This has come up before, there is no doubt that older wine buyers will not be buying much EP, I stopped buying EP some years back, it simply makes no sense to a certain age demographic.
The old advantages of EP ie buy two cases of a wine, sell one later and drink the second for free disappeared decades back, the Chateau caught onto that wheeze after the '82 vintage and hiked their prices to make it almost impossible.
You also have the fact that Europe has had more vintages of the century in recent times than the rest of century combined, with wine making techniques improved beyond recognition and climate change, all areas of Europe have benefited, some more than others like Germany.
And whilst certain wines attract EP buying simply on the basis that someone likes them and wishes to ensure they have that year in their cellar, that is countered by the fact there is hardly any previous vintage of Bordeaux especially you cannot buy, and that also reduces costs as you are not paying storage or insurance.
The days when three vintages in ten were any good and all piled in to buy are over, there simply isn’t the need anymore.
As with all things it is up to the individual what they buy and how, but EP is a very British thing other nations do not really have much to do with it.
Plus today a large part of the wine buying world see nothing positive in laying down wines for decades and the industry as I know from insiders are making wines that are ready even in Bordeaux, much earlier than before alongside being much more tolerant of extremes in temperature etc and that will become in time much more prevalent.
An additional downside to long maturing wines is ‘when are they actually ready’ to drink, nobody really knows and you read reports of wine drinkers opening expensive wines after ten, twelve , fifteen years and declaring they need more cellar time, and what has happened, you have just wasted three bottles of Chateau X at £100 a pop finding out it isn’t ready making the rest of the case even more expensive.
Of course you may be of that ilk that the expense means little to you and just enjoy the experience of opening wines to see how they are 'improving ’ or not but it don’t come cheap.
For younger imbibers there is some merit in EP but it is lessening by the year with so much available.
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