Never too old to learn something new. Thanks.
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Add another primary reason for “throwing in the towel”:
- Too old.
For that reason, I won’t be purchasing any more Bordeaux futures. It’s becoming increasingly likely that I won’t be around to enjoy them when they mature.
Was thinking about this just the other day. Let’s face it. It’s pretty easy to find very good wines if you are willing to spend lots of $$$
Personally, I am always on the look out for wines that “over-deliver” in the $30-$40 a bottle range. Unfortunately, these wines get identified by savvy drinkers and the price inevitably escalates. I start to abandon these wines as they approach the $60-$70 a bottle range and start looking for the next value.
However, even with this strategy, lately I have begun to feel about guilty about my weekly wine bill that sometimes approaches the after tax, take home pay, of lower income workers.
Then, I see people post here about buying CASES of classified Bordeaux/Napa Cabs/Burgundy/high end Barolo…where the bottles range from $150 -$800. Yikes!
I realize that people are free to spend their money on whenever they want, but if someone buys a fancy sports car/boat/expensive home, at least they have something to show for it at the end of the day. I simply have a damaged liver.
Please make me feel less guilty about my expensive passion.
Ha! Yes. I make so many typos from posting off of my phone but that one I will attribute my foggy brain and my 6 year old.
You could be picking up your screagle at the winery via helicopter…
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Come on- it’s an interesting topic. Let the poor OP be.
And quite honestly I don’t use whinging as often as wanker and my particular favorite, Scouse Git.
I got an offer for the 2016 Prod d Barbaresco Riservas today - at over $90/bottle. The '15s were $50ish/bottle. That kind of jump is hard to swallow - even for a wonderful producer, who makes great wine, and this will be no exception. And you can legitimately argue its still ‘worth it’ relative to other piedmont wines, that the price is fair for what you get, etc. Im just saying that kind of price inflation when you have a mental framework for what it costs make it hard to keep buying it. And thats true even if intellectually you know its a combo of tariffs and currency fluctuation and critic enthusiasm, etc.
No worries Mark. Whining is one of our most time honored traditions here at WB ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
But seriously, it is a genuine curiosity for me. I wish I was able to track / plot the average prices of the wines I am throwing in the towel on over the past 10-20 years. I can use the prices I recorded in CT, but that can be a bit unreliable as I bought some of these on sale, great deals from grey market, etc. Also I cannot simply search CT prices and those are quite unreliable as well. I read that some wine investing sites track the prices of Bordeaux over decades particularly the 1st growth. I wish I had something like that for other regions, not for investing purposes, but just the wine geek in me.
The hypothesis I am trying to get here is that, is it me or is there truth to the hypothesis that prices of “some” regions and producers (Burgundy, N. Rhone, Piedmont), have risen in a more exponential manner in the past 1-3 years compared to how they rose in the previous years / decades. At first glance it is easy to say yes (tariffs alone added 25%), but that is going to be my own biased opinion. I sort of had a “perfect storm” happen to me. Passing on 2018 (due to prices, storage and ripeness) and then getting shocked to see the 2019 prices that are trickling in. I have stopped / am going to stop purchasing almost 75% of my top 20 producers in the span of the last 12 months (and moving forward). Prices are probably not going to get lower for the producers I buy, and with 2020 rumored to be a warmer vintage, then by the time 2021 rolls in (assuming it becomes a less ripe vintage) I can only imagine what the prices will be then.
I am just curious if anyone else has has noticed this or has had the same experience, not for the sake of garnering sympathy or whining, but just out of sheer curiosity and wine geekiness.
With you there. I’m not buying anything that takes more than 5 years to mature as I may never get to drink it. My kids don’t seem to want my wine.
“I’m not a cat” joel
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Off the top of my head.
Stuff i’ve stopped buying on release due to price (I’m sure there’s more)
Salon
Rayas
PYCM grand crus
Noellat -price to value ratio is lost on me now.
Clape
Hudellot or Georges?
I mentioned Produttori riserva in a thread not long ago. the funny thing here is a couple pieces long. first, if Produttori would have always been $90/bottle, I dont think anyone would blink. but I went deep on 13s on release (graduation year) for less than $50, two years ago basically. The rapid jump happened in a blink (I’m still hoping it’ll be possible to source them for less than $70 when theyre fully released, but even that feels steep compared to what I’m used to for them). second: I’m still seeing availability/offers of basically every reserve vineyard from 13, 14, and 15 in the market right now. sure, the 16 Normale is REALLY good. but if I can get 13 (grad year) and 15 (anniversary year) for half the price? I’m stocking up on those. also, didn’t Italy avoid the tariff anyways?
Hudellot. Never bought George.
I thought the Zoomers on this board stopped buying wine to play with Gamestonk?
Yes, I have also noticed this seemingly exponential boost in the price of wine recently. Obviously there has been pretty steady growth in wine prices for a while, but I first noticed an acceleration in price growth in 2018-19. Then I expected it to moderate with the pandemic but instead it accelerated even more. Now that the economy is recovering a bit, it seems to be continuing.
This isn’t just Burgundy/Piedmont/N Rhone (in fact I haven’t noticed it as much in Northern Rhone, perhaps Syrah is just not enough of a mass taste). It’s also Bordeaux back vintages which used to be a very good deal. I am noticing a lot of older “off vintage” bottles for solid but not celebrated classed growths (Lynch Bages, Leoville Barton, etc.) getting well over $100 now when they used to be available for much less. I suspect similar things are happening in California but I’m not knowledgeable enough to spot it (in California there is such a profusion of producers which have uncertainty about aging capacity that perhaps it won’t happen there to the same extent).
Wondering where this merry go round ends…
Thrown in the towel:
Bartolo Mascarello (5 yrs - 2015 last vintage)
Keller GG’s (10 yrs - 2017 last vintage)
Antinori (12 yrs - 2016 last vintage)
Sine Qua Non (4 years - 2016 last vintage)
About to throw in the towel:
Elio Grasso (8 years - 2016 may be my last vintage)
G. Mascarello (5 or 8 years - If I do not buy 2016 then 2013 will be my last vintage; waiting to see if prices drops below $200)
As a friend of mine likes to tell me, ‘how come you spend so much money on stuff that ends up in the toilet?’ A sobering thought.
I only drink 2-4 bottles per week, but this is my price point. I feel like 25-40 or so is the best value in wine in general.
This thread makes me sad because these inflating prices make it simply impossible for many to even taste, let alone regularly drink, more and more great wines. I never expected to be able to have DRC, First Growth Bordeaux, Bartolo Mascarello, or G-Max on a regular basis, but these prices are keeping many more great wines out of reach as well. Now I have to forget about trying Chave, Rayas, Egon Muller, many second growths, scores of Burgundy and California wines, as well. It seems like I’m hearing about more and more wines that are being astronomically inflated to the point of undrinkability. The whole N Rhone and Piedomont seem to be going the direction of Burgundy, unfortunately. I would have thought that such a market was unsustainable, but apparently not; these prices do nothing but climb- right through 2008 and COVID. Seems inevitable that a few years from now most of us will be subsisting on Budweiser and Carlo Rossi.
Eric Asimov has a nice piece about this in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/dining/drinks/wine-prices.html
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