After a hundred years of wide-spread popularity among wine buyers in England, Switzerland and France, the concept of purchasing wine en primeur is now becoming part of the consciousness of Americans and Israelis. Buying wine en primeur has something akin to buying futures on the stock exchange. In other words, it means that wines are purchased one, two or even more years before they are released to the market. In most cases, wines purchased this way are still in oak casks when they are bought; in a few cases the wines have been bottled but are still stored in the cellars of the Chateaux in which they were made because they are not yet considered mature enough for release.

The advantage of this system when it works at its best to serious wine buyers is that even though they have to pay for their wines several years in advance, they are guaranteed that they will pay the lowest possible price. The disadvantage is that to some extent buyers are gambling on how good the vintage year will have been and on the quality of the wine once it is actually released. Those, for example, who bought the Bordeaux or Burgundy wines of 1989 (a superb year in both locations en primeur still sigh with deep satisfaction whenever they think of how the prices of those wines have tripled and quadrupled since they bought them. On the other hand, those who bought futures of the same wines from the truly mediocre vintage year of 1992 vintage year are still wondering why the gods decided to punish them.

From all available signs (the quality of the harvest itself and advance tastings of wines still in barrels), it is safe to predict that the Bordeaux harvest of 1998 was an excellent one. Although it will not live up to the extraordinary qualities of the 1989 or 1990 vintages, the year may well be comparable to 1988 and 1985, both of which gave us admirable and excellent wines.

Now, however, the problem. Starting in 1993, largely because of the extraordinary enthusiasm of the writers at TheWine Spectator magazine, en premieur prices went wild and are still going wild. People who bought the not all that good 93 wines are now aware that at the sometimes outrageous prices they paid, they could have gone to fine wine stores, purchased far better 1989 wines off the shelves and saved a great deal of money. Since then, en primeur prices have not really represented very good value for money.

There, is a second problem as well in buying en premieur. Wine prices the world over a starting to fall. The red wine shortage is over and with so many reds now readily available, wineries have no choice but to lower prices in order to empty their cellars. It is probably true that the great wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy and Tuscany will not fall in price, but one does not drink great wines all the time and, with the exception of the few true millionaires among us, prices do count.

There is another problem, for drinking any of these wines when they first arrive in September 2001 would be akin to committing infanticide, for these are wines that will be fully ready to drink only in another five to ten years. The wine of Chateau Margaux, for example will even not reach its peak until somewhere between the years 2010 and 2020. Serious American, English and French buyers either have cellars that are appropriate for long term storage or store their wines in the cellars of wine merchants. Considering that very few of us have adequate wine-storage facilities at home and long term storage at wine stores is a concept just beginning to make itself felt here, that means that most of these wine will be drunk far too young or will go bad before they are really at their best.

© Daniel Rogov