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Expensive Wines


Joe H

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The new issue of the Wine Spectator notes that 2002 Sassacaia sells for US $190.00. They gave it a whopping 87 points. Of course for Fattoria Del Barbi, this must seem rather generous considering the 78 points their '99 brunello received. This is a US $103.00 78 point wine!!!!! I don't believe I have ever seen a wine that cost this much receive so few points. "Earthy and funky...with some decent fruit." For one hundred and three dollars.....

Of course there's the annually predictable Allegrini Palazzo della Torre whose '01 received 90 points. There's usually someone in D. C. (Magruder's?) who has this on sale for about $13 or $14.

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My three most over-priced wines would be:

1994 Screaming Eagle - It was a very nice wine, but it was not good enough to justify the $1200 that people are willing to spend for it. I understand this was one of their lesser vintages, but I have had off vintage Petrus that made me understand why that glorious wine commands the prices it does.

1988 Krug Clos de Mesnil - A beautiful champagne, and is in my top five best sparklers, but I believe that the 1988 Krug is better, and for half the price.

White Zinfandel - Overpriced even when free.

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Of course there's the annually predictable Allegrini Palazzo della Torre whose '01 received 90 points.  There's usually someone in D. C. (Magruder's?) who has this on sale for about $13 or $14.

It is Magruders that used to have the Palazzo della Torre for $14.99 a bottle, but I think they sold out of their allocation. You can usually find it for around $17-18 at other local stores.

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My three most over-priced wines would be:

1994 Screaming Eagle - It was a very nice wine, but it was not good enough to justify the $1200 that people are willing to spend for it.  I understand this was one of their lesser vintages, but I have had off vintage Petrus that made me understand why that glorious wine commands the prices it does.

1988 Krug Clos de Mesnil - A beautiful champagne, and is in my top five best sparklers, but I believe that the 1988 Krug is better, and for half the price.

White Zinfandel - Overpriced even when free.

Steve, when Roberto and Jeff Black came for dinner one of the wines was a magnum of '97 Sassicaia which Roberto opened himself, prying the wooden box open, decanting, etc. I bought this in Florence about five years ago and kept it in a Eurocave for almost the entire time.

I cannot tell you how disappointed we all were with this. My guess is that the shop that I bought it from in Italy had not stored it properly and it overheated at some point because the wine seemed "thinner" lacking depth and actually had a bit of "bite" to it. I thought opening a bottle like this would have been perfect for that evening but I honestly do not remember if we even finished it before opening another bottle.

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When I was at the Enoteca in Montalcino, they had Sassicaia 2001 on their cruvinet. The wine bar manager was practically embarassed to sell me a glass. In fact she gave me a glass of Casse Basse 99 Riserva Brunello (another overpriced, overmade wine in my mind) for free! Her coment ont he Sassicaia? "I don't get it." I agree.

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Isn't that a failing grade?

Although I used to give my students the benefit of the doubt and round "69" up to "70". Unless of course I wanted them to fail in which case I found a way to make that "69" turn into a "68".

Which reminds me of an old joke....

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How about the 2001 BV Latour Private Reserve:  Price $90/bottle, score 69.  Can we add that one to the list?

Oh BV a wine that has provided me as many heart breaks as Opus One and Insignia. I have had old wines of all three that were transcendental, but the newer offerings have been very disappointing. :lol:

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I just recieved a list of impeccably stored Bordeaux from a  negociant in Bordeaux containing the following bargains (wholesale prices):

1970 Mouton-Rothschild    $8,630 case

1961 Chateau Margaux      $20,424 case

1961 Chateau Haut Brion  $ 37,459 case

1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild  $129,187 case

Cheers!

So, how many cases of each did you buy?

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1988 Krug Clos de Mesnil - A beautiful champagne, and is in my top five best sparklers, but I believe that the 1988 Krug is better, and for half the price.

Apples and oranges, my friend.

The Clos du Mesnil is from the single highest rated vineyard in all of Champagne (as rated by the Champagne growers bureau). It is surrounded by the town of Le Mesnil Sur Oger, and can only produce but so much fruit, and it is in very high demand. Obviously, it is a Blanc de Blancs, whereas the vintage Krug bottling is Pinot Noir, Meunier and Chardonnay.

I'm not saying that it isn't overpriced - for some it is, for others it is not - but the two aren't truly comparable.

The best Krug bottling? Easy - the one that someone else is paying for :lol:

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It is Magruders that used to have the Palazzo della Torre for $14.99 a bottle, but I think they sold out of their allocation.  You can usually find it for around $17-18 at other local stores.

We've got plenty. I'd love to see it go away. Send me a PM and we'll talk.

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Penfold's "Grange" 2001

We just got our allocation for the new vintage. It seems to be even more frighteningly expensive than usual, but if any DR.com folks are interested in a bottle or three, I'm ready to give you a great price. Please feel free to drop me a PM or email me at joe@acebevdc.com

I hope to get to taste it next week with the winemaker, so perhaps I can provide a first-hand report, but my experience has always been that this wine needs a good 10-15+ years before it is "ready" and drinking it this young is a form of infanticide, but since Mr. Groom is no longer the winemaker there, perhaps the style has changed. Unlikely, but who knows?

I remember tasting the 1981 when it was around 17 years of age, and it remains one of the greatest red wines I've ever had, and I'm greedily hoarding my remaining bottle (or two) that I remember paying $39.99 for back in the late 1980's. For that price, I could buy a glass of the new vintage I think :unsure:

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We just got our allocation for the new vintage. It seems to be even more frighteningly expensive than usual, but if any DR.com folks are interested in a bottle or three, I'm ready to give you a great price. Please feel free to drop me a PM or email me at joe@acebevdc.com

I hope to get to taste it next week with the winemaker, so perhaps I can provide a first-hand report, but my experience has always been that this wine needs a good 10-15+ years before it is "ready" and drinking it this young is a form of infanticide, but since Mr. Groom is no longer the winemaker there, perhaps the style has changed. Unlikely, but who knows?

I remember tasting the 1981 when it was around 17 years of age, and it remains one of the greatest red wines I've ever had, and I'm greedily hoarding my remaining bottle (or two) that I remember paying $39.99 for back in the late 1980's. For that price, I could buy a glass of the new vintage I think :unsure:

A quick swoop through the internet yielded these prices for the '01 Grange:

D. Sokolin & Co. $270.07/bottle

WineCommune.com $356/bottle

Cellarit.com $476/bottle

That's quite a spread!

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A quick swoop through the internet yielded these prices for the '01 Grange:

D. Sokolin & Co. $270.07/bottle

WineCommune.com $356/bottle

Cellarit.com $476/bottle

That's quite a spread!

Yikes! My shelf price wouldn't be quite that high, but yes, over $200.

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Did they add tannin powder this year?

Not likely. I met with the winemaker, Peter Gago, in Baltimore last night with a group, tasting the Grange from '79 through '01, from magnums that had been opened 12 hours before and double-decanted for a morning tasting with HE WHO MUST BE OBEYED. I'll post more on my blog in a few days, but suffice to say that the wines showed a remarkable consistency of style, even while revealing vintage differences.

Joe, your 1981 was showing nicely, but lighter and less intense than the '80 to my taste. We were up to the '86 before I noted that the wine tasted like a "young" shiraz. I tend to like the blowsy, flirtatious type (hey, I'm an easy date! :unsure: ), so I swooned for the '88, '89, '97. The '90, '91, '92 and '94 were more structured and tight, indicating that they are not yet revealing their full potential. Those were the geeky wines. The '01, recently released, was of course massive, tight and tannic. But the tannins were well integrated.

I've never been able to pay that much for a bottle of wine, so I won't be stocking up. But this was my first chance to taste so many Grange vintages at once - they justify the hype.

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I went to a trade tasting of Penfold's wines yesterday which had the whole Penfold's crew there and the winemaker, and it was kind of fun.

The 2001 Grange was surprisingly drinkable for such a young wine, but perhaps the bottle I was poured from had been open for a while (I'm betting that they opened multiple bottles of all those wines early so that they would "show" better). I thought that it would be impenetrable and unforgiving, but one could easily enjoy a bottle tonight. It would be a shame, because it has decades of potential in front of it, but it wouldn't punish you if you were curious.

That Baltimore dinner sounds like great fun. What a unique experience. Good to hear about the '81. I may just open them all on my birthday this year and get it over with :unsure:

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I was at that tasting as well, Joe. the '01 Grange is going to be killer down the road, and yeah, it was not quite as mean as I expected it to be this young. There was some fruit, flower and mineral to be tasted through the wall-o-tannin.

I wish they'd had an older vintage or two (or 22!) open! What a great time that b-more dinner must have been!

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Interesting article in today's San Francisco Chronicle on why people spend hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine -- and how and why winemakers get away with charging that much:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...WIGVHK6MGT1.DTL

The article also provides an insightful breakdown of production costs (including taxes, marketing, etc.).

Is there anyone out there who'd pay $500 for a bottle of wine? Does it depend on what precisely is inside the bottle? Or is $500 simply too much to pay for 25.6 ounces of fermented grape juice? If it is too much, what's your ceiling?

Michael

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Here? Sure, plenty of people would, under the right circumstances.

As for me, myself...personally. My ceiling, if I HAVE to buy a bottle, and not stick to the buy the glass list...$40, defined as the most expensive of the two bottles of wine I have ever bought in a restaurant, and skip dessert :) .

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It really depends on the wine, and the vintage. But the prices simply reflect the reality of the demand for these wines. You never see Harlen, Screagle, or any of these other cult wines in the bargain bin. Would I pay $500 a bottle for a new release of Screaming Eagle? No, but I have paid that price for a well aged first growth (and it was worth every penny).

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I have paid €205 for a bottle of 97 Dal Forno Romano Amarone. I have paid almost $300 for the 2000 of same. After that it falls off real quickly... maybe $125 for a half bottle of eiswein, $90 for a brunello riserva, 75 for another, then $65 or so for Ridge Montebello futures. Most of my personal wine buying is in the $30-60 range with a lot of rossi di montalcino for less.

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If my funds were much less limited than they are now? Sure, I'd spend $500 for the right bottle.

Unfortunately, my funds are limited and I spend my time searching for the best <$15 bottle of Rhone I can find and exploring other cheap inexpensive wines from around the world. Once every few weeks I splurge and pay $30 for a wine retail. In most restaurants I max out at about $50, but more often spend in the $30s.

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I wouldn't hesitate if it 1) were a special occasion, 2) the wine had a certain emotional or associative value for me personally beyond its intrinsic merits, and 3) I knew the wine had been well kept. So few wines meet these criteria that I've always been able to save the 500 bucks. But one that comes to mind would be a 1971 Bernkastler Doktor Auslese, which is now beyond mature but was the first wine I ever consciously tasted and therefore the first one I remember. (I was about ten years old at the time and still recall that it poured like oil.) If I could find a well-kept bottle of that I'd gladly pay $500 for it.

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That is over my limit for what I'd pay for a bottle of wine. Personally, the most I've ever paid for a bottle of wine is $100, and I've never paid more than $175 in a restaurant (and that was only once.)

But . . . there are wines that if you can buy them when released at that price, are worth much more on the secondary market. Look at what Chateau Petrus sells for, and a DRC just keeps going up in value. Some of the wines mentioned like Screaming Eagle, Harlen, etc. are so rare (well Screagle is getting less so) that you can flip them for almost twice what they cost at release (if you are so fortunate to be on the allocation list) the next week. I met a collector who bought three cases of the 2000 Cheval-Blanc as futures, and as soon as they arrived, flipped two cases and made enough profit to pay for the third. If I remember correctly, they sold for about $5600 a case as futures.

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Just to echo what has already been said, I would pay $500 for a bottle of wine that had special meaning to me, or some such thing. I think that the most I've paid for a single bottle is around $250 retail, and about the same on a winelist. Most of the time I am in the $40-100 range in restaurants. As dinwiddie said, were I fortunate enough to be on the Screagle list, I would certainly put down $1500 for my three pack and sell one, making the rest free. Other than that scenario, I wouldn't/don't buy wine as an investment per se, I buy it to drink when it's ready...

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The Littorai is a good one, though getting pricier. I don't know that these qualify as 'cult' wines but, I'm having fun seeking out the second labels of first growth bordeux right now. Whereas Latour would be my entertainment budget for the quarter, le Forts de Latour is a justifiable indulgence.

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The Littorai is a good one, though getting pricier. I don't know that these qualify as 'cult' wines but, I'm having fun seeking out the second labels of first growth bordeux right now. Whereas Latour would be my entertainment budget for the quarter, le Forts de Latour is a justifiable indulgence.

While Les Forts de Latour is cheaper than Chateau Latour, it sure ain't cheap. Touton Selections has the best book of second labels in DC, many of them with age on them. Citronelle is currently pouring the second label of Chateau Pontet Canet called Benjamin de Pontet 1995 by the glass.

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While Les Forts de Latour is cheaper than Chateau Latour, it sure ain't cheap. Touton Selections has the best book of second labels in DC, many of them with age on them. Citronelle is currently pouring the second label of Chateau Pontet Canet called Benjamin de Pontet 1995 by the glass.

I've only had a single Chateau Pontet Canet and it was stellar (a 93 or 95 IIRC). What you state is being poured by the glass, man that is certainly worthy of trying! Too bad I've only been to Citronelle once (so expensive!), I really need an excuse to go again (and a refresh of the bank account!).

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I've only had a single Chateau Pontet Canet and it was stellar (a 93 or 95 IIRC). What you state is being poured by the glass, man that is certainly worthy of trying! Too bad I've only been to Citronelle once (so expensive!), I really need an excuse to go again (and a refresh of the bank account!).

I believe that Bassin's has the 95 Chateau Pontet Canet for around $60.00 IIRC.

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I've only had a single Chateau Pontet Canet and it was stellar (a 93 or 95 IIRC). What you state is being poured by the glass, man that is certainly worthy of trying! Too bad I've only been to Citronelle once (so expensive!), I really need an excuse to go again (and a refresh of the bank account!).

You can always hit the lounge.

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:angry:
You can always hit the lounge.
IYRC you rememeber for sure the difference in a horrible wine and a terrific wine, ie) 93 was a bomber in bordeaux, and drinks very thin, and 95 was a knock out and drinks wonderfully. problem is Pontet Canet is a good producer, try one from something like Lynch Moussas, or Grand Puy Lacoste or Ducasse and get a BANGER!!! if you are looking for an old world CULTY, look to the Burgs, and drink Rousseau, or Roumier, or for the rich at heart DRC's "the spot". or flow down to the Rhone and do the La La thing. these are wines that get the points now, but the real winners were in the 80s.. that is the appreciaters cult sector. fly by the seat of your pants and find what you like, not the seat of the RP driver. find your point scale and do the right thing
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