Now that’s an understatement.
Thanks for weighing in, Jeff. I was hoping you would give another side of this story.
Tom
You read about En Premier because you like the wines of the region. You buy or not based on your own sense of value. While many wines don’t move in price, some do. If you read my site, you would have known to buy 2016 Les Carmes Haut Brion for example. I was the only person giving it 98-100. It’s more than doubled. There are others, but it’s not always a value play.
So en premier has simply become a means of generating excitement for the next release, and a good bit of PR for the current releases.
EP is always for the current release. It’s the best PR in the world. Wine is a business. You make wine every year and you need to sell it, just like every other business.
After all this is about publicity, not really quality assessment. Anyone who is honest knows that is the game.
Serious people are there to look for the style and quality, or lack of. Regardless of the fun, wines or hard work, it’s about the wine.
My skepticism regarding Chateaux tastings is real, a marketing advantage to distinguish their brand from the pack of 1000+ wines and have tasters to themselves focused exclusively on their brand.
The following comments were tongue in cheek extensions of the “out of the club” and the First Growth low 90’s score references in the article. My “Ha” and pun slid, satire, ha!
-
It is interesting to pick one example, 2016 Les Carmes, from what is agreed is a vintage where some wines will excel and have quality above the price point. However as you note, many other critics were not as enthusiastic, as it is very difficult to do barrel tastings. (I have some modest experience myself, and it is darn hard to see through the veil of new oak and adolescent tannins to guage a final result). How about the countless other wines that really did not budge much in price? It used to be that EP buying would almost always result in a bit of savings, sometime significant, as to finished wine in bottle. In the 90’s you almost never paid more EP than for the final product. So what really is the point in speculation? Yes you may catch lightning in a bottle (so to speak) and get a relative bargain on a wine or two. But I’d rather pay a bit more 2 years from now and be more sure of the quality. The last time there was widespread reason to jump on EP was 2008, due to the dismal assessment of left bank wines early on. Since then the producers have learned to shoot high rather than low.
-
Bold point two above. You are making my argument for me, thanks for agreement.
-
Point three. Sadly for many bigger producers, it’s about the money. God bless the little guys who are scratching out a living to follow an ideal. It is those folks who deserve credit. Bernard Magrez is not someone I want to have a beer with.
Though I posted above that you can render en primeur irrelevant by not buying until later, and without financial penalty, I still enjoy reading the reports. I love Bordeaux and the spectacle of en primeur remains entertaining. I still prefer to read about it than experience it first hand.
Just back from Bordeaux, tasting the 2018 en primeur. 4 days of visits, 16 estates each day, larger tastings in the evening. The special treatment is the possibility to taste the new vintage in a well prepared sample, nothing more.
I agree with Goode on one point, too few critics dare to raise their voice and write a negative review about a wine or a producer. Many critics either write positive about a wine, or they don’t write. Which is dangerous if wine criticism would like to be taken seriously. The readers should expect more.
I visit 2-300 wineries each year. Different regions. Bordeaux people are professional business people. Nothing wrong with that. They are honest and always very interested in the trade. I have never experienced that they value honestly held opinions less than smaller producers from other regions. On that point Goode is simply wrong.
+1
I liked the Jaime Goode blog post.
And anyways, a lot of this is irrelevant, since it hasn’t made any sense to buy EP for a while now.
For every person who might gloat over a fortunate purchase there are a whole lot of people who keep mum about Premier Cru, Rare LLC, Carolina Wine Co. , Sams, C-W and all the vendors who took money and never delivered promised goods.
you can argue the merits of objectivity vs subjectivity for evaluation of the aesthetic / experiential. But if objectivity is what you seek, if it isn’t RCT (randomized control trial), it will invariably be biased.