Tasting September fine wine releases via the Bordeaux Place

September now sees almost daily releases of ‘icon’ fine wines from all corners of the globe using the historic Place de Bordeaux marketplace to launch their newest vintages.

Names already released at the time of writing include Opus One 2018, Inglenook Rubicon 2018, Seña 2019, Nicolás Catena Zapata 2018 and Clos Apalta 2018, among others. Many more will follow, from Tuscany and Champagne to Australia and California.

The Place, which has traditionally – and very successfully – been used to sell 99% of all Bordeaux fine wines via a network of roughly 300 négociants, now handles a collection of more than 70 wines from five continents.

Click to see our new score table covering notes and scores for all the September fine wine releases via the Place de Bordeaux

Notes on a selection of the top-scoring September releases 2021 are also at the bottom of the post

While Bordeaux en primeur remains the key event in the Bordelais calendar, these September releases are now an important fixture for the fine wine trade.

They not only concentrate the attention of buyers at a time when the interest in blue-chip Bordeaux is traditionally low but have also helped négociants to diversify their businesses by creating a dedicated, separate sales strategy to manage the international releases.

This trend has been growing every year since the first non-Bordeaux wine joined the Place in 1998 in the shape of Almaviva, a joint-venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA (Mouton) and Chile’s Concha y Toro.

Opus One, the California joint-venture created in 1979 between the Rothschilds and California’s Mondavi family, started releasing some of its wine via the Place in 2004. The first wine not linked to Bordeaux was Italy’s Masseto, in 2009, followed by Solaia, in 2010.

They were followed by South Africa’s famous sweet wine, Vin de Constance, as well as one of the most in-demand Rhône Valley wines, Château de Beaucastel’s Hommage à Jacques Perrin, which is sold now exclusively through La Place in September.

More recently, the first Australian wines entered the system in 2020 and there are several debutants in 2021, including the first wine from the Penfolds range, a Spanish Rioja and vintage Champagne.