A video would be nice 
It would show my 8 year old whoâs starting the conservatory with his cello this year that some good comes out of this âwhy is daddy on his phone againâ website!
Tomâs contrast was dinner at home or luncheonâs with family and maybe friends, where the wine was an accompaniment to the food. You said you âtypicallyâ drink high-end wines with a fairly large group where wine is the centerpiece to the event, which is what he described as the alternative, where the incentive is to outdo your neighbor.
If you donât see any tendency to âbigger is betterâ in your group, it may be that Tomâs point is overstated or even misleading.
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To me even 8-10+ bottles of wine at a table, which is common at wine dinners, is a âmass tastingâ environment in the way Tom was discussing. Itâs just categorically different than lingering over a bottle or two at a casual lunch or intimate dinner. In the smaller settings you are almost forced to appreciate the uniqueness of a wineâs style and what it offers instead of moving on to a more impactful alternative.
I thought Tomâs post was quite insightful in terms of the way that the âcollectorâ settings may be changing market demand for wine. Not only do collector type settings tend to involve large numbers of bottles at a time, but the collector mentality tends to seek out the âbestâ wines and see wine as the star of the show rather than a complement to a broader lifestyle. Not knocking collectors here, I am one and recognized myself in Toms description.
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I would say quantity wise probably mostly drink top wines in big groups of 8-15 ppl with 20-40 wines at a time. Sometimes weâll do dinners with 4 ppl or so but pretty infrequently.
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Tomâs post, while nostalgic doesnât ring true to me.
Thereâs no need to pine for a time when a lot of vintages were downright bad. This is the same logic weâre getting with critics and others pushing 21 burgundy at 25-50% higher price than outstanding vintages like 19 and 20 and calling them classic. Thatâs all well and good but if you have a vintage like 01, 07 or 13 then price it accordingly. For better or worse we live in a time where producers can achieve physiologic ripeness every year without chapitilzation which to me is a positive.
I consider underripe thin wines flawed. If you like time then thatâs probably great because they are likely widely available for cheap. This is the same logic âcognoscentiâ are doing with their hot takes on how great 10 dom, 11 comtes and 14 Cristal are. Spoiler alert, they arenât great wines. They are pedestrian ones that are priced the same or higher as legitimately good ones.
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I used to think more this way but Iâve been caught up short by some fantastic wines from supposedly âbadâ or thin vintages, particularly in Bordeaux. For example, in 2021 I tasted a 1993 Haut Brion that was spectacular â haunting, elegant, light-bodied, profound â in a way that I donât think would have been stylistically possible in a âbiggerâ vintage.
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Thatâs awesome. Iâm sure you can find plenty of cheap 93 Bordeaux. It would be great to love 04 or 11 red burgundy too.
There is no one answer to this across all Berserker-dom.
I most often drink âtopâ wines at dinner, with groups of 3 - 5 drinkers, sometimes accompanied by a complementary bottle. Yes, I attend larger dinners, but even then my most common group size is 6 people with 6 - 8 bottles. The 20+ bottle events are maybe once a year for me, less often since Covid.
For me the interest of inoculation in Bordeaux derives from a variety of factors. High pH musts (with the exception of the areas with clay-limestone soils), nutrient-poor musts in drought years, comparatively large fermentation vats and comparatively large wineries which are logistically challenging to manage all play into it. Iâm not familiar with the Italian wines you site, I confess, but it is clear that brett is an increasing issue in a number of French wine regions, and brett issues in barrel often have their origins during vinification.
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Your analogies are better than mine, but we both love the 1985 Magdelaine.
I just bought a case of the 1990, btw!
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Youâre honestly missing out.
The 1993 Haut Brion is to 1993 Bordeaux what the 2004 Engel Clos Vougeot is to 2004 Burgundy - a complete outlier. I have magnums in my cellar and along with Lafleur and La Mission, also exceptions to the rule, itâs the only 1993 Bordeaux I own for a reason.
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It sounds nice but I hardly drink Bdx as it is. I hardly get around to drinking my 80s Bdx, I have a handful if 95-95 hb. Maybe if someone ever opens some Iâll have the opportunity to try it.
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I much enjoyed this nostalgic, even somewhat melancholy ode to the glories of yesteryearâs wines and above all wine culture, and I certainly understand where youâre coming from. As someone who makes a point of drinking their best bottles at home with the family rather than in âtastingâ settings, I can also relate to some of your reflections. It also begs the question, as ever when one talks of ends of eras or of golden ages, of where one sets the year zero. One of my old mentors in wine in my late teens used to compare the Post War wines unfavorably to the more extracted, taut clarets of the Inter War years; and those wines in turn, as Jeff observed, where faulted at the time for lacking the intensity of the pre-phylloxera vintages. Simply inverting the schema of âbest everâ doesnât get us much further, and I hope my piece made clear that there is a real âremise en questionâ going on in Bordeaux, and that the new stylistic era is reasserting the regionâs traditional identity. The wines of the 2000-2010 or so period may not have convinced you, but so much has changed in so short a time. Nor is contemporary Bordeauxâs evolution by any means finished. But of course, time will tell, and I hope that my enthusiasm isnât misplaced.
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What a perpective! Thank you for putting this together.
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Yup. Thatâs the majesty of Bordeaux. Often the Classified Growths from so-called off-vintages blossom into something spectacular, and so unexpected. Some recent surprises, 1973 Chateau Latour and even a 1965 Chateau Mouton Rothschild. On that 65, who would have thunk. I do not trust the modern wines from those 2003-2010, 15 and 18 ripe years to ever hit those elegant notes. I focused more on 2001, 04, 08 and 14. Now 2016, wow! As good as Bordeaux gets.
Those that only chase what the critics and crowds call the âvintage of the centuryâ may not really ever experience or appreciate what the lesser vintages produce.
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2004, 07, and 08 may surprise you
2000 left bank has elegance as well I think. It kind of has the 1996 Cabernet crispness to it
I added those vintages before you posted, but concur. Not necessarily a fan of 2007, but did buy 4 bottles of 2007 Magdelaine last year and literally drank them all in like 3 mos. Wonderful stuff.
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Iâm sad to report that a 1973 Petrus brought by a friend to a recent dinner was alive but uninteresting. Not a wine Iâm privileged to drink very often.
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Major bummer, but goes back to the old saying, there are only great bottles not great wines or great vintages.