Not very covert; for example there’s a shop next to one of the major train stations where you can walk in and get as much DRC or Lafite as you want. As long as it’s from a trophy vintage
Any economists should not be allowed into this thread. If you can afford to drink these from the perspective of the economist, you have a tremendous headwind to actually evaluating the wines. The general notion that critics’ scores matter less in Burgundy is probably the right place to start (for my philosophy). There will be no consistency in older samples due to the vagaries of time. The most highly praised will be the hardest to obtain true examples of unless you have a great connection or friends who are faithful curators. A great connection really must be one degree from the domaine or one of those faithful curators. All others can be presumed to be too good to be true.
If you catch the tail of the comet, enjoy the ride.
fred
Presumably due to (a) storage condition risk, (b) counterfeit risk, a lot of prized wines appear to trade with nearly no premium for age. I.e. look at older Monfortino, with the exception of certain prized vintages like 71, 78, compared to new vintages. Even if there is a slight premium, on an annualized basis it’s very low - i.e. maybe a 1964 Mascarello Barolo will go for $700-800 whereas a top recent vintage like 2010 goes for $400-500 - suggests a 1%/yr value for age. Given all the well known counterfeiting for DRC I’d imagine there is even more of a premium associated with buying upon release from a known source.
This is why buying long-lived wines upon release to store until it’s ready to drink appears to be an insane financial decision, although the provenance risk of buying aged wine is obviously real.
Rob,
Your final statement outs you as economically informed. Please exit the thread before your head explodes. I value provenance very highly, moreso with counterfeit bait. A DRC I bought at release has huge value over an auction acquisition. Clearly, the market either disagrees or concedes that it cannot accurately identify such a commodity. I find it refreshing that there can be some mysticism in the experience of an older bottle. I cringe at the idea that an object with such history can be commoditized into a single fixed value that factors risk correctly. It just doesn’t work that way. The flipside is that the escalation of price in the recent vintage is irrational with respect to the actual enjoyment value that will be derived by the vast majority of drinkers that put their money on the barrel for it.
This is why I don’t chase too much in the aftermarket if I don’t know where it is coming from.
Cheers,
fred
It was actually my predecessor Neal Martin who gave the 1961 La Tâche 100/100. Robert Parker himself gave it 76/100 back in 1995. Similarly, for the 1999, the 100/100 is from Neal. The 100/100 from Parker was for the 1990 La Tâche, which Neal in turn downgraded to 95/100. So much for the numbers.
As others have mentioned, the provenance of old DRC is frequently, let’s say, hard to ascertain; and even authentic examples are liable to have picked up appreciable air miles over the decades. I buy the occasional older bottle, and when I do it’s from a source I trust in Burgundy. We drank a simply stunning 1959 La Tâche last year, which had never left the region, and have a 1957 Grands-Echézeaux from the same cellar to open this year. I would personally rather drink one pristinely conserved bottle with a couple of good friends that participate in a massive vertical.
Another factor to consider in relation to the comparatively weak prices of older vintages is that DRC prices are driven, to a significant extent, by the HK market. And at least in my experience, many HK collectors are more interested in recent, i.e. 1990 and after, vintages. And actually, that’s true of many markets: an interest in older wines is more and more a niche interest.
I well remember a little shock when reading Richard Olney; he practically berated the domaine for moving to 6-barrel bottlings - the basis of this critique implying that the extra special bottles of Romanée-Conti were being lost!!!
Fascinating. What a deliciously perverted point of view (hat tip to Davy Strange)
hmmm…the answer before the question. Is this a Zen koan for the day? Or does this beg the question?