US losing stature with Bordeaux wine producers

US losing stature with Bordeaux wine producers
By Sophie Kevany AFP - 56 minutes ago

BORDEAUX, France (AFP) - Fewer US buyers than usual turned up in Bordeaux this week for wine primeur week -- when buyers and critics taste the latest wine harvest -- but producers surprisingly are not too concerned.

"America is not the world, it is a bit bigger than that," said Patrick Maroteaux, president of the Union des Grands Cru de Bordeaux, organiser of the annual primeur tastings, which take place six months after the harvest and two years before bottling.

"Europe is a significant market, as is Asia," he said.

Going one step beyond their oft repeated complaint that Americans only buy primeurs in top quality speculative years, so more for profit than drinking, producers now happily say they are no longer dependant on the US market.

"It has happened in about the last two years, on the good side people realised there were new customers from Asia, Russia and India," said Didier Marcelis a Bordeaux producer at a tasting in St Emilion on Monday.

"And on the other side there has been the euro dollar problem. So we started realizing we shouldn't rely on the Americans," said Marcelis, who spent 20 years working for IBM and Cisco before buying Chateau Serilhan in Bordeaux's St Estephe region in 2003. "It is not complicated though, it is just Darwinism."

Dramatic changes in consumption patterns are clear in emerging markets.

In 2007, Bordeaux exported 43,000 hectolitres to China, 82 percent more than in 2006. That volume was worth 45 million euros (70 million dollars), an increase of 158 percent.

One Chinese buyer at the Monday tasting, Steven Lu, said he would be buying about double what he bought last year, of both un-bottled primeurs for stock, and bottled wine for the Olympics. Lu, who has a small import business selling to upmarket hotels and restaurants, as well as private clients, says his customer list has doubled in the last two years.

In 2007, Bordeaux also exported 38,500 hectolitres to South Korea, an increase of 40 percent for a value of 29 million euros, up 66 percent, while Singapore got 15,000 hectolitres, a 94 percent increase, worth 23.5 million euro, up 33 percent.

By comparison wine exports to America in 2007 were down nine percent in value, albeit for a more significant sum of 196 million euros.

The US market is driven by point scores though, so a lot will depend on those of US critic Robert Parker, who is in Bordeaux this week to taste both the 2007 vintage, and re-taste the now bottled 2005s.

"If I get a good Parker score, which makes it so easy to sell my wines, that is great," said Marcelis. However if he gets a bad one, or none, sales to the US are very difficult.

Parker's points will not be available for two to three months, and the majority of Bordeaux primeur producers will wait till after their publication to release their prices. So although the Bordelaise may talk about America not being a make or break market any more, it would be unimaginable for them to release prices before the make or break scores of this particular American are published.

As the figures show though, emerging markets on their own will not replace America, which is set to overtake France as the world's number one consumers of wine, per person per head, in the next year or two. So hopes are also high for European and domestic French buyers, particularly those from the supermarkets.

Fabrice Matysiak, a buyer for Auchan, one of France's top three supermarkets, described 2007 as interesting. "We came with lead boots to find, yes some bad wines, but some good ones too," he said. "But they will have to lower their prices from the 2006 vintage," he said, admitting freely that this was inevitably round one of negotiations.

There are producers of course who have welcomed US buyers already this week, and they prefer to say that in 2007, as in 2004 and 2001, all less than great vintages, one sees fewer but better buyers.

Asked his opinion about US markets this year, US-born Bordeaux-based wine merchant Jeffrey Davies put it more straightforwardly. "Frankly, I would imagine that in America people will be reaching for the vodka, rather than the Lafite right now," he said.