Luke, the difference is this: owners of inherently worthless SQN rose are happy to sell it and laugh all the way to the bank at the morons who purchase it. Bottles of SQN are the Beanie Babies of those with too much disposable income and no taste for fine wine. Ballers can want rare old bottles of Nebbiolo all they want, but they are not likely to find it at auction or at retail often enough to feed their habit. It took me a decade to source 3 bottles of 1971 Giacosa Barbaresco Santo Stefano Riserva Speciale. The combination of serious Nebbiolo collectors who would rather have their wines buried with them than to sell at any price, and consumption of most of the old and rare before anyone appreciated that the wines would ever become old and rare (and, yes, expensive) has dried up the world’s supply of the labels that would have baller cachet, but, as noted above, there is still an excellent supply of aged or aging Nebbiolo available at reasonable prices. It may take a little legwork to source it sometimes, but the second- and third-tier wines are out there…
Exactly. I think it’s naive to assume it will be any different in Barolo. Conterno, Bartolo, Rinaldi, Giacosa, Gaja are already well into their price increases. The next tier down is just holding its release price. No more waiting 4-6 months for the PremierCru fire sale.
I’m sure it will be a good number of years before things really get out of hand.
My concern as someone who has just started down the nebbiolo path is that it will go up in price considerably. In a sense, I missed out on Bordeaux and Burgundy before they moved into the unaffordable stage. Obviously there is still plenty of good bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy to be had but there are just so many that I’d like to try that are out of my price range. That is not the case with Barolo. Granted I’m not buying the top labels but there is so much excellent juice in the $50 - $100 range. It worries me because you can just get so much more value for your dollar than with Bordeaux, Burgundy and even CA Cabs. So maybe my opinion is based on fear that I will be priced out of my newest wine fascination but the numbers seem to indicate it is possible.
James you have nothing to worry about. These people want nothing to do with wines that aren’t $300-400 and up. Just not enough status for them. They aren’t drinking the wines because they like the wines. You have all the great under $100 Barolo you need.
Maybe a deflated baller wine.
Giacosa and G Conterno are undisputed Baller wines.
And it seems a few more now.
2010 Vietti ‘Ravera’, clearly a Baller wine. Without the 2010 hype and the new buyers of all things 100 points, this is a $120 bottle of juice. It’s not a riserva! Maybe $130. The offerings here are close to $300!
Vietti is now officially Baller Juice (at least for Ravera). You can go buy the 2004 Villero riserva for less than the 2010 Ravera!
Vajra Ravera in 2010, not Baller Juice. Vietti Ravera in 2010, Baller Juice!
Is Bartolo Mascarello now Baller Juice? Maybe. Aldo Conterno (Granbussia?)? Probably! Cappellano (the Franco, of course!)? No, because you can’t find scores! No Baller with no scores!!!
The Raveras are not baller wines yet, Peter. They do not have the track record for it. Vietti’s wines are not baller juice (at least not yet), and the Ravera vineyard does not have much of a track record to date in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, I researched who was making Barolo from Ravera, and I came up with Cogno (who was making pretty dreadful barrique Ravera prior to 2005) and the two above. Thus, Ravera is not a baller vineyard like, say, Asili, Rabaja, Santo Stefano, Cascina Francia or the Le Rocche subplot of Falletto. One Galloni 100 in an overhyped vintage helps make a wine hard to get, and helps promote gouging by retailers, but it does not a baller wine make! 
I see that nobody is buying my theory of the case, which (for once) is fine. I do not deny that $2,000 Giacosas and Monfortinos have enormous baller appeal. My only point is that the supply of such wines is decimated (which is why they fetch four figures), so the ball will not last for long enough for Cinderella to arrive on the old ones. (The ball on fake 1947 Cheval Blanc, however, can last forever!) I suppose that the best recent-vintage Monfortinos, like the 1999, 2004, 2006 and possibly the 2010, as well as a host of more recent great-vintage Giacosa red labels (given that Il Maestro will not, alas, be with us much longer), could provide the raw material for ballers, but sourcing the wines is going to be tricky at best, and after the ballers drink a few pop-and-pour 1999 Monfortinos, they may well lose their appetite for such wines (along with the enamel on their teeth). One of the problems will surely be that there are already enough hard-core Nebbiolo freaks to soak up all of the output of the top wines, and they, like me, have been buying the wines for years, greasing retail connections worldwide, buying at auction, etc., etc. I am not convinced that most ballers have either the attention span or patience to chase wines that often require considerably more effort than throwing a bundle of money at the problem…
I’m going to hold you to that Gary. I’ve been really blown away by the QPR nature of nebbiolo. Thanks to your advice and others on the Board, I’ve loaded up on some great stuff that is only going to get better. The most expensive '10 wine I have purchased is the Monprivato. While I don’t like spending over $100 for wine, I felt like the '04 and '08 I tried made me feel like this was a solid buy at those prices. Maybe not a baller wine but good enough for me. And my guess is that in 10 years it will be a $300 btl if you can find it.
James you are going to be OK. As long as wines like the G. D Vajra Barolo Bricco delle Viole are around you are safe. Ain’t no baller wine it be.
I believe you have already evolved the general Baller theory and are making a distinction between ‘typical Baller’ and ‘Baller’ wines. It is not a leap of faith to believe the most revered Barolo’s will be ‘Baller’ - regardless of their accessibility. As they say in pick-up basketball - “Respect”… if we stick with our colloquialism genre. It seems you are overlaying supply- so as to point out said Barolo cannot also become ‘typical Baller’ or poster children for the Baller set. That certainly may be the case and thus the Barolo Intelligentsia can rest easier in their golden years…
Maybe in this case it should be “ballarino”? Some of you Italian linguists guys help me out here.
…and yes, I concur- the ‘typical Baller’ Barolo’s are the 2000’s kind Red labels and Monfortinos.
This my be a misplaced thought, but for a brief time period, among others, the white labels and wait for it… Voerzio tried to crank up the retail price (i.e. suggested list) in a seemingly premeditated attempt for price-infused prestige thus aiming to someday expand the landscape of the ‘typical’ baller universe. Seemed to fail miserably and the bid/offer on prestigous non-riservas remains $100-170… but as dicussed on other threads, this is a good thing.
Gaja is also instructive on this point. He beat Voerzio and everyone else to the punch on high prices (although Voerzio and Roagna are running neck-and-neck is the absurdly unjustifiable high-price race ), but Gaja’s wines generally sell at a meaningful discount to retail, are rarely difficult to source and do not seem to appreciate in value all that much over time, at least as compared to Giacosa’s red labels and Monfortino. On paper, Gaja’s should be the ultimate baller wines, the Piemonte’s SQNs (but outstanding wines instead of uber purple drank). I suspect that, like Leroy’s Burgundies, the notion of his wines not being good QPR keeps the traffic down, and if ballers cannot beat out regular folk and scoop up all of the wines for the bragging rights, they rarely want them!
Bill. I like these thoughts. So the Baller wines have to have a longer track record, can’t be just a 100 point 1 hit wonder (like the '10 Vietti ‘Ravera’). So how about Aldo Conterno’s ‘Granbussia’? We don’t discuss much on this board but it has the long term track record, going back decades? And a fun name that’s also fun to say. “Guys, Let’s Ball up with some GranBussia!!”
Ah yes- great call with Gaja. The label looks beautiful at a table (and can be recognized a few tables away!). They are marketing alot in Asia which could take out a chunk of supply. Some of the dynamics are certainly there.
Do you feel when Angelo steps away, it will have the same effect as Bruno as to the perception of future vintage quality and thus desire of the future wines? My presumption is that Angelo has been transitioning smoother and thus it will be more of a Giovanni / Aldo event (but frankly I may be misrepresenting those transitions as I admittledly didn’t follow those too closely).
I agree, but both Gran Bussia and Sandrone’s wines have the curse of “suspected of modernism” and ready availability upon release, although the 1989 and 1990 Sandrone CB and the 1989 Gran Bussia, ideally out of magnum in all cases, really should qualify as baller juice.
Luke, I think that Gaja’s transition will be the smoothest since Roberto Conterno took the reins. Angelo has kids and help that can manage the winemaking and money, as well as do the international ambassador thing. Some even find Gaia Gaja easier on the eye than Angelo…
I doubt that there is a wine region in the world where the average wine is above $25-40 per bottle. On this board, we tend to pick only the most expensive wines from a region. I don’t have the ability to tell the future, but right now on Bassin’s web site I see Oddero Barolos for around $40, Barbarescos from Produttori for under $30 and Barolo from Vajra for about $30. Are these baller levels?
Napa Valley?
Another factor: Nebbiolo is historically among the hardest wines to understand and appreciate. Ballers tend to be in the shallow end of the pool when it comes to understanding and appreciation. They drink labels, often too young (unless the baller is John Kapon, and the supply of phony old wines is unlimited), and in mass quantities. Nebbiolo is a classic food wine, and will rarely show well in the middle of a bunch of bottles of Screagle, Schrader and SQN…
GranBussia could become GranBaller. I am just sayin.