A multitude of milestone celebrations produced a legion of guiltless permissions to pop corks on aged wines last month. Graduations, birthdays, and the annual Troquet summer cellar clearance converged. Birth year wines of graduating children, old bottles carried to my home by giddy parents on the precipices of new empty-nest lifestyles, Troquet wines on sale, and […]
Bordeaux Wine Cellar ROI
Bordeaux dominates my cellar inventory of wines preceding the 1995 vintage. That is nothing more than a happy fact of life for collectors with the advantage of early access to these wines prior to mind numbing price escalation. Last week at a 2000 Bordeaux tasting dinner I attended, one of the younger participants who works in […]
Wine Cellar Celebration at AKA Bistro
Bordeaux improves through cellaring; nothing new about that. A long time ago I joined a group dinner to taste claret with Clive Coates and he drew something like this to explain a cultural gap in patience, along wines’ life trajectories, between British and American wine enthusiasts: At a very recent dinner I hosted for a group of business […]
French Wine Fund
Wine is inarguably a vehicle of pleasure to its appreciators. To some others, it is nothing more than a speculative investment vehicle. Acquiring wine without intention to see, touch, nor ever taste it defies any interpretation of the “wine lifestyle” concept. With that perspective and plenty of curious amusement I embraced the week’s news of French authorities […]
Blind Tasting 2009 Bordeaux Value
The wines hidden inside brown paper bags came from Fronsac, Castillon, and the Haut Medoc. There were two token wines, one from St. Julien and the other St. Emilion. The most expensive bottle of 2009 Bordeaux in the lineup was $33 retail, insuring that the evening’s foundation would be poured and hardened sans pedigree. Besides […]
Strategy & Debate for 2009 Bordeaux
Let’s not debate the greatness of the 2009 Bordeaux vintage as the top wines make their way to US markets. For now, squelch all lamentations over price inflation for first and second growths on the heels of their runaway futures market. Turn a blind eye to Parker’s very recent The Empire Strikes Back article where he wrote “this is unquestionably […]
2011 Wine Highlights Part 1: Wine & Restaurants
While the best wine and food might still appear on my table over the next couple of weeks, 2011 is quickly shutting down like newly bottled Bordeaux and I catch myself reminiscing over the year that was in wine and food. These musings must not be mistaken for a quintessential nor ultimate reminiscence of global […]
Top Three Wines: Monbousquet, Raquillet, & Mullineux
Top wines this month bring together strange bedfellows including a Southern Hemisphere syrah from the long ignored vineyards in South Africa’s Swartland Cape Winelands outpost, a brilliant Burgundy from the stepchild Côte Chalonnaise village of Mercurey, and Bordeaux from a refocused producer working right bank Saint-Émilion vineyards. Each one of these wines represents strong value in […]
Some Old Wine Bottles
95% of wines are consumed within a week of purchase. It’s a fact, but is it vinous genocide? I had a conversation with a notable wine educator the other night who said he preferred young wines and can only recall tasting eight older wines that were worth the wait or more enjoyable to drink older […]
Bordeaux First Growths Fund Alternative Wines
In early 2006 the Bordeaux price-value line was breached and began its transgression towards complete collapse, erasing all justification for drinking the first growths and other similarly coveted wines that sat in my cellar for decades. Just look at the blue line to the right, representing relative fine wine price escalation compared to the major […]