to avoid. I got a huge complaint — not from the individual châteaux —  but from the UGC about why was I even doing that.

So I wrote back to say that the purpose of that is that these wines were not good, and so I thought people shouldn’t buy them. Those châteaux did not close their doors to me. The UGC did not cease to invite me.

By the way, I stopped doing that during the pandemic when I received samples that were shipped to me. I did not know whether some samples tasted terrible because they had been in a hot warehouse or because they were simply not very good. So I stopped pointing out wines that I didn’t really like, because it didn’t seem fair.

That’s, however, different from score inflation, which is people always giving 97, 98 points to the First Growths. What I would say in defense of some of these writers is that, as Paul Pontallier told me during a year of tasting wines from a not particularly good vintage; he said, “Well, we simply have to scale back the amount of wine we make. People will not accept a Château Margaux that is not perfection.” The First Growths can do that. They can reduce and scale down. Every vine is coddled. Even in a not terribly fabulous vintage, these wines are always going to shine to a certain degree because of this.

I think that the whole idea of scores anyway are inflated for everything, not just for Bordeaux.

Part of that is that over the period of time that I have been actually tasting wine and writing about it, the improvement overall has been dramatic. There used to be so much difference between the very best wines and the rest. The difference is not that big nowadays.

What else have you witnessed over the period you’ve been going to Bordeaux?

One of the things that I’ve seen is the financialization of Bordeaux. And I think it has been a terrible thing for Bordeaux. I think the big shift was accelerated by things like Liv-ex. That really accelerated the whole idea of Bordeaux as a serious investment, and fostered the whole idea of wine investment funds and essentially pushed, I would say, some retailers and a lot of very unscrupulous people to create all sorts of vehicles and products for people to invest in. I feel that all of that has been to the total detriment of Bordeaux and also to fine wine. It’s taken away so much that makes wine of value to people.

What is the main benefit of the La Place system?

La Place has always been such a strength for Bordeaux because, from early on – in comparison with many other wine regions around the world-, Bordeaux was focused on the wines going elsewhere; looking for markets, finding new places to sell the wines. They were early into China, for example. They always had this market in the UK. They were the people who were selling Bordeaux in the 1980s into the US. So La Place has been a great strength in terms of finding markets and selling the wines when other regions were just very insular.

Any more thoughts on how Bordeaux has changed?

One of the biggest ways that Bordeaux has changed is that it is not afraid to look at the future, which is why I continue to have faith that they will find a way to resolve and figure out the whole problem with En Primeur. They are so forward thinking when it comes to climate change, environmental issues — and a lot of the top players are not going to sacrifice anything so that they can keep making pots of money.

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