En Primeur 2021 Releases: June 17th
17 June 2022
Read moreGiven the context of the vintage, the red wines of Bordeaux in 2021 are considerably better than you might expect them to be. Are they the best wines you will ever taste? No. Do they stand up to the magic, drama and intensity of 2018, 2019, or 2020? No. But are they a demonstration of the sheer will, technical prowess, and fortitude of the Bordeaux vignerons? Undoubtedly. These are wines that have no right to be as good as they are - and they really are good: as The Wine Advocate's William Kelley states "were the 2021s transposed to the decade of the 1990s, they would be considered the product of a superb vintage".
Some will say that 2021 in Bordeaux was a complicated vintage. More accurately it should be described as complex. This is not mere semantics: complicated problems are hard to solve, with a series of often interlinked tasks requiring completion; but these can be addressed with rules and processes. Fundamentally winegrowing is always complicated. Complex problems require far more applied thought, analysis, and ultimately, risk-taking, as they involve more unknown factors than merely complicated problems. Finance Professor and author Rick Nason suggests that when facing a problem, too many people resort to merely complicated thinking when in fact they should be "consciously managing complexity", making brave decisions which allow for multiple further options. This seems like the perfect analogy for 2021: vignerons and estate owners who consciously managed the complexity of 2021 were able to vastly outperform the natural potential of the vintage and deliver highly satisfying and at times downright surprising wines.
Here's the vintage in a nutshell:
Make no mistake, in years and decades gone by, the vintage conditions experienced in 2021 would have delivered wines that were close to the bottom of the pile. However a combination of terroir characteristics, natural situations, and individual philosophies, have created a vintage which at its peak is ultimately comparable to some of the better vintages of the 1980s and 1990s which we regularly enjoy and occasionally revere today when the wines are poured. If we had to pick a vintage to which it could be compared - in style rather than growing season - it might be 2001. The 2021s are a reminder that not every vintage has to be about richness, drama and bombast - after all we love Bordeaux for its variety and flexibility, and cooler vintages driven by freshness and minerality which will likely provide earlier drinking are more than deserving of their place in the cellar.
Buying En Primeur is the best way to secure small production or highly sought-after wines which can be very hard to find (or which increase rapidly in value) further down the line
Owning a wine from the very start of its life is extremely beneficial, whether you are planning to drink or sell the wine at a later date
Whether you have a penchant for lunchtime halves or love big bottles for parties and celebrations, buying En Primeur allows you to choose your preferred bottling size