The new wine held in the cask at the chateau is called En Primeur or Wine Futures: The vintage is the year of harvest, but is not released for sale until the following spring. We purchase this as an investment each spring, subject to a good vintage, and singling out the best producing chateaux each year. Most buyers have a major drawback when buying in a great vintage – that is if they can. Many wine merchants will only sell the best wines if the buyer purchases the equivalent value of lesser ‘drinking’ wine. We have been able to secure allocations of the wines from the Chateaux we choose without any obligation to buy the cheaper wines as well. We will not buy vintages that are not of a high enough quality, unlike wine merchants we are not beholden to buy every year regardless of how good the wines are.
Most of the wines we will purchase will be from established vintages, with established secondary trading markets. As soon as the wine is ready to drink stocks start to diminish. Wines good enough to be used as an investment will usually have a life span of 40-49 years, some may last even longer. An excellent wine will take approximately 5-7 years (average) before it has matured enough to be drinkable, however most connoisseurs will wait until the wine has reached its optimum drinkable level, usually when the wine is approximately 12-18 years old.
The wine will then carry on maturing in the bottle getting better and better as the years pass, right up until the end of its life when it goes ‘Over the Hill’; i.e. be past its best and no longer good for drinking.
There will be drinkers sourcing each winefrom the point of early maturity right though to late maturity as some drinkers like their wines young, while others like their wines well matured, and obviously there are all the drinkers, restaurants, hotels, casinos, private members clubs etc wanting to purchase the Claret in the interim years.
| As we all know, an increasing demand (due to increasing quality and rarity) together with a decreasing supply (due to consumption) creates the basis for a very successful and stable market. |