The 2009 vintage en primeur campaign has gotten off to a flying start with early hype predicting another bumper year for the Bordeaux region. With all the journalists and merchants heading out to the region, it seems we’re being primed for a big campaign with equally large prices.

Despite the preconception that the recession has left people to broke to support the en primeur business, it seems that new buyers are emerging from around the world with a second BBR office opening in Hong Kong and many Aisan buyers plugging the gaps that the Western investors have had to pull back on. Saying that, it does seem that web traffic being monitored for search related terms is not slowing down and London Wine merchant, Jeroboams, report that their enquiries for the 2009 Bordeaux en primeur are reaching the same as those of the vaunted 2005.

It is early days yet but the allocations will soon be allocated and the sellers will be hitting the call back buttons to the early enquirers and staple diet customers of yesteryear. We’ll be piping through as many reports as we can on our site at Bordeaux En Primeur.

A big name chateau getting preliminary scores already by big name wine writers are Lafite 100. Latour 99. Cheval 100. Haut-B 97. Margaux 98. Mouton 94. Ausone 97. Petrus 98. Yquen 99 points (@timatkin – Twitterfeed). But isn’t that the rub? Gary vaynerchuk wisely pointed out that the scores between the 2008 en primeur’s and the 2009 vintage is not that great but the trouble is, the price disparity is. It does highlight that the scoring methods for wines by trusted industry stalwarts like Robert Parker or Jancis Robinson need closer attention. a 100 point wine rating convention that has a tendency to score wines in the high 90′s and then announces a special vintage does leave it self much room for differentiation. Does this mean that we are meant to look at every score within a certain context? It seems that as we look back over the vintages and compare the scores, we also need a hell of a lot of notes to make the scores a meaningful representation of the vintage to the buyer.

It doesn’t all quite add up, does it? Surely a score given at a given time that is a universal scoring method, should be just that… a benchmark that investors can trust. So what’s the solution? Visiting the numerous tastings that are put on for potential buyers could be a tried and tested solution. A good idea is to hand pick a couple of wine critics both from the UK and the USA and closely compare and contrast their scores and notes to inform your selection. Obviously, if you’re in the investing rather than the drinking business then you’ll not care – just buy the most famous chateau in the best vintages and your investment will be safe.