I still regret not grabbing those. Still.
Most of my wines with the highest values are Truchots that I bought for < $100.
I don’t know what corner of the universe Weinberg lives in, certainly not my coast. Nice to see a humbler assortment of prices than what you might expect from all the talk of GC Burgundy, Juge, Monfortino, and other such icons.
I’m with Sarah that the price a bottle is worth today is not nearly as relevant as much much they paid for it. Especially for those that have been collecting for long as have been fortunate enough to have bottle drastically appreciate in value. Much more interesting and telling would be people’s average, or even max, cost per bottle or hearing which bottle from their cellar has appreciated the most.
The most I have ever paid for a bottle, by FAR, was a 2010 Bonneau Celestins. I remember it was $514 in 2016, and I snapped it up then because I knew to the thrill of my bones that it would never get cheaper.
And if you were to buy it today, you’d have to pay…$515.
I have not bought like that again because this much winning is painful.
The most I’ve paid for a bottle was ~$1800 that I paid for an old La Tache in a restaurant. The restaurant’s charge was far lower than the market for that bottle, and, had the bottle been corked, I could avoid the cost. No brainer. It was delicious, btw.
The highest valued wine I have is in excess of $4K. I did not pay that amount for the wine and am deeply conflicted about whether I will ever drink any of the bottles I still have. I did pop one of those a couple of years ago when a close friend visited before moving abroad. I felt that if there was any time to bite the bullet and drink an amazingly rare/expensive wine, it was with a good friend who would appreciate the wine and who I might not see again for many years.
Some old Madeira which has appreciated multiple times in the past few years.
Hmm. The 1999 Roumier Amoueuses that I “purchased” by trading three bottles of 2000 Bordeaux - Leoville Barton, Leoville Las Cases and Ducru, the latter two of which i acquired by trading some of the Leoville Barton for which I’d paid $45/.
Oh and the trade of three bottles of 2000:Bordeaux yielded me three bottles of the chambolle.
I found 2005 Tenuta dell’Ornellaia Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia on the shelf in late 2018 at my local grocery that always has good wine selection, but this was certainly an outlier. One bottle marked at $120, even though that’s above my normal “cap”, I bought it before even checking value. Now worth ~$200. I expect to drink it sometime, since tasting notes are very compelling.
A few DRC bottles that were offered at 1st tier vs. 3rd tier pricing. Way more than I would normally spend, but was too good to pass. Those have escalated to the point where I don’t know the situation where I will open. Will need to be an event or a special celebration
with our kids. If they continue to increase in value, maybe they become something more important such as what the proceeds can help with (home down-payment, wedding gift, a future grandchild’s college fund). I believe every bottle of wine should be drunk - but it doesn’t have to be by me.
They aren’t the wines that have increased the most on a % scale, but dollar-wise, for sure. A few slightly older Mugnier-Gibourg I picked up years ago for a relative song became “hot” this decade.
The economically literate answer to that is that you should always mark to market.
A more practical question is whether or not I could find a wine (or wines) from which I could derive at least the same amount of pleasure for the recovery cost. For me, the answer more often than not, is no.
Costco
Kinda rare and definitely stoopid expensive today. Rare Wine Company has the 1995 for $6,000. I might be tempted to trade that one! And I have only sold one wine in my life.
Have a couple bottles of 2007 Bruno Giacosa Barolo red label. Bought them for $200 each, now more than double in price.
The answer to that question for me, for just about every wine that I’ve ever sold, has been yes. Three bottles of 2004 Screagle or a case of 1990 Haut Brion remains a very simple decision for me.
The key phrase here is “that I’ve ever sold.” I’ve not sold many for economic reasons (as opposed to changing tastes or space issues), because generally speaking a wine I bought for $38 that now goes for $250 with 20 years of age on it is likely to give me more pleasure than I can get from some other bottle that is available today for $250, and this is the majority of what I drink, beyond daily drinkers.
But in those rare instances when one of my wines caught the unicorn train and now goes for four figures, it’s an easy sell unless that particular bottle also happens to have sentimental value. There’s no way I get more pleasure from a bottle of unicorn juice that I can sell for $1,800 than I would get from a case or two of the other stuff I could buy for that much (or from putting the $1,800 toward a family vacation).
So if you phrase it as “that I’ve ever bought,” the answer has almost always been I can get more pleasure from drinking it than from selling it and buying something else, and not surprisingly I’ve opened and enjoyed those bottles rather than thinking for a second about selling them. But if you phrase it as “that I’ve ever sold,” you’re talking about a much smaller set and the answer is the opposite.
$200 Pichon Lalande from several vintages. That’s about my cap. I’ve been tempted by some $300 Gaja at my wine guys store but I have kids to raise. Maybe in 10 years I’ll up my limit.
An interesting definition in the OP - I paid the most for a 1954 Haut Brion as that is my birth year, and that was such a crappy vintage that it was hard to find one. But it is worth only a fraction of what I paid for it - and no, I have no regrets. Conversely, the wine that I is worth the most is a 1995 Lafite that I bought at an antique auction for a fraction of its value - I was the only person their who had any idea what that wine was. And yes, I will drink it one of these days.
Is market what we could sell the wine for or what we would have to pay to buy it?
‘82 Latour 1.5L.
I bought it before I had kids. It’s taking a nice long nap in the cellar.
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