All of the major speculation is over now as the majority of the chateaux have released just enough of their wine in a half-hearted attempt to create a first tranche. The prices? They were downright scary on some items, a good 30% higher on average than the record breaking 2005’s were when they were released. As we said in the lead article, the euro is lower than it was for the 2005-2006 releases, the world economy is seriously bruised right now, and there is certainly no reasonable expectation that it is going to improve greatly any time soon. Yet here are the Bordelais not only setting records with their opening prices, but clearly trying to manipulate the market to push them even higher. We can cite lots of examples, but one will suffice. We’ll call it Chateau XYZ that released their opening “tranche” at $300, supposedly sold out, and had the second tranche available at $340…one hour later. Just how much was released at that initial price? No one knows. Will folks come back right away and bite on the next round? We can say we didn’t.
More surprising, folks seem to be of the opinion that if they are not in early, they’ll miss out or be facing even more outlandish pricing. Only time will tell that story, but the early rounds of the name brands are selling and people seem interested. It is not our place to judge what is reasonable, I guess, because if the stuff sells out, than obviously the price wasn’t too high. As merchants, we are facilitators first. The trick is to get people as much wine as they want to buy, or at least as much as we can provide. But when the market decides it is sated, which is unpredictable, we definitely don’t want to be the ones holding a lot of $10,000-12,000 cases because those aren’t going to be easy to move.
Another thing that has been frustrating for us and consumers alike is the difficulty formulating offers. There’s a reason for it, though it is not easy to explain. From our perspective, it is hard to formulate a plan if you have anticipated demand for an item at, say, 50 cases, and you can only get a firm confirmation on 10 within a given time period, and that confirmation is slow in coming. With the internet, people are reading Bordeaux release news and expecting full fledged, detailed offers within seconds of that information becoming public. They don’t know how much of an item has been released, or what the demand is, they just know that it’s out there so someone must have some answers. Would that it worked so smoothly.
That brings us to, well, now. Where does it go from here? Hard to say. It depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for some of the greatest Bordeaux ever made, they are out there. But prices are all over the map. If you are looking for surprising deals, those are there, too. But there’s no way to tell for how long as a lot of the best score-to-value wines were made in very modest quantities. The market is hard to predict right now, and we have been at this a long time.
The final lunch before the awards ‘banquet’ Thurs night and the trip home was a place across from Madison Park in the flatiron district. Eleven Madison was created in an existing, really stylish art deco building with elevated windows looking out to the trees swaying in the park across the street, a high decorated cieling, and two (or was it three?) levels of an open, airy, really grand room. Very spacious tables, this was an old school elegance kind of place. We didn’t do the serious tasting menu or anything. This was just having a nice lunch.
Fresh off the plane from sunny Bordeaux and I’m fired up! Why? Because along with Kyle and the Winerychannel.tv crew, we just spent two weeks filming in HD the 2009 harvest. Being in Bordeaux or any wine region during harvest is exciting because there is a buzz in the air… somthing all owners wait and plan for all year. From pickers in the vineyards to tractors rolling up and down the road, it just an exciting place to be and experience. There are many reasons that makes this trip so special and we will get into that in later blogs and videos, but the quality of the vintage has to be one of the top. While it’s still too early to speculate, one thing is for sure… the fruit is some of the best both Kyle and I have ever seen and the juice (tasted anywhere from 2 to 5 days) was rich, dense with outstanding purity and already has an opaque in color. We tasted tank samples from 
Today Steve and I attended one of those tastings that are kind of like a tasting grenade. At the time that you you RSVP you don’t think too much of it other than, “Hey, this could be fun.” But this gig was a little more than “fun”. The sight of having 20 consecutive vintages of one of Australia’s most acclaimed Shiraz wines sitting in glasses in front of you does not go unnoticed. The opportunity to learn and glean something from an event such as this does not go untaken. And not only was it a chance to get a comprehensive look at this icon bottling but it was also an even rarer chance to get a snapshot in time of every vintage in the Barossa Valley since 1987, the first year this bottling was produced. 
many more signing on since they knew they could trust the guy. He has access every year to the finest fruit from every major sub-region of the Barossa, from which he produces a number of wines, with Stonewell being the cream of the crop. It is 100% Shiraz, 100% Barossa, sourced from mostly 100+ year old vines (they send cuttings back to the Rhone all the time since phylloxera wiped these clonal selections out in France) but also from whichever growers ‘bring the drama’ vintage to vintage. A few changes have taken place over the years, including a little less time in wood and more French oak finding its way into the program. But the wine is still aged five years before release (a la Grange and Hill of Grace) and, from what this tasting unequivically demonstrated, capable of extended aging (and improvement) in the bottle.
