How to reserve
rare Burgundy wines

Buying Burgundy en primeur 🔊 —as futures—means reserving wines while they are still in barrel at the domaine. You commit now, at a pre-release price, and receive the wine later once the grower has finished the work of élevage and bottling.

This is not a financial scheme. It is simply how Burgundy has worked for generations. In practice, it is the most direct route to wines that rarely make it to the general market in meaningful quantity.

Futures give you access, price protection, and certainty before release-day scarcity takes over. Burgundy rewards patience, and the most sought-after bottles are often spoken for well before bottling.

Understanding where the wine has been is the beginning. Those who follow a wine from barrel to bottle gain more than insight—they gain perspective. It is often at this stage that the greatest value exists, before release and before the wider market fully recognizes what is in the glass.

Tomorrow, we move from concept to reality—inside the Hospices de Beaune and Hospices de Nuits auctions, where these wines are first identified and secured, often at a stage when their value is still far from fully realized, and set on their path from barrel to bottle.

The Hospices de Beaune and Hospices de Nuits wines tell one of the great stories in Burgundy. We purchase barrels every year at both auctions, beginning with tastings in barrel alongside the winemakers so we know exactly which wines we want. The wines are then entrusted to producers we know well to guide their élevage over the following 15 to 18 months. When ready, they are bottled, labelled, and shipped to our US cellars for onward delivery to you. Over time, we have built a strong track record of securing standout wines from these historic vineyards.

We send our Hospices de Beaune wines in the barrel to Pascal Borgeot and our Hospices de Nuits wine to Pascal Marchand based on their experience and extensive presence in the appellations of the respective regions. That is part of the beauty of Burgundy and another reason to buy our selections early from the barrel

To secure these wines " en primeur 🔊 ", that is before bottling, is to secure not just favorable pricing, but more importantly, access to exceptional wines that are often impossible to obtain once released.

'Futures' from Domaine de Cromey offer a different kind of appeal: intimacy, directness, and the quiet confidence that comes from a close relationship with the grower and cellar. The vineyard is a Monopole 🔊 , meaning that it is exclusive to Cromey, unlike most vineyards in Burgundy, where often multiple winemakers own a piece. And, these wines are not available anywhere else in the world. They are available exclusively to burgundywine.com.

The Cromey vineyard is a single 7-acre plot called ‘Le Clos,’ a substantial single parcel vineyard by Burgundian standards. It has never had chemical or synthetic products used on it, so it is an organic farmer’s dream. In addition, the vineyard is at a higher elevation than much of the rest of Burgundy’s vineyards, and that, as vintages get hotter due to climate, has become very important to a new generation of winemakers here.

These are wines still evolving in barrels, with all the excitement that implies. They are real wines, in a real cellar, under the care of people we know and trust.

Buying at the " en primeur 🔊 " stage means entering the story early, before release, before the wider market, and before scarcity hardens into regret.

What makes Cromey so compelling is how rarely all of these elements come together in Burgundy. A true monopole, under a single vision, planted on land that has never seen chemicals and farmed organically and biodynamically from the beginning. It sits higher on the slope, in a part of Burgundy that is still emerging, where the wines naturally retain freshness and balance as the climate shifts.

There is a clarity and honesty here that speaks directly to place, without compromise. For those who understand Burgundy, this is exactly the kind of wine you hope to find: site-driven, distinctive, and full of potential. For burgundywine.com clients, it’s one of the most compelling opportunities in the cellar right now.

Collecting wine is about more than possession.

And it's certainly not about buying to drink tonight. It is about memory, anticipation, and the satisfaction of building something meaningful over time.

Futures align perfectly with that mindset. They allow you to plan future drinking windows, secure wines tied to anniversaries and milestones, and quietly build a cellar before everyone else begins looking for the same bottles, and can maybe only get a few...

Provenance matters deeply to collectors. So does access. So does value. Buying Burgundy at the futures stage speaks to all three. These distinct benefits can be seen as the reward for commitment in the early stages.

This is the last call before these wines begin to disappear into private cellars.

Futures are not endlessly available inventory. They are one-time opportunities tied to a particular wine, in a particular vintage, at a particular moment before release.

Once allocated, they are gone. If there are wines here you want for your cellar, now is the time to secure them.