Stars of the hors Bordeaux 2025 Spring collection

On the eve of the spring 2025 edition of la place’s hors Bordeaux campaign, db's Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay assesses the prospects for these iconic wines set to be released in market conditions that remain as difficult as they have been in over a decade. There is no way around the brutal fact that market conditions remains extraordinarily complex, nor the likely implications of that for the spring campaign (and, indeed, for the en primeur campaign that will follow on shortly afterwards). Even if, to date, La Place has proved more resilient to this profound market readjustment than many assumed it would be, it is far from out of the woods. And whilst it remains in the woods it is likely to remain extremely conservative in the positions it takes on new releases, whether from Bordeaux (en primeur) or beyond (hors Bordeaux).

La place’s new economic realism

But that is news to no-one; and that it is news to no-one is a bit of a game changer. For that was not the case this time last year. What it changes is that we are now in a phase of at least relative transparency characterised by a new and increasingly shared sense of economic realism. Properties bringing wines to la place this spring cannot continue to pretend, as some of them certainly did last year, that conditions – at least from their perspective – were, if not favourable, then tolerable and continuity was the best course of action. That is simply not how the conversation goes today. So what does this new economic realism look like and what are the brutal facts that it has absorbed? Let’s start with the good news, even if it is unlikely to detain us for long. There have been few if any outright casualties on la place, certainly for now. Indeed, essentially all of the estates who released wines on la place in the Spring campaign of 2024 remain on la place today. Some, to be fair, have either moved their releases to the autumn or consolidated what was a split-offer into a single autumn release. Amongst those that will not release this spring for that reason are Penfolds, VIK, Stag’s Leap and L’Aventure. But these should be seen as purely logistical choices. They tell us little or nothing about how what they have already released has fared. Rather more significantly, a number of properties are still licking their wounds after a difficult year on la place. They will in all likelihood re-assess the situation when spring has turned to summer and it is not inconceivable that some of them will choose to withdraw from la place and revert to more traditional distribution models. But we are not there yet. That notwithstanding, the reality is that la place remains better at commercialising wines that have already acquired a global reputation than it is at commercialising those whose reputation is still rising and whose potential remains to be fully realised. That needs to change and it may just be starting to change. We will see.

La place’s ‘new normal’

That things could well have been worse is, of course, in a way a good thing. But there is no disguising the fact that the days are long since gone when the new hors Bordeaux releases sold through in hours with négociants fighting between themselves to increase the size of their allocations. Today’s ‘new normal’ on la place is rather different. Négociant pools that were once very small have been growing. Indeed, we will see a few re-releases of wines on la place this March which are designed simply to provide additional volumes of a wine to the new members of an enlarged négociant pool. This is just one symptom of the wider condition. The underlying problem, as fine wine market analysts have been arguing for 18 months at least, is lack of demand and the market’s new found aversion to young wines in particular. True, the hors Bordeaux market is not a primeurs market. All of the new releases are at least in bottle and, as my tasting notes below attest, such is the quality of the wines on offer that they are almost all approachable now. That even goes for the Barolo Riservas, the Brunello Riservas and the Napa releases – in short, for wines that will age for at least 50 years without any difficulty and which we used to think of as completely inaccessible and impenetrable in their youth. That was then … But that is not really the relevant point here. For however accessible these wines may now have become in their infancy, they come from the most recent available vintage. That is the problem. For in a context in which the market is, and has been for some time, awash with the discounted accumulated backstock of previous releases the demand for any new release is supressed.

Expectations for the spring campaign

But that too is common knowledge to all market participants. So how might they react? What should we expect from the spring campaign? The first thing to note here is that, if last year much of the hors Bordeaux market was still in denial about the gravity of the prevailing market situation, that is no longer the case. And that leads me to anticipate at minimum modest reductions in price relative to last year for many of these wines. But why only modest reductions? Surely that will not be enough? And if that is true, obvious even, then doesn’t it question my claim to have identified a new spirit of market realism in and around la place today? The answers to these questions are linked – if just a little complicated. In the best-case scenario (and putting to one side for now the introduction of US tariffs on European exports) it is just about credible to think that the market has already reached it floor. By implication, it is already recovering. But it is certainly not doing so at any great pace. And for as long as it continues to flat-line, we know that it is likely to be characterised by a generalised lack of demand for new releases of young vintages. In such market conditions the ‘clearing price’ for these wines (the price that would guarantee that all of a given release would sell through) is very low indeed and properties, in my view, will not go looking for it. They will, instead, try to find a certain kind of ‘sweet spot’ – a price that interests and mobilises that demand which does exist but which doesn’t threaten to reduce further already supressed secondary market prices for equivalent earlier releases. Judging that price is not easy (though it is not difficult to see that it is some way below last year’s equivalent release price). But many properties, I fear, will be rather too conservative in their spring campaign pricing. Here a second factor comes into the reckoning. A high proportion of the spring releases comes from Italy and the US (roughly 60% in fact). These markets are significantly different from the market for Bordeaux. For a much higher proportion of total sales is domestically-driven (and, for Italy, a significant proportion of those sales which are not are to the US alone). The point is that the domestic market for these wines (in both cases) and the US export market for Italian wines both remain rather stronger than the non-domestic markets for these wines. Yet it is invariably only for these latter markets that la place de Bordeaux controls the distribution. That, in a nutshell is the problem. For Italian and US producers are unlikely to wish to set a global price for their wines sufficiently low to reignite global demand when a rather less generous release price might be sufficient to ensure domestic and US sales (even if the latter are now challenged by tariffs). The implication is that we are likely to see smaller releases of these wines on la place rather than the kinds of price reductions that might be required to resuscitate global (above all Asian and European) demand. That is not good news for the négociants and the courtiers of la place.

New entrants

All of that said, the difficult economic context has not dissuaded a number of la place regulars bringing new wines to their spring offering (notably the first ever vintage of Borgogno’s fabulous Barolo Annunziata Riserva and Champagne Lanson’s first release of library stock of their exquisite Cuvée Noble). Nor has it prevented the arrival on la place for the first time of a rather unique and very different Champagne from the southern limits of the region in the Côte de Bar, Alexandre Bonnet’s tiny cuvée La Fôret. We also see the first releases of an exclusivity of the leading négociant, Joanne, with two Mercurey cuvées from Domaine Raquillet. Overall, I have tasted, reviewed and rated some 78 wines, with a number of additional wines either still wending their way to Paris as I type or not available for tasting at all given the miniscule quantity and legendary status of the proposed release. Amongst the many stars in this staggering line-up are the following:  Star releases:

• Marchesi di Grésy Barbaresco Camp Gros Martinenga Riserva 2020
• Ceretto Barolo Bricco Rocche 2020
• Borgogno Barolo Riserva Annunziata 2019
• Borgogno Barolo Riserva Cannubi 2019
• Poggio di Sotto Brunello di Montalcino 2020
• Poggio di Sotto Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2019
• Ornellaia 2021
• Dal Forno Amarone della Valpolicella 2018
• Ao Yun 2021
• Clos du Lican 2022
• Cathiard Vineyards 2022
• Promontory (Harlan) 2020

Value Picks:

• Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco Faset 2022
• I Sodi di San Niccolo (Castellare di Castellina) 2021
• Alberelli di Giodo Nerello Mascalese 2022
• Alberelli di Giodo Carricante 2023
• Champagne Alexandre Bonnet La Fôret 2020

See here for tasting notes by region: