Those who approach futures from the pricing aspect are hoping that laying out money today will be less costly than laying it out for a wine when it is released retail. In this case, you are paying today for the privilege of having ownership of the wine in 2011.

The other reason to consider futures is to secure ownershop of a wine that you believe will be very difficult to access upon release, due to supply:demand issues. This is a very common challenge with Red Burgundies…..very little production and very high demand. Fortunately for Bordeaux lovers, the production levels are generous (often 5-10,000 cases per vintage). Don’t ignore, by the way, that “investing” your money now for access to a product in two years must take into account the opportunity lost to invest that money elsewhere.

Thus, it really boils down to whether your crystal ball is telling you that you can grab a great deal on the ’09 Bordeaux by purchasing futures. If you’re lucky, you may look back years from now and pat yourself on the back for well crafted intuition. At present,
however, my crystal ball is mired in fog and mist and until it clears, I prefer to be patient. Even with China attempting to mop up excess high end wine inventory, thus placing a floor under pricing, I suspect that economic weakness throughout the rest of the wine world will keep prices in check.

I just want to thank you for that heartfelt and thoughtful response laying outyour concerns with Bordeaux 2009. It was very eloquently put. Most of all I am delighted to see someone else raising concerns about the vintage instead of just chanting the hype in tune with everybody else.

I tasted as many of the wines as I could during the primeurs week in late March (all now written up on my site (www.thewinedoctor.com). I thought a good number of the wines were amazing, but as you say it is not a consistent vintage. I described it as one of “consistent inconsistency” because in almost every red wine commune you could find brilliant wines but you could also find shockers, especially the left-bank Merlot-rich cuvées or the right-bank wines which are of course mostly Merlot. There were many Cabernet-based wines I liked, perhaps different ones to you, but superb wines all the same, whether they were in the elegant style (eg. Calon-Ségur, where the Merlot content has been minimised) or the more powerful (too many examples to mention!). Some though in gaining the power and the alcohol lost something along the way, most probably drinkability (eg. Cos d’Estournel).

What I am particularly pleased to see is an established critic drawing the attention of readers to the overt alcohol expressed in some of these wines. Some of them smelt of it, or tasted of it, some of them just burned in the back of the palate. I have tasting notes on my site describing wines with alcoholic heat which just screams “stay away” and yet I see others not even commenting on it. RP says of the left bank “Reports of excessive alcohol are, for the most part, absurd” and doesn’t even make a style-related comment on the right bank alcohols, other than to say that “14-15 degrees for St.-Emilions and Pomerols” is “slightly higher” than was found in 2005. Neither statement serves the consumer looking for balanced wines to add to the cellar, I think.

But 2009 is emphatically not a classic vintage, and it is not a consistent vintage, so one really has to be careful with selection. It is not classic because the alcohol levels are notably higher than is customary in a top vintage- pretty much across the board a full degree higher than in 2005 (which was by no means a low alchol vintage)- and so one has to pick and choose amongst those estates who have managed the higher alcohol levels well and those that have produced hot wines. IME, it is a very rare wine that shows its higher alcohol level as heat on the backend that ages well over the long haul, and due to the very high tannin content of the 2009s, aging over the long haul is going to be a prerequisite. And there are plenty of 2009s that show heat and are candidates to crash and burn, rather than blossom with bottle age.

The vintage conditions also were difficult enough to produce a lot of wines with overt signs of overripeness- which not only produces undesirable aromatic and flavor combinations such as prunes, kirsch and boysenberry syrup, but also takes away from any expression of terroir and really muddies focus and precision on the palate. The vintage’s very high natural tannin content has also been augmented at many estates with an overly generous blast of new wood- leaching wood tannins into already tannic wines and really calling into question their overall balances, so there are plenty of wines that will never blossom and simply whither in the bottle.

Alas, there are plenty of commentators out there who have already a long public track record of not being particularly sensitive to overripe elements and excessive alcohol in wines from other regions- what do you think the odds are that they will be able to accurately evaluate this very atypical and inconsistent Bordeaux vintage? However, it is quite likely that they will not hesitate to tell you unequivocally that Wine X is a great wine- one of the best I have ever tasted…. etc, and then move on to the next vintage and leave you holding the bag on an unwanted case or ten of some structurally flawed wine that will have no future as anything but a commodity.

One must remember that there is an awful lot of institutional inertia involved with handicappiing young Bordeaux vintages, and for one to pretend that all of this early tasting of the new vintage happens in a vaccuum is simply myopic. Reputations and market placement are at stake, and the people involved on either side of the equation are going to do what it takes to put the proper spin on the vintage. Given that there are a great many absolutely magical wines in the making in this vintage, it would be incorrect IMO to put down all the early excitement simply to hype and less than honorable marketing, as the best wines do truly deserve all of their accolades. But in the 2009 vintage, it is also imperative to separate the wheat from the chaff.

It would be rather prudent for interested consumers to tread carefully and only choose the more classic examples of the vintage, so that they end up with truly great wines in the cellar for drinking twenty or thirty years down the road, rather than just a lot of experience of the wrong kind and in the end nothing drinkable from this fine year. There are plenty of easy ways to waste money, but in a vintage like 2009 which has so many really superb wines, it would be a shame to waste one’s money chasing the wrong wines this year.

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”

More troubling is the wine market pricing being ‘set’ more or less, based on Parker’s reviews. I remember seeing the 2008 Lafite at less than $250/bottle prior to his ratings and then the price sky rocketed.

I personally find the WS reviews more in alignment with my tastes and lean more heavily to those when I don’t have the ability to taste the wine prior to purchase.

Finally *rant on* , I left sports card collecting due to Beckett setting the prices (ther eis no doubt, no argument can be made, it is as CLEAR as day). I would hate to find myself leaving the wine arena for the same reasons, but frankly I am nearly in that camp. I have a good celler full of wines *I* like and may just start popping those corks for the next few years. Might I miss out on some great wines, sure but I’ll likely be just as content with the wines I have! *rant off*

With tha said, I probably will avoid all Bordeaux in 2009 except a couple of my $20-50 standards which are already priced int hat range. I’ll continue to dabble in the ‘CA cult Cab’ arena and enjoy whatever wine is in my glass at the time!