The vintage in Bordeaux is usually in full swing by early September. Six months later — and long before the wines are even palatable — the Bordelaises launch their “primeur” campaign, presenting what they claim are representative samples of the young wines to trade buyers and wine writers.
Reviews of the vintage and ratings of individual wines drive their marketing effort. Over the three-month campaign the properties announce their “primeur” prices and make their first sales. It’s great business for the chateaux: in good years the bulk of the crop is sold before the producers even have to pay for the packaging.
In the usual course of events, the top chateaux hold back as long as possible before announcing their primeur pricing: they want to see what others are doing, and they need to assess market demand. This year, however, one top property broke ranks. The 2022 vintage had received rave reviews: the lesser chateaux had begun to announce upbeat prices. It was at this point — early in the campaign — that Chateau Cheval Blanc, one of fewer than 10 truly elite Bordeaux estates, announced an extraordinary 20% year-on-year increase.
The move was clearly strategic. Cheval Blanc is owned by LVMH’s Bernard Arnault, the world’s wealthiest individual and the smartest operator in the field of luxury goods. He knows the game: even when you are at the apex of the pricing pyramid you need to step on the shoulders of your competitors. The Cheval Blanc primeur price is more than a challenge to Petrus and Lafite. It is an attempt to elevate his St Emilion chateau into an atmosphere so rarefied that these days it is mainly occupied by the tiniest Burgundy estates. Arnault is not simply aiming for pole position in Bordeaux; he is reinforcing the role of high-end wine as the ultimate luxury consumable.
Many of the Cape’s boutique producers understand this perfectly well. While they use price as a proxy for quality, their key play is the message of rarity. This is simply to induce a FOMO (fear of missing out) panic among consumers when the latest vintage comes to market. Several of these producers have a members’ section on their websites. If you are on the inside, you get in ahead of everyone else. To stay there you need to keep shopping.
In SA, none of the high-end small-volume producers submit their wines to the scrutiny of blind tasting. As long as buyers are happy to shop on the basis of a pig in a poke, why should they take the risk? After all, it’s how the Bordeaux primeurs are managed and the primeur circus is just a bigger-volume version of the Cape’s (and Californian Napa’s) “buy when we tell you to buy or risk missing out”.
Blind tasting is the only way to get an objective assessment of wine quality: otherwise you are purchasing the marketing message. It’s what I do for Wine Wizard, and what the Investec Trophy Wine Show (which I have chaired since its inception) sets out to achieve. As the Financial Times’ Jancis Robinson OBE MW (the foremost wine critic in the English-speaking world) observed: the value of the Trophy Wine Show is the chance to assess wines free of being “bedazzled by the reputation of the producer”.
Unless the label means more to you than the contents of the bottle, you might consider taking guidance from the expert palates who tasted nearly 700 wines blind to produce the results, released last week, of the 2023 Trophy Wine Show. The judges included Robinson, Benjamin Roffet (Best Sommelier in France), and Anne Krebiehl MW.
Don’t expect to find any of the wines of the Secret Handshake Club among the medallists, though you may be happily surprised by the quality and affordability of the trophy winners.
The Johannesburg and Cape Town public tastings of the best wines of the 2023 Trophy Wine Show take place on June 14 and 21, respectively. For the results and more info, go to https://www.trophywineshow.co.za/
• Michael Fridjhon was chairman of the judges at the Trophy Wine Show 2023.
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