Liv-ex says Bordeaux 2025 still offers a buying opportunity

Liv-ex said the Bordeaux 2025 en primeur campaign ended with mixed results, but its closing report argues the vintage may still prove to be a reasonable buying opportunity rather than a clear failure.

The wine marketplace described this year’s campaign as “middling,” with weak overall sales and buyers still highly sensitive to price. Even so, Liv-ex said some wines performed well, some release prices made sense in the context of the broader market, and demand did emerge for a limited group of estates.

Sophia Gilmour, a market analyst at Liv-ex, said the 2025 campaign was shaped in large part by what happened a year earlier. Speaking before the report’s release, she said this season unfolded “in the wake of the 2024 campaign,” when merchants and négociants turned away from allocations in unusual numbers. That backdrop made 2025 different from other recent years that had also been framed as decisive for Bordeaux’s futures market.

“It was not a success, but it also wasn’t a complete dead duck,” Gilmour said. “There were wines that were successful, and I think there were some prices that made sense.”

According to the report, conditions improved somewhat once the effect of last year’s disappointing campaign began to fade. Liv-ex said the wider fine wine market showed signs of stabilization, even if buyers remained cautious and focused on value. Its position was that a 2025 wine deserved consideration when there were no similarly rated, or better rated, alternatives available more cheaply on the market.

That view differs in tone from some other assessments of the campaign. Fine wine investment company WineCap said in its own en primeur report that fewer than 10 producers truly responded to trade demands for attractive pricing. Gilmour told The Drinks Business that such judgments tend to focus on wines bought mainly for investment, rather than the full range of Bordeaux sold en primeur. She said many more wines could be seen as good value, especially where critics gave strong scores.

Liv-ex said critics generally rated the 2025s solidly, placing them among the stronger vintages of the past decade. At the same time, many releases came out at levels similar to current market prices for the 2019 and 2020 vintages, which often looked like clearer alternatives for buyers.

That pricing tension helped define the campaign. Merchants offered fewer wines than in past years, and buyers narrowed their selections. Gilmour said private clients were still purchasing, but buying less and concentrating on a smaller number of labels. In that environment, even wines that appeared fairly priced did not always generate the level of demand producers or merchants expected.

Liv-ex said feedback from its members reflected that divide. Some sympathized with buyers who felt prices were still too high after several years of disappointing release strategies that damaged confidence in en primeur. Others were surprised by how limited demand remained. When Liv-ex compiled sales data by value, it found results broadly similar to last year.

Still, there were pockets of stronger activity. The report highlighted Cheval Blanc, Margaux, Lafite and Batailley among the brighter spots in the campaign. It also pointed to later momentum for Léoville Las Cases and Montrose.

At the same time, some merchants expressed frustration over tighter allocations. Gilmour said Lafite had reduced allocations to U.K. merchants, a move that was unpopular with parts of the trade but also reflected an effort by estates not to add further stock to an already heavy U.K. market. Liv-ex said that after a year in which merchants and négociants had refused allocations, sellouts for even a small number of wines suggested there was at least some real demand beneath the weak headline numbers.

Gilmour drew a parallel between the 2025 campaign and Bordeaux’s 2014 en primeur season. In both cases, she said, châteaux released wines into markets that were stabilizing rather than rising strongly. In both periods, Bordeaux was also dealing with buyer fatigue after years of poor release pricing in stronger vintages and then lower-volume harvests in weaker years.

Liv-ex said both 2014 and 2025 shared another feature: low yields. The report argued that châteaux in each case faced pressure not only to win back skeptical buyers but also to recover revenue after underwhelming sales from the previous vintage at lower prices.

The comparison matters because 2014 was criticized at release but later looked more acceptable as market conditions improved and no cheaper alternatives emerged by the time those wines became physical stock. Gilmour said something similar could happen with 2025 if the market continues to firm over the next two years.

“It is very similar to how people are talking about the ’25s now, saying they didn’t take the opportunity, they didn’t come down enough, and that may well be true,” she said. “The real impact of an improving market is that by the time these wines reach us, they’ll still look all right.”

For wine merchants, exporters and investors, that reading could shape expectations well beyond this year’s Bordeaux campaign. Release pricing in en primeur often influences confidence in later trading on the secondary market, and selective demand this year may offer clues about which estates still have pricing power when buyers are cautious. For producers and négociants across the drinks business, especially those exposed to export channels and fine wine inventories, the campaign is another sign that buyers are willing to engage when prices are seen as credible but are no longer prepared to support broad-based releases on reputation alone.

Liv-ex concluded that 2025 did not become the make-or-break moment many had predicted. Instead, it showed that demand for Bordeaux futures has not disappeared, but has become narrower, more selective and more dependent on price discipline than in earlier cycles.