Wine producers in Bordeaux have given a stinging assessment of the 2022 wine buying public, saying they are among the worst they’ve ever seen.
Heart-breaking
‘They’ve shown almost no interest in our lovely en primeur campaign at all,’ said Donna Moiton-Argent of the Association of Chateaux Negotiants and Exporters (ACNE).
‘We’ve poured our heart and soul into pretending that an uninspiring year is absolutely marvellous and yet they couldn’t give less of a shit.’
It was, she said ‘heart-breaking to put so much time and effort into social media, website posts and press releases only to have it all ruined by a prolonged indifference on the part of the public.’
Frost problems
The 2021 growing season was a challenging one in Bordeaux, with ice, hail, fog, rain, rot and even plagues of locusts in Entre Deux Merdes.
The chateaux have maintained that a prolonged period of late-season lying had turned things around and created conditions that were perfect for gullible collectors to part with their cash. But interest levels among the public have remained stubbornly low.
‘This year’s campaign was hit hard with a certain frostiness early on, and interest remained unseasonably cold all the way through,’ said Moiton-Argent. ‘Many of our potential buyers are still hard and sour even now.
‘Probably because we’re charging ridiculous amounts for a spectacularly average year.’
Look and learn
Consumer groups have suggested that the Bordelais might have had a more successful campaign if they’d taken some time off from counting their money and looked at what was happening in the world.
‘A lot of people are preferring to invest their money in other things at the moment,’ said Imogen Fairplay of Wot? Magazine. ‘Such as food, gas and electricity.’
Bordeaux, she went on, ‘just isn’t seen as an essential to people.
‘Particularly if they want something nice to drink.’
Whine-maker’s vintage
Rose-Anne Segla of Chateau Croquet-Mallet said that the 2022 wine-drinking public were ‘a whine-maker’s vintage – because they make us all whine by not buying our bottles.’
Stylistically, she said this year’s consumers were ‘tight, closed and poor – particularly in the wallet.’
Click here to understand Bordeaux in 20 seconds – or here to have it explained to you by, er… Michael Gove on the Booze at Ten.
