If you need some additional purchasing advice this might be helpful.
I have been buying lower end bottlings from 2016 like Capbern, Les Ormes de Pez, and Labegorce. The prices for many of these wines has not increased as much overtime as the big boys have,and I think they provide the best values year after year from Bordeaux. I think these $40 and under Bordeaux compete favorably with Cali cabs in the same price range. Moreover, now age 60, for 2015 and for 2016 I have been buying everything in half bottles! ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
Less is more… ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Will be dipping a toe (2-3 mixed cases) soon. Focus on value (and I use the term loosely but relatively).
Dipped on a handful of Cos, Montrose and Lynch Bages, hopefully these turn out great in 20 years.
For those of you wanting a heads-up, Calon Segur just went live. I’m in for 6.
L’Evangile still not in the futures market. Boo hoo.
I bought some, mostly 375’s. I am managing to be restrained this year. I gotta stop reading this thread.
I’m partial to Malescot St-Exupery, and went in for a rare case.
My son was born in 2016 and my daughter in 2014. Have picked up a lot of 2014 for her but the pricing of many wines is unconscionably almost twice what it was in 2014. La Mission Haut Brion was $195 EP in 2014 and twice that now. Sorry son. Haut Brion was $319. Sorry son. I don’t know what is worth splurging on. I don’t really know Neal Martin’s palate. WE and WS are similarly opaque to me. Not sure what Antonio is looking for. I’ve trusted Panos the last two years but haven’t been able to sample anything yet, so hoping my picks pan out. Not sure where else 2016 will be a prime vintage…
As a general matter, what does three strong vintages in a row do to pricing, as compared to if you just had one of these strong vintages by itself?
That’s a good question. Has Bordeaux ever had three good vintages in a row? And each of these is very good, but god’s grace wasn’t distributed equally, so you have to do a little research to know the relative values of a given chateau in a given year. So I can’t imagine there’s going to be a good rule for pricing, except that they’ll try to charge as much as possible and pretend they’re almost out of wine as quickly as they can.
So far, beychevelle at 75/bottle is the only offer that’s really slightly interested me at all in its pricing. I’ll wait on Leoville Barton as well, before deciding what to buy, but the increases in prices are pretty disheartening. Likely in for a mixed case (sociando-mallet mallet seems intriguing even though it’s 40% more than 14) and a sampling of halves. And then we’ll see what I’ll do when the bottles hit shelves. Shame, because the vintage sounds fantastic.
Are there reports on how well the vintage is selling both in the US and abroad?
1988, 1989 and 1990. And yes, for a time, 1990 was a hard sell.
That being said, the wine buying universe is much larger than it was then.
I did notice a couple of chateaux are trying to change the pricing structure, notably Phelan Segur by raising prices in this strong vintage.
Farr Vintner’s website collects all of the major critics’ tasting notes, including several of the UK sources.
As I’ve said before, if Jancis, Martin, Anson, and Galloni all love a wine, I am pretty confident that I will too. SUckling doesn’t enter into the equation, though his notes are there too.
Personally, this has been a disappointing and disheartening primeurs!
I was fired up at the beginning as vintage seemed good and 2016 was my sons birth year so had all my incentives/excuses in place to dip in a bit. But then it seemed to take an eternity for releases to come out and the price rises have just totally put me off.
Wines i was set on like lafon-rochet and GPL are to me being frankly too much: lafon primeurs is more expensive than in the market 2010 and GPL 25% over 2015 is taking the piss! I bought some 2014 primeur and now the 2016 primeur price is nearly 2x from that campaign. I just have to walk away…
So far, only bought some Grand Corbin Despagne, Clos Puy Arnaud and Branaire Ducru as the only sensible non-gougey GC to release. Waiting on Chevalier, Leoville B, Carmes but i don’t have much hope on their restraint. After all, they have their brand image to think about…
Petit Mouton for nearly $200/btl is simply insane. $79 for GPL? Well, that depends on how good it is, and everyone seems to love it. I won’t buy – I have 14s and 15s coming for less, but were I younger and with a lot of empty slots to fill in the cellar I would be tempted.
What are everyone’s opinions on La Gaffeliere lately? Looking to get some right bank wines. I havent had any vintages of this made after the late 1990s. I liked those, but I wasnt sure if it got spoofy.
I’m buying. It was inevitable because my younger daughter was born last year, and I’m a sucker for birth-year wines. But there are other reasons:
(1) quality is not only reportedly high in general, but (based on critics’ reports) whether due to what nature provider, stylistic choices or both, a lot of chateaux have dialed it down and are producing more balanced, lower-alcohol wines. (I don’t fetishize low ABV – heck, I drink zinfandel and southern Rhones – but still think this is a positive development.) At least, this is what a lot of critics are reporting. Someone mentioned Tour St. Christophe above as a value play; I bought a 3L partly because as a value play ($115 at klwines.com – no affiliation) which is cheap for large formats (which I seldom buy), partly because Galloni specifically mentioned that it’s the first vintage of this wine that didn’t taste overextracted to him.
(2) a lot of wines are, in the greater scheme of things, still attractively priced, at least in the sense that I don’t see a lot of opportunities to backfill from superior vintages at cheaper prices (I already bought a fair amount of 2014 and 2015). Some of the more recent recents have seemed a bit greedy in the pricing. But others such as Montrose (same price as '15) and Beychevelle and Lynch Bages (up 12-14%, but reportedly with the best wines those estates have made, at least in a long time) have seemed broadly reasonable.
(3) Total Wine’s requirement of only 50% down (on top of very competitive pricing in most cases) makes it a lot easier to commit to futures – less capital is tied up, and my counterparty default exposure is proportionately less. (I have no affiliation with this store, except as a customer.)
(4) No one can predict forex movements with certainty. There are arguments for a stronger dollar. But the dollar has gotten weaker in recent month and that trend could continue, with significant implications for US buyers. A fair amount of the recent fall in prices in back vintages may be explained by forex movements – the USD-EUR rates was 1.45 - 1 when the 2010’s were being released; now it’s 1.11 or so. It doesn’t mean that buying Bordeaux futures is an inherently bad proposition.
Yeah, the GPL price took me aback a bit. I had been counting on in general on several factors to hold down prices (back-to-back good vintages, British pound depreciation, USD appreciation), but everything is pretty much coming out higher than 2015. I would thank Haut Brion and Mouton for keeping their increases to a small amount, but at $550 a pop, my gratitude is severely limited.
1988, 1989, 1990
2008, 2009, 2010
Even stylistically, they seem to match up if what I read is correct:
1988 - 2008 - 2014
1989 - 2010 - 2016
1990 - 2009 - 2015
I do remember the 1990s being significantly cheaper on futures than the 1989s and as a result ended up with more 1990s, even though now I wish I had 1989s than 1990s.