Most of what I feel about the Bordeaux 2010 campaign (a distinct lack of enthusiasm mainly) has already been expressed on these much-viewed threads on our Members' forum:
More Bordeaux
Are you buying Bdx 2010? (7,000 views and more than 100 posts)
1000 pounds a bottle
and especially
So – when is the great wine bubble going to burst? (14,000 views and well over 200 posts).
But you might like to take a look at this seven-minute interview with me made for the Financial Times' website about the campaign. It's called 'Is a bubble brewing in Bordeaux?'
One thing I find rather savage is how various players are turning on those proprietors who have judged their prices wrongly and come out at prices too inflated for the market's liking. I'm thinking particularly of Florence Cathiard of Ch Smith Haut Lafitte and the able and hugely experienced John Kolasa of Ch Rauzan Ségla, about which Suntory-part-owned négociant Barrière Frères sent a round robin declaring their opening price of €84 was 'just completely ludicrous'. (Kolasa runs another négociant, Ulysse Cazabon.)
Like Figeac last year, Smith and Rauzan-Ségla have had to submit to the very public humiliation of seeing their wine released and not much taken up. But since the opening prices of these wines were well below those of some other wines such as Pontet-Canet and Léoville Barton, which did sell well, and since, I would argue, they have suffered enough, I find this throwing of public insults rather distasteful. If négociants, merchants, traders and consumers don't want to buy, is that not punishment enough?
[If you want to read up on absolutely everything about Bordeaux 2010 on this site, see our Bordeaux 2010 guide.]
