Hi everyone, hoping to gain some knowledge from your expertise.
I have zero experience dealing with action sites and I am wondering who people feel most comfortable with?
I have a cellar full of California and Oregon wines, but my wife and I have enjoyed some fantastic French wines lately, namely Pavie. We had on 2 occasions last year with friends and it just hit all the right notes. My goal is to acquire some with some age on it & also get a few recommendations for Burgundy that won’t break the bank. I will be looking for wines that have a drinking window in the next 5-10 (possibly 15 years) for peak.
Do you want information on auction sites because you want to sell your California & Oregon wines, or because you want to acquire older French wines?
Given that you like Pavie, have you ever tried any of the California winemakers [or winemakeresses] with more of an old world approach to winemaking, such as Philip Togni or Cathy Corison?
There is no Burgundy which won’t break the bank. That ship sailed years ago, and it ain’t never returning to port.
Both of those links are to Free Wine Searcher, but if you decide to become a “Ballah” [whatever that means], and play the auction game, then you’ll want to purchase a subscription to Wine Searcher Pro, in order to see all the listings.
And if you like both Togni & Pavie, then I’d strongly urge you to check out Cathy Corison’s wines.
Togni and Corison are nothing like Pavie, at least the Pavie from the late 90s onwards. Jim, what vintages of Pavie did you like? The older vintages are quite different from the newer ones.
There is plenty of Burgundy that won’t break the bank. If you liked more recent vintages of Pavie, I’m guessing you like a riper, denser style of wine. Producers like Roty, Meo-Camuzet, or Bachelet may appeal to you. There are bottlings with prices in the stratosphere, but also bottlings that run in the $50 range.
One caution I would offer about buying at auction is that in recent years the arrangement of lots has evolved such that you will typically need to spend low to mid $1,000s per auction lot. There are always a handful of lots that go for $1,000 or less- but they are few and far between relatively speaking, and certainly compared to the past.
With the higher profile wines, it just takes a few bottles to get there anyway, but where I have seen a lot of change is with wines that will typically auction for $100 or less per bottle- and this includes a lot of the “won’t break the bank” kind of wines you say you are after.
Instead of having a few such bottles in a lot with an estimate in the low to mid $100s, you will instead often find 20-50 bottles all put together in a single lot- and very often the wines themselves have little in common outside of coming from a particular general region. And with that many bottles, the lot is going to sell in the mid $1000s, and viola you are making a major investment.
Winebid is an exception to this- there you can almost always bid on single bottles (sometimes they do offer case lots), and I confidently recommend them as a resource for you.
Beyond that as you get into this game of the secondary market, let me please suggest you also look at the secondary retail scene. The price per bottle is going to be slightly higher, but you can pick and choose what you want much easier as well as buy just a few bottles at a time.
Retailers that I highly recommend include, Chambers Street and Crush (both NYC) and out in California- Belmont, Benchmark and European Wine Resource. The Wine Connection in Pound Ridge NY is also an amazing resource- but their online listing is very limited. Still, worth following them.