Liv-ex EP: the 2025 vintage is ‘an opportunity rather than a mistake’

There is hope for en primeur, according to Liv-ex’s closing report on this year’s campaign – and though the “make or break”’ campaign turned out to be more of a “middling” affair met with “tepid sale”, pricing that may seem sensible with the benefit of hindsight.

Speaking to the drinks business ahead of the report’s release last week, Liv-ex’s market analyst Sophia Gilmour said that one of the things that set this campaign apart was not that it has been a make or break year (it has, after all, been said consistently for a number of years, as Gilmour pointed out) but that it was conducted “in the wake of the 2024 campaign”.

“I think this year that was more true because of merchants and negociants turning away from their allocations, so that did set the vintage apart,” she said. “It was not a success, but it also wasn’t a complete dead duck. There were wines that were successful, and I think there were some prices that made sense.”

Writing in the report, Gilmour noted that “once the shadow of last year’s en primeur campaign had lifted, things did start to look up in the broader market”, even if it remained price sensitive.

“We take the position that if there are no other similarly, or better rated vintages cheaper on the market than [that wine] is worth consideration,” the report said.

Although fine wine investment company WineCap‘s EP report said there were “fewer than ten producers who “truly responded” to the trade’s call to offer tempting pricing, Gilmour told db that this reflected wines that are bought primarily for investment purposes rather than the full gamut of Bordeaux wines available en primeur.

There were “a ton of wines…  that could have been good value” and which had been rated highly by critics, she pointed out. “I found a whole lot more than ten that were true for at least one critic,” she said.

Although the assessment of individual producers did not produce a unanimous verdict among critics, generally, “the 2025s received very solid scores, generally ranking amongst the best of the past decade,” the report noted. “They were released at similar levels to the current pricing of the 2019s and 2020s, which regularly came out on top as the clear alternative.”

Increased selectivity

However, there were very few merchants that had the great breadth of wines trading, Gilmour told db, echoing Berry Bros. & Rudd’s fine wine purchasing managing director Max Lalondrelle’s comments to the drinks business that the UK’s oldest wine merchant now offered nearly half the number of wines it did a decade ago.

“This really has been a more selective vintage,” she agreed, also noting that “private clients are still buying, but they’re buying less and they’re narrowing down their selections.”

“So even though some of these [wines] might have made sense [in terms of price], they weren’t necessarily generating the demand that one would have expected,” she explained. “When we spoke to our members, there were many who sympathized with their buyers and said prices were too high, and not tempting enough given years of poor pricing and breaking trust, but there were others that were genuinely surprised by a lack of demand. When we compiled the sales data by value, it came out very similarly to last year.”

That’s not to say there weren’t “flashed of excitement”, the report said – noting, as db’s previously reported, Cheval Blanc, Margaux, Lafite and Batailley.  There were some late performers that also did really well, for example Las Cases and Montrose.

Elsewhere, however there was “frustration at reduced allocations” among Liv-ex’s merchant members. Gilmour for example noted that Lafitte had “squeezed allocations to UK merchants”, which wasn’t a popular decision, but tapped into the potentially at estate’s disposal to “not add to the glut of wine in the UK”.

“Following a year defined by negociants and merchants refusing allocation, this is somewhat surprising. For there to have been enough demand for even some wines to sell out indicates at least some level of demand,” the report said.

Similarity to the 2014 campaign

Gilmour also noted the “heavy comparison” of the 2025 vintage and the 2014, in terms of the market they are being released in. The 2025 was far better rated than the 2024, but essentially released “into a very similar market”, she said. “You’re looking at years of bad release pricing in 2009, 2010, 21, and 22 and then directly following that, poor and low volume vintages (the 2013 and 2024) but both were released into stabilizing markets.

“With the release of the 2014s and the 2025, chateaus not only needed to ingratiate themselves with piqued buyers, but also to recoup losses from underwhelming sales at low prices from the previous year,” the report noted. “Moreover, both the 2014s and 2025s were themselves low yielding, and both released into (finally) sideways moving markets.”

Despite discontent at the pricing of the 2014s at the time, thanks to a stabilizing market in the two years that it took for them to become physical, “no other wines became cheaper.”

“It is very similar to how people are talking about the ’25s now, saying they didn’t take the opportunity, they didn’t come down enough, and that may well be true,” Gilmour said. “The real impact of an improving market is that by the time these wines reach us, they’ll still look all right.”

Like the 2014s before them, the 2025s might prove to be fair in the longer run.

“To sum up the campaign, it wasn’t as make-or-break as we might have thought it was, and it showed what can be successful. It showed that there is a bit of demand, even though it perhaps was not appreciated in the way some had hoped,” Gilmour concluded.

 

 

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