La vente en primeur, instrument de discrimination intertemporelle en prix

Now widespread in many french wine market places, the so-called "en primeur" sales policy, that is selling part of the production before wine is bottled, appears to be a form of intertemporal price discrimination. Surprisingly enough, wine is actually sold at a lower price "en primeur" than later in bottle. To investigate this question, we consider a monopolist facing two types of consumers and show that he is better off selling at a first-period price lower than a second-period price, provided that high valuation consumers are rationed at the first period. Moreover, price discrimination with such rationing dominates the uniform pricing policy but also pure third-degreee price discrimination.