Caveat Emptor

Investing In Older Wines Can Yield Either Treasure Or Trash.
Here's How To Avoid The Latter

By Christopher S. Miller

Mature wines can be a revelation, in more ways than one.

I was lucky in the late 1980s to work as a beverage director for a hotel chain whose corporate philosophy changed. This meant that the wine lists for all the hotels were going to become much more "New World" and simpler in structure so more people would understand them. I was in the right place at the right time, but not for the reason you might think.

You see, the hotel I worked for had a wine cellar with a bunch of wines they thought no longer "suited" the new wine program. So the general manager offered me the opportunity to buy some of the wines that would not be on the new wine lists at a reasonable price. I went through the cellar and put together several cases of wines I wanted. The GM agreed on a price for the wines and I used my credit card to pay for the about 600 dollars "worth" of wine.

Now, back then that was a lot of money for me to plunk down on something that frivolous. And though the wines might have been worth a bit more at the time - maybe 1000 dollars - their worth today would be much greater. All the wines were decent vintages of great wines: 1971 Mouton-Rothschild, 1985 Mondavi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, 1978 Beychevelle, 1979 Volnay, Corton and Pommards. Some wines were drunk immediately (just some great memories now), some are still lurking in my cellar. In that group of wines I had six bottles of the '71 Mouton.

Today I explored the current price of that wine and found it costing between $175 a bottle at an internet wine auction house (not too reliable), up to $338 a bottle locally and an average of about $300 a bottle. My $600 was well spent!

Does this same kind of bargain still exist? Maybe not, but with some knowledge and research, some very interesting and exciting wines can be found. For me the key is knowing which vintages or producers have been overlooked, or which wines will escalate in price by so much that if you buy some you can later re-sell part of the lot of wine to subsidize other wine purchases.

This type of purchasing requires several things: knowledge of producers, regions, vintages and storage practices or a way to determine that sticky question of "provenance" (the history, including ownership, of a particular bottle).

Also of note is the fraud issue. Some wine professionals wonder, for example, how much 1945 Premier Cru Bordeaux actually exists anymore, and therefore question the pedigree of some of these wines offered for sale. If you think this is a rare occurrence, just Google the name Rodenstock along with the term "wine fraud." One article that comes up ran in The New Yorker on September 3. It is called "The Jefferson Bottles," by Patrick Radden Keefe. Here is an excerpt:

"Serena Sutcliffe, the head of Sotheby's international wine department, jokes that more 1945 Mouton was consumed on the fiftieth anniversary of the vintage, in 1995, than was ever produced to begin with. 'You can go into important cellars and see a million dollars' worth of fakes among five or six million dollars' worth of nice stuff,' she said."

Why would someone counterfeit wine, one might ask. Well, consider the price of a weak vintage of Chateau Latour, such as 1987. This wine can be found for a bit less than $300 a bottle, while the 1982 Chateau Latour is currently selling for closer to $1500 a bottle. Seems like a crooked computer geek's payday to me. And Chateau Latour is only one of a list of probably twenty to thirty wines that would be great targets for fraud. Others include Chateau d'Yquem, Domaine Leroy, and Chateau Petrus, just to name a few.

How can you tell the real thing from a fake? Some producers change their labels, cork stamps or bottle capsules subtly with each vintage to help catch counterfeiters. Another way to avoid this kind of problem is to only buy wines from highly reputable and very knowledgeable sources. (This tends to be more expensive, though it will spare you some sleepless nights.) The way I personally avoid it is by purchasing the lesser vintages from the second tier producers. In Bordeaux, that means Second Growth (or Cru) from a vintage like 1998, rather than the vaunted 1982, 2000 or 2005 vintages.

But if you insist on getting the greatest vintages from the greatest producers, then find a reliable source or bring someone very knowledgeable with you to an auction house. Better yet, have someone knowledgeable look through an auction catalogue with you.

Some wine stores have a spurt of wild purchasing in serious wines, but then can't find buyers for them. If you happen into such a store on vacation or business somewhere, just be aware of the bottle conditions and storage - is the wine stored in direct light? Is the store constantly air-conditioned? What happens in this situation is the wines' prices may not get adjusted to reflect the market as the owner flirted with major wines for a vintage or two and then gave up.

In Bordeaux you can count the good and great vintages of the '60s and '70s on your hands. Not so for the '80s and '90s, and even less so in the '90s and '00s. The same can be said for Burgundy. A vintage like 2003, which was one of the hottest summers on record, could have caused many more problems than it did thirty years ago. Yes, some producers miscalculated the harvest dates, but many made great wines in a very unusual vintage by understanding the science behind making wine.

Now is a great time to be drinking and sourcing wines. There have been several good to great vintages in a row in many regions. All wine regions are benefiting greatly from increased technology and increased understanding of wine production and vineyard management. This has created a vinous environment of far fewer bad vintages and far more good to great ones. No more is wine production left to the whimsy of nature. This is good news for the savvy wine consumer like you.

Christopher Miller is the Senior Wine Writer for Dan's Papers "Wine Guides." Mr. Miller is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, an Advanced Sommelier with the Court of Master Sommeliers, a wine consultant for Sherry-Lehmann and wine educator. He is also the Education Director for Long Island's Sommelier Society of America, and has held the position of saucier chef at Schweizerhof in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and that of sommelier at Manhattan's '21' Club. He is teaching a Captain's Course at Stone Creek Inn in the fall. Visit his website www.noblewines.com or email csm@hamptonswineclub.com

Back to Contents