BORDEAUX: Bordeaux vintners and merchants are rallying to survive in a thirsty but choppy US market after their biggest customer in the United States defected.

US importer Chateau & Estate Wines (DC&E), a subsidiary of UK drinks

giant Diageo, last year ended a 35-year relationship with Bordeaux

fine wine and began aggressively liquidating

tens of millions of dollars’ worth of stock at 40

to 60 per cent discounts. DC&E was for years the largest US buyer of Bordeaux and had amassed a huge cellar, which is now being sold off.

Diageo, which remains in the Bordeaux business outside the United States, left the US market for Bordeaux fine wine in the face of enormous unsold stocks, shrinking profit margins and a trend among US consumers toward less expensive wine.

“DC&E still has a huge inventory — thousands

of cases, it’s still on the

US market, hanging

over our necks like the sword of Damocles,” Guillaume Touton, owner of US importer-distributor Monsieur Touton Selections, said. “We have a very risky situation.”

Some vintners have taken the unprecedented step of buying back their own wine. “When it was official that DC&E was stopping everything and going to sell off its stock, immediately we were in contact,” recounted Jean Merlaut, owner of Chateau Gruaud Larose. “We said that we wanted to buy back our wine.”