Bordeaux’s 2025 futures campaign loses momentum despite strong reviews

Bordeaux’s 2025 en primeur campaign has moved through the trade with less momentum than many merchants had hoped for, even as buyers and brokers described the wines themselves as strong and, in some cases, exceptional.

Several merchants said the annual futures campaign was not a failure, but they also said demand was cautious and uneven. That matters beyond Bordeaux because en primeur prices often help set benchmarks across the fine wine business, shaping merchant margins, inventory decisions and pricing on the secondary market for collectible bottles.

Max Lalondrelle, managing director of fine wine purchasing at Berry Bros. & Rudd, said the campaign had “worked” for his company and that it sold “a sizeable amount of wine.” Even so, he said the market structure has changed so much that en primeur “is no longer what it used to be.”

Berry Bros. & Rudd has cut its en primeur offer by about half over the past decade, to around 60 wines this year, Lalondrelle said. He added that the campaign now generates less attention across the trade than it did 10 or 15 years ago, when Bordeaux futures dominated discussion for weeks. Today, he said, en primeur is only part of the conversation, with merchants selling other wines at the same time and seeing less traction than in earlier years.

Robert Mathias, buying director at Lay & Wheeler, said there had been “cautious optimism” before the campaign began. Producers in Bordeaux were restrained in how they talked about the vintage, he said, but knew they had largely very good wines to sell. Still, he described the pace of releases as slow and uneven, saying that pattern hurt momentum. He also said the early start left merchants and critics with little time to absorb tastings and prepare before offers began to arrive.

Mathias said the campaign “has not been a disaster,” pointing to wines such as Lafite, Cheval Blanc, Mouton and Batailley as highlights. But he said the release schedule became compressed toward the end, which did not help demand.

Pricing remained at the center of the debate. According to merchants, many 2025 wines came to market above 2024 levels, with offers often positioned somewhere between 2024 and 2023 prices and in some cases near 2019 levels. For some buyers, that was difficult to accept in a market where older vintages are still widely available.

Marc Ditcham, fine wine buyer at Corney & Barrow, said many chateaux appeared to ignore repeated warnings from négociants, British merchants and consumers about a difficult global economic backdrop. He said lower yields than in 2024 and broad agreement that 2025 delivered better quality encouraged estates to seek higher release prices.

That logic may have made sense in stronger years for Bordeaux futures, Ditcham said, but customer appetite is now weaker because back vintages can often be bought on the secondary market at similar or lower prices. He added that there is little financial incentive for many collectors to buy early when they can wait for physical stock to arrive later.

Even so, Ditcham said some customers still buy en primeur without much concern for short-term pricing comparisons. Those buyers may want a favorite estate, a specific bottle format or case size, or simply prefer securing an allocation early rather than risking missing out.

Mathias argued that some of this year’s prices may look reasonable over time and said the bigger issue was demand rather than outright overpricing. Bordeaux still has an active market, he said, but buying patterns now move in waves and enthusiasm for futures purchases is weaker than it once was.

Martin Pruszynski, head of wine investment at WineCap, took a similar view on valuation. He said some 2025 releases may later appear “100% fair,” especially given that Bordeaux prices have stabilized more broadly. But he also said buyers can only judge wines against comparable vintages available today, not against what those bottles might be worth years from now.

That tension has become central to Bordeaux’s annual campaign. Merchants say buyers are comparing 2025 not only with last year’s release prices but also with physical vintages already trading in the market, including 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2016 and 2015. In that context, futures lose some of their appeal if they do not offer either a clear discount or scarcity value.

Lalondrelle pushed back against reducing the vintage to a pricing argument alone. He said the quality of 2025 was “incredible” and ranked it among his top three Bordeaux vintages of the past 25 years. In his view, direct comparisons with years such as 2019 or 2022 can be misleading because the style and character of each vintage differ too much to treat them as substitutes.

He also argued that winemaking progress in Bordeaux over the past two decades has changed what estates can achieve in years like 2025. That makes simple price comparisons harder, he said, even if they remain unavoidable in a cautious market.

Still, merchants broadly agreed that consumer behavior has shifted. Mathias said Bordeaux needs to think more carefully about how customers now drink and buy wine. Lalondrelle described a generational divide: older collectors were often willing to buy wine and wait years for delivery, while newer consumers increasingly expect faster access to goods.

That shift may prove important for the wider drinks sector as well. If en primeur continues to lose urgency as a buying model, merchants may devote more capital and attention to wines that can be sold sooner rather than tying up money in long-dated allocations. That could affect stock planning across fine wine portfolios and reinforce pressure on producers whose release strategies depend on futures demand.

For now, trade sentiment suggests Bordeaux’s 2025 campaign delivered selective successes rather than a broad revival. Merchants reported solid sales for some estates and continued respect for the quality of the vintage. But they also described a market that is more price-sensitive, less patient and less willing than before to treat en primeur as an automatic way to buy top Bordeaux.