This episode of “Wine 101” is sponsored by Louis M. Martini Winery. The term “en primeur” signifies a wine that hasn’t been released to the market yet, but reports show it’ll be an amazing vintage. If there were en primeur wines in the U.S., Louis M. Martini would definitely be high on the list. With a history so ingrained in Napa, you simply couldn’t do it without them.
En primeur, or “wine futures,” is the phenomenon of buying wine almost two years before it’s bottled. The practice is usually something that only industry people pay attention to, but it occasionally leaks into the consumer realm.
The concept of en primeur was first documented by writer Pliny the Younger in ancient Rome. With the invention of cylindrical wine bottles came an interest in collecting and storing wine. However, at the time, the only people who could afford to do so were members of the bourgeoisie, and there were only so many wine varietals that went to bottle — usually port and Madeira.
Fast-forward to 1848 and a French man named Hermann Cruz decided to buy up almost all of the previous year’s Medoc wine to sell on his own terms at a later date. By the 1860s, the import duties on French products had been significantly reduced and the passing of the Single Bottle Act helped bring retail sales to fruition. Then, phylloxera hit, and the practice of en primeur was dormant until the post-World War II era when the French
