Why do people buy really old undrinkable Bdx

WINE TALK
21

Alan -

when i buy any older wine, i’m buying it because i’m curious. i may love the producer, the region, the vintage may mean something to me, or i’m just bored (or a combination of those reasons). i think a lot of us here buy older wine (when price is advantageous) with the hopes it’ll show us something special.

22

Like i said at the outset of this posting, im not trying to knock people who like old wine or to say its wrong in any way to enjoy it.

For example i bought a 64 Charles Krug cab as a birth year wine just for fun of it, various people had posted that they had enjoyable bottles within a few months prior. It was undrinkable on every level possible, nothing at all to hang onto.

I just cant help but think that 40 year old Bdx from known terrible years cannot be enjoyable.

23

Victor

Please dont fish, im not biting. This has nothing to do with points, it has to do with bad vintages. My reference for this era is the Michael Broadbent Bdx books which were printed before WS, RP and points even existed

24

You are certain of this even though you’ve never had any '74 Bordeauxs?

25

Thanks for the shout out, when it comes to wine I truly believe that.

Actually I think bdx has much more bang for the buck than Burgundy, can’t believe what people spend on bad burgs.

26

Have you tasted said wine, or not?

It’s like sucking at golf. The shots you make occasionally are enough to keep you on the hook.

27

Alan, Paul, Howie…

28

I haven’t had any 74s, but I know the 1970s bdx vintages were unloved and scored lowly at the time, because they were stern, tough and not joyful in their youth and for many decades after.

But there are many top wines from the 1970s that have finally matured and are very good now, but whose prices are relatively suppressed by low vintage and wine scores from release and prior decades. I’ve had some really good bottles from 70, 75 and 79 in recent years,'both first growths and other good producers.

So you can’t entirely assume wines and vintages with low scores from decades ago are necessarily bad wines today.

29

Are “bad/terrible” vintages really just a relative term for you guys?

I don’t know anything about old Bordeaux but I hear this “terrible vintage” or “undrinkable vintage” all the time and I think you’re all full of it.

I would venture to guess France has some of the better wine makers in the world correct? How can a vintage be so “terrible” that these seasoned winemakers can’t create something that’s unique and far more than just drinkable. Furthermore, if I were a world class winemaker and a vintage was so bad that my wine would be “undrinkable” I wouldn’t even bottle it.

Long story short, I think you’re all full of horse apples. Sure there’s vintage variation but the top producers should be able to make a consistently high quality product year in and year out.

30

I see what you did here…

31

Brandon, that naivety is touching, but we are not talking about the current era with technology galore… There are some seriously awful bottlings.

And Alan, broadbents writings are more interesting than relevant given that there are more current reference points along their long evolutionary curve.

32

So-called ‘off’ vintages in Bordeaux and Burrgundy can actually produce some very intesting, even very good wines. I’ve had a few '73s, '74s, '77s, '80s, and '84s (generally regarded as the worst vintages between '72 and '87) over the last couple of years and have actually had very few bottles from reliable producers that weren’t good (though of course I tend not to buy wines with terrible levels or off colours). In fact, I have found that getting a bad bottle from a less reliable producer, even in a so-called ‘top’ vintage, is a much more common occurrence. I haven’t had the Mouton '74 but I have had a Gruaud Larose and a Ducru Beaucaillou from that vintage and both were very enjoyable wines. They didn’t have the complexity of a top vintage but they constituted a good drop nonetheheless.

I don’t want to start spreading conspiracy theories here but I do think that our obsession with vintages, and particularly vintage ratings, is a bit misplaced. It’s partly skewed by the wine-trade’s excessive marketing of the most recent and ‘best-ever’ vintage, and partly the speculators’ desires to push up prices on blue chip vintages even further. In the wake of this, less than top-performing vintages in the not too-distant past are forced to act as scapegoats for mediocrity, carrying the weight of a top-end-heavy market. Giving a vintage full marks is only truly effective if this can be contrasted by relegating another to the gutter (or perhaps, in this context, the sink). It’s convenient that there happen to be so few bottles of '74 around, filling up the shelves and store rooms of négociants and merchants; if there were a lot of it, we might see scores increasing accordingly. For own selfish reasons, I don’t mind this practice; more reasonably priced '74s at auction for me…

Saying that, I think $660 for a Mouton '74 is exceedingly expensive. I would expect to see it hit about $160-180 a bottle at auction. The WS '69 must be down to a bad bottle, or a reviewer with a (plate of) chip(s) on their shoulder.

An intesting addition to the Boradbent reading mentioned above; if you look through his notes he tends to have very few recent notes on older ‘off’ vintages, apart from first growths, which he tends to be quite harsh towards in his marking (deservedly so, given the prices they command). If you look his initial (early) scores for the vintage, there are quite a few ** wines. I would say that this would relate to about 90+ on the 100pt system, especially if we take inflation into account…

33

Absolutely. And compared to the price of new releases, sometimes the so-called “off” vintages are downright bargains. Luv me some 2000 and 2007 Burgundy! Even the dreaded 2004 vintage produced the rare decent bottle. For Cali Cabs, I’ve got some pet bottles from lesser years that I look for on the secondary market dirt cheap compared to the sought after vintages.

34

If you read post #13 above, it appears that it’s $640 (not $660) for a lot of three, and the per-bottle price for all three lots works out to less than $225:

35

Absolutely. And compared to the price of new releases, sometimes the so-called “off” vintages are downright bargains. Luv me some 2000 and 2007 Burgundy! Even the dreaded 2004 vintage produced the rare decent bottle. For Cali Cabs, I’ve got some pet bottles from lesser years that I look for on the secondary market dirt cheap compared to the sought after vintages.

36

You can say that again.

Oh, wait, you did. [wink.gif]

37

Because they are ‘spendthrift masochists’?

The decade of the seventies saw one abominable vintage after the other.

Chateau owners greed, heavy handed use of herbicides/pesticides and extensive plantings of young vines pushed yields through the roof.

In retrospect it seems that Mother Gaja protested by punishing the culprits with terrible weather causing rot, mildew and unripe grapes that didn’t translate into great wine cause after excessive filtrations and next to no selection (many second and third wines hadn’t been invented back then) the results where light years from truly great vintages such as 1920, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1953, 1955, 1959 and 1961. Not to speak of the many far, far superior modern great vintages such as 1982, 1990, 1996, 2000, 2005, 2009 and 2010.

Do I sound like I have encountered case after case of pathetic swill from the sixties and seventies?

You bet I have.

The most funny thing that came out of all this grimassing was when I opened a Palmer 1974 and after one sip and sniff simply painted the snow beneath my second floor window red with this chaptalized vinegar.

Looked very artistic for days [snort.gif]

Peter

PS I once held tastings of all vintages of Latour from the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties up to 1986.
The vintages from the seventies were described as poor, mediocre or quite pleasant, but never great as several bottles from the other decades. The fifties were flirtysmile [thankyou.gif]

38

A couple of thoughts.

Mouton is a law unto itself, as there is a sub group of fanatical collectors who go after the artist label rather than the wine. You will often find really lousy vintages like 1969 going for very high prices, because they were mostly drunk early, and there are very few survivors.

While I have enjoyed a few 1974s (the best vintage between 1971 and 1975) Mouton was definitely not one of them, so in that respect, Alan you are right. Horrible, horrible wine.


In addition to label collectors, as others have mentioned, there are other collectors who want every vintage of a wine, irrespective of quality. And of course, the birth year wines, where you need to serve from the year you were born (or for people who were born in vintages like 1956, and don’t want to drink something revolting) or conceived.

And finally, there is ignorance, although thanks to the net, there is less reason to buy bad wine expecting them. There are plenty of reasons for buying a particular bottle, not all of them to do with the contents.

39

It was that bad?

40

I went to a tasting of 1974 first growths 2 years ago. Every one of them were well-stored with good fills but tired and uninspiring and I like old Bordeaux. I would think buying any of these at auction is mere trophy hunting and does not reflect prudent wine purchases. By the way a similar tasting of 1975 6 months later was sublime.