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Bouchard Père & Fils withdraws from en primeur
Historic Burgundy house Bouchard Père & Fils has withdrawn from the en primeur system from the 2023 vintage following its purchase by Artémis Domaines, and stopped its négociant activity to focus solely on estate-grown wines. Its vineyards in the Côte de Nuits will also transfer to the Artémis-owned Domaine d’Eugénie, it has revealed.
The 2023 vintage will now be available in March 2026, after a longer cellar ageing which will allow the wines time to mature in bottle and gain added complexity. This lines up with the delayed release of wines across the Artémis Domaines portfolio, in order to “respect [the wines] tasting maturity”, which it said would benefit the market. As a result of the strategic decision, this year will see a re-release of the 2022 vintage alongside with a museum release of older back vintages.
The move comes less than two years after the estate was acquired by Artémis Domaines, and is in line with the parent company’s wider strategy – the wines of Clos de Tart are also released once bottled, rather than sold en primeur.
According to Richard Girling, fine wine director at Bouchard Père & Fils’ UK importer, Fells, the re-release of the 2022 vintage and the museum release dating back to the 1990s will help fill the “significant chunk” of wines that are not available for this year’s en primeur campaign. They will be aimed at the on-trade and gastronomy channel, he said, “who are always looking for mature Burgundy”. The library release was particularly strong in Côte de Beaune Premier Cru, he added, the “more affordable” part of the Côte d’Or, which is often overlooked by customers chasing big names, but have the ability to age for 20-3o years.
The museum releases have been quality-checked, topped up, re-corked and wax-sealed and tagged to guarantee their provenance from the domaine’s cellars.
Girling said there had been a mixed response from both merchants and discussions with some of its more traditional customers “but on the whole, it was quite positive”, although the new release date – of March – will miss the traditional January-February Burgundy window and would therefore need some “creative thinking.”
Focussing purely on domaine wines
In addition, Bouchard Père & Fils has ceased its négoce business, which amounted to around 60% of its production, Girling said. Speaking to the drinks business at a recent tasting, the estate’s technical director Frédéric Weber said the opportunity would enable the technical team to focus wholly on the estate-grown wines, spending more time “at every step” of the process, from pruning to harvest – thereby enabling them to produce wines with greater precision.
“Today we separate everything and vinify each age of vine separately so that we have a better comprehension of can be more selective when we make the cuvée,” he said. “For example, for the Corton Charlemagne, we have seven different ages of vine, so we organize a blind tasting – often a young vine won’t have the same salinity or complexity, and we prefer to declassify and only take the better ones to make the domaines wines.”
“A lot of people are extremely interested about what is happened across Bouchard Père et Fils as they knew the terroir was exceptional and today to have the ability to be only focussed on the domaine is a big change with history, but a big challenge for the future, but I think it’s a good for the quality, with increased precision.”
However, the move will slash Bouchard Père et Fils’s output by up to 60-75% in total, compared to five years ago.
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“Five years ago, we produced 1.8 -2m bottles on average and today with the estate we are able to produce 500,000 bottles,” Weber said.
Girling also noted that this move would have an impact on Bouchard’s UK and international markets, who would need to find an alternative source of entry-level Burgundy.
Transferring vineyards
Artemis has also embarked on a policy to a wider strategy to transfer some of the Bouchard vineyards in the Côte de Nuits to another Artemis-owned estate, Domaine d’Eugénie in Vosne-Romanée.
“The vineyard from the Côte de Nuits will transfer to Domaine d’Eugénie, which will be the domaines for the Côte de Nuits and Bouchard Père will be the domain for the Côte de Beaune from Chassagne to la colline de Corton,” Weber said.
The vineyards that have been transferred comprise its Premier Crus of Chambertin Les Cazetiers and Nuits St Georges Les Cailles, the Grand Crus of Bonnes-Mares, Les Chambertin and Echézeux, and Les Chambolle-Musigny village – leaving Bouchard with around 98.7 ha in total, comprising 77 climats and 111 plots.
Globally, a lot of people are really excited about the move, Weber added. “The world changes very quickly and I think it’s very important for the vineyard and the house, even with 300 years of history, if we are here today it’s because we change, we have to adapt.”
According to Weber the previous negociants business contract had been very quickly snapped up.
“Twenty years ago, you had lots of small domaines and some big houses, but today more people are becoming negociants and the traditional big house negociants continue to decrease,” he reflected.
The move brings the estate in line with the wider strategy of Artémis Domaines, which is majority-owned by the Pinault family.
Artémis Domaines acquired Bouchard Père et Fils in October 2022, when in merged with Maisons & Domaines Henriot. The deal also included Champagne Henriot (which was subsequently bought by Champagne’s largest cooperative group, Terroirs et Vignerons de Champagne (TEVC) in March 2023), William Fèvre in Chablis (since sold to Domaines Barons de Rothschild (DBR) in January 2024) and Beaux Frères in Oregon. Rumours soon surfaced that the new owners might reorder the different estates among its existing portfolio, causing some unrest in Burgundy, where Bouchard Père & Fils is one of the oldest wine estates, having been founded in Beaune in 1731 by Michel Bouchard. It was also one of the largest vineyard owners in the Cote D’or.