An Overview of Buying In Bond & En Primeur
Bordeaux châteaux have traditionally sold each new vintage en primeur, i.e. in the year following the harvest while the wines are still maturing in cask. For centuries the city’s merchants tasted the young wines to decide which to buy, the barrels being delivered to their cellars on the Quai des Chartrons beside the Gironde estuary. The en primeur system continues to this day, the difference being that the wines remain in situ after purchase, to be bottled by the châteaux in their own cellars prior to despatch to customers around the world.
In addition to Bordeaux négoçiants, journalists and merchants from around the globe now taste the young wines, publishing their notes, recommendations and scores. Private customers are now able to place orders as soon as prices are released.
Lay & Wheeler offers the wines priced as ‘in bond’, including shipment to the UK into its designated bonded repository, Vinothèque. Wines are shipped after bottling, usually eighteen months to two years after purchase. Vinothèque provides excellent long term storage conditions for fine wines; and, as it is an official bonded warehouse, the wines are not liable to duty or VAT until eventual delivery to the owner. Storing wine under bond is therefore a cash efficient means of buying fine wines and is considered almost essential where wines may subsequently be re-sold or exported.
Many wines in addition to those of Bordeaux are now sold under bond so that customers can take advantage of the benefits of this form of storage. Lay & Wheeler offers vintages from Burgundy, the Rhone, Italy, Spain and elsewhere in this way. Most frequently these are young wines, tasted in cask in the producers’ cellars, and therefore available at the most favourable prices. As with Bordeaux these are subsequently shipped to the UK when in bottle.
Click on the links below for further information:
|