Did I Do Something Stupid?

Of course, what’s more stupid is buying young Brodeaux and drinking Bordeaux young. But that’s for another thread.

1 Like

While I was partially trolling, I think a story as old as time is the following:

  • young wine newb begins trawling forums to get into wine. Through knowledge gathering, BDX is immediately attractive as a prestige region with a hierarchical ordering of “quality” and a steady stream of critics and boosters showering tasting notes. It is essentially the easiest region to grok one’s virtual palate via the internet.
  • Said young Turk decides to start buying recent vintage of the century because of naiveté and recency bias. Bordelais are good at generating fomo for an erstwhile commodity which languishes across cellars, auction, and secondary markets for decades.
  • Having not really formed tacit understanding of what tastes they actually like, young pot committed Bordeaux buyer begins rationalizing around (a) why they keep buying and (b) how they should be forming their own tastes. One would hope they are actually refining opinions through tastings but realistically this takes years to do even if you have a high throughput wine tasting community. Literally years.
  • Young BDX guy realizes that either they have too much young Bordeaux, or bought things on silly taste notes that are awry with their taste. This goes back to my point about UGC and en primeur. A total waste of time for the uninitiated.
  • They tend to correct the error of their ways by dumping an appreciable percentage of their young Bordeaux on market (often at a poor net when you factor all the frictional cost and transaction fees), backfilling wines that are cheaper on a time value of money standpoint and frankly better, while hopefully also expanding to adjacencies that provide more flexibility, acid range, and flavor spectrum.
6 Likes

Astute.
Happens to the best of us :grin:.

2 Likes