I have access to a cellar of well stored older wines, including some exceptional wines amid a fair number of basically worthless bottles. I have selected a few bottles to try that I am purchasing at fair market value. One of these is a 1978 Roumier Clos Vougeot, but I am unable to find any information on it’s value. I have searched using winesearcher pro, and a few other sources to no avail. Any ideas?
No clue what it’s worth but the 79 I had last year was amazing
I plan to open this at a tasting tomorrow night, so I’ll know what it tastes like shortly, and hope it’s also amazing. But that’s based on the assumption it is worth a few hundred. I don’t want to find out after the fact that is is $1K, even if it is amazing!
78 wasn’t (IMO) a great Roumier year, though the year has caché. Roumier no longer makes Clos Vougeot. I’d place it at about $1000, though . . .
alan
Really? Not really questioning what is I presume a guess on your part, but as an example, a 1979 Bonnes Mares is currently available from Benchmark at $570. And generally Roumier Bonnes Mares sells for a lot more than his Clos Vougeot, like a multiple of several times, from what I can tell.
Other data points I can find for Roumier Vougeot from Wine Market Journal auction prices (including buyer’s premium) are $171 for 1983, $178 for 1988, $263 for 1989. I am looking to pay auction hammer, so a little less. And if 1978 isn’t considered a great year for Roumier, despite being arguably a better overall vintage than the above, I just wonder if it could really command that high a price.
my wild guess.
alan
78 Roumier Clos Vougeot (made by Jean-Marie) is now more of a collectible than for fine drinking, I would suspect. I have a bit of experience with 78 Roumier but only from memory. I think I would compare the 78 Clos Vougeot with that from Marchard de Gramont although the Gramont was more elegant and the Roumier more on the rustic side. The Roumier was slow to evolve but would be interesting to taste now. With current condition unknown I would be looking for $300 to $400 maximum. If you are a collectible nutcase maybe $800 maximum.
fyi I’m sure you saw a '69 for $1700 in the UK on winesearcher pro…
$800-$1k at auction.
I bought the 79 for $250 a couple years ago. It was damn good.
Bottles sold at auction in 2005 for just shy of $1000 including commission. I’d expect around the same result today, but with a lot of variance. I am not sure when the results you see in WMJ were realized, but those don’t look like current valuation levels to me.
My memory is slightly hazy, but when Benchmark originally offered the Roumier BM 1979, some bottles were great and a couple of others had mediocre fills. I tried to grab the ones in best condition and they were gone in seconds. I suspect the $570 one(s) left had the worse fills. Even so that price is well below where I’d expect it to trade at auction these days unless it’s really like a 6-7cm fill.
If only we were friends earlier
good to see you poking your head in here on occasion.
alan
Thanks to everyone for all the input. Not sure if I’ll open it tonight, as I have 4-5 other less expensive bottles from the same cellar (71 Gaja Barbaresco, 74 Barolo from G. Mascarello). If I do, I’ll let you know how it is.
http://www.90pluswines.com/pages/search/search2.aspx?SearchType=ExtendedSearch 1138€ estimated, it has been sold in 2008 for 1417€ apparently but I would not be a buyer at that price.
Kristof
Would probably go for $600-1000 at auction here, if you paid a fair price for it why not drink it?
Trust me, Jeremy, I drink all kinds of pricey bottles. In this case, however, I selected a few bottles to try from this cellar, but didn’t agree to a price yet, since we didn’t know what they are selling for. I simply agreed to pay far market value for what I open to test, but that I may not open everything. I thought the Roumier would sell for anywhere from $250 to $500, but I’m not willing to pay $1K for one, so I’ll probably return that one.
That’s fair enough Chuck.
So after all this, I didn’t open this, at least not tonight. I did open 3 Piedmont wines, a 1974 La Spinona Barbaresco (quite nice), a 1974 Guiseppe Mascarello Barolo for which I had high hopes (light and thin, somewhat oxidized, and maybe very slighhtly corked), and a 1971 Gaja Barbaresco that was everything you might hope it would be. There is more of both the La Spinona and the Gaja, and I think I’ll buy them, but the Mascarello was a one off. Overall, the wines in the cellar have been very well stored.
Just as a follow up to this discussion, for which I thank all of you that responded, I made the seller an offer of $400 which she accepted. There were two more bottles, which Winebid estimated to hammer at $430. Before sending them to auction, I thought it would be a good time to open my bottle. So last week with a friend, we took it to dinner, with a 2000 Coche M-P and a 1982 Leoville Las Cases. The Roumier was easily the wine of the night, killer nose from the get go, but I will say that by the end of the evening it faded a little. Needless to say, I purchased the other 2 bottles for $430 per before sending a bunch of other wines to auction.