After two years of Covid, shipments of refrigerated planes to transport the wine to the other side of the world, and video tastings, the primeurs were back in Bordeaux this spring 2022. Nearly 5,000 professionals, among which journalists and merchants flocked to Bordeaux and the châteaux to taste the wine that had just been harvested and placed in the cellars of the grands crus. A typical Bordeaux tradition, which allowsassess the quality of a vintageand to prepare future contracts.
Negotiations begin this Monday and will last seven weeks. A system that allows buyers to benefit from advantageous prices, and producers to have cash and avoid stocks when these wines are generally consumable several years later. These orders can represent between 50 and 100% of the turnover of the wine châteaux taking part in the event.
Chinese, Hong Kongers and Russians absent
An edition which therefore saw the return of foreign professionals. They were 2,300, that is half of the contingent, with the British (about 400) and the Americans (300) as first and second nationalities. However, the Asian professionals, especially Chinese and Hong Kongers, were not there, due to the stricter rules linked to Covid-19. That is about 500 people who did not make the trip, just like the Russians, ostracized since the start of the war in Ukraine. Thus, only about thirty sample kits were sent to Hong Kong this year for remote tastings, while there were 400 last year. Mainland China and Hong Kong remain the leading importers of Bordeaux wines, with 616 million euros of purchases in 2021.
“People are happy to come back, to see us”, rejoices Ronan Laborde, the boss of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (Ugcb) which organizes the week of primeurs. It evokes a 2021 vintage “appreciated”, even though the level of the outstanding trilogy 2018-2019-2020 seems complicated to match. It’s a vintage “different, more in the softness, in the elegance. With a digestible side a little more important”, describes Ronan Laborde. For him, red wines are “a little less greedy”, but the dry and syrupy whites are “wonderful”. The year 2021 had been that of the “challenges”, with an episode of frost which had destroyed a good part of the buds already out, and the outbreak of vine diseases, such as mildew.