En Primeur was not invented in a moment of confidence.

It was improvised in a panic — after three bad vintages, an oil crisis, and a scandal nearly took down the entire négociant system in the mid-1970s.

The model is not an ancient pillar of the Bordeaux system; it's roughly the same age as the VHS cassette or the Muppet Show.

But here's what's more interesting than its origins: every time En Primeur appeared to be working — really working — it was because of a specific, unrepeatable circumstance.

Robert Parker created a generation of American collectors who needed to buy early to secure allocations.

The Japanese bubble economy of the late 1980s produced buyers with money, status anxiety, and no patience for waiting.

Chinese gifting culture in the 2000s turned First Growths into luxury tokens with a Bordeaux label attached.

Each time, the system looked as though it had been vindicated. Each time, the circumstances that vindicated it disappeared.

The structural logic of paying today for wine you won't drink for a decade has to be re-earned every year — and, for the last 15 years, Bordeaux has increasingly been running out of convincing reasons.

New En Primeur-favouring circumstances have failed to turn up.

I've written a (very) long piece on where En Primeur came from, what actually made it work, why it's structurally broken, and where the answer might already exist 300 miles south of the Alps.

Paywalled — but the first section is free.