Similar to Alan’s thread, but from the opposite angle.
What wines do you wish you had bought at release, so they were in their drinking windows when you want to enjoy them? I’m not talking about scoring DRC when it was $25/bottle, or signing up for that unicorn mailing list before they had a 10 year waitlist. I’m talking about the wines easily obtained today at reasonable prices, but you didn’t know enough about wine at the time to appreciate it what it would become much later later.
Other than missing out on 1989/1990 Bordeaux/Burgundy because I knew nothing about them at the time, I am all set.
Various vintage champagnes. Was not buying them 15-20 years ago when I should have loaded up
Wish I’d loaded the boat from '85 to ''00, when I was (mostly) buying Bordeaux.
Northern Rhone
Burgundy
Barolo
Aside from the normal and obvious answers I will hometown it here and go with Oregon Pinots from 1985-1993 that I bought in case quantities and stashed away in perfect conditions and only started opening in the last five years or so. Many to most older Oregon Pinots saw way less than ideal storage conditions and I know from tasting suspectly stored wines that modern sensibilities on storage would have resulted in wines that 20-30 years later would be revelatory. You also could have done that on a highly reasonable budget back then.
Gentaz.
This … + Trollat.
Champagne, you can never have enough.
Everything?
I bought a lot of 82 Bordeaux, but it wasn’t enough!
Top-tier Northern Rhones. They just could not be found in Florida and shipping laws where more strict.
Gentaz. Verset. Juge. Trollat. Allemand. Clape.
A group of us got together and splurged $25pp to sample the big five current release Bdxs from '81 cuz, you know, none of us could afford to actually buy any of those ourselves.
Haut Brion was my favorite–I still remember that.
I thought you were going to say 2001 Donnhoff
.
Ha! I actually have enough of that.
1966 through 1972 Napa Cabs. Things changed after that. In the early 80’s, (when I got serious about wine), I’d buy all the old half bottles from restaurants for $5.00 each. They would fade fast, but I could drink fast too. Didn’t think I could afford 750 and mags back then. They were $60 or more, at double, triple, even four times the release prices.
In order of how hard I’d like to kick myself:
2002 Lokoya Diamond Mtn because it’s the best higher elevation Cab I’ve had. I was too busy drinking beer, and buying Arrowood and Ruffino back then. I wish I had payed more attention to mountain vineyard wines. I was cynical and thought it was just a gimmick. I’d grab several cases.
1997 Gaja Sperss but this is something I’d need a wayback machine for since I didn’t know about it until last week. I guess you could add '90, '93, and '95 Burgundy to the list I’d go grab in that same trip.
1985 Graham’s VP… although it isn’t terribly priced now by today’s standards.
EDIT because of Chris’ post immediately below: Should have grabbed loads of '01 and '02 JJ Prum at the same time I would have been buying '02 Lokoya.
If I had it to do over again, I’d stockpile a case a year of good $15-30 German Riesling so every year I could drink it at 12+ years old. Seems you can hardly go wrong (other than maybe Donnhoff) and it isn’t easy to find older bottles at auction of retail.
Good call. What’s wrong with Donnhoff BTW?
Rayas and Pignan. Burgundy.
Doesn’t age.