Sun, May 26 2019

On a drenched field in southern Ethiopia, hundreds of members of the ethnic Gedeo community are huddled together with nothing to do but wait. It had rained all night and the ragged shelters they had strung together were sinking in the mud.

In theory, we are in the middle of Bordeaux's en primeur campaign but, as has become usual, this annual attempt to sell the latest vintage, when it's only a few months old and still in cask, has been spotty at best and sluggish at worst. From a…