Over the past month there were a couple of auctions of note in the wine world. Hart Davis Hart in Chicago sold the largest single cellar collection in the US for 2009 and Piasa hosted a massive garage sale for La Tour d'Argent in Paris. Both houses had solid numbers and sold some pretty incredible wine including a bottle of pre-revolution (1788) cognac in Paris, and some extremely rare 59's and a veritable lake of merlot with all of the Petrus in Chicago. (A bit of disclosure; for the past two years, I had worked for Hart Davis Hart. No longer, but on to better things hopefully...) While listening to the news regarding these sales, my wife brought up a concern. "It seems unfortunate that so many people wanted to drink these wines, but with all of the collectors looking to tuck these away, the prices became too high. Who gets to drink these anyway?"She wasn't the only one who wanted the bottles to end up in the hands of drinkers instead of professional collectors. David Ridgway, la tour d'argent's chief sommelier was reported in the Guardian as saying "I would like to think that other people will enjoy them rather than just collect them. Wines for me are meant to be drunk with people you love preferably. There are too many hoarders." I know I felt the same while watching lot after lot of beautiful wine disappearing into collections, knowing that the buyer was not going to drink them, but turn around in a couple of years and resell. At the auctions, it tended to be a pretty easy guess as to who was who in the drinker vs. buyer category. I watched one individual sit through the majority of one auction to bid on six out of about eight-hundred lots. He and his companion shared a bottle of wine with lunch and was obviously jubilant when he won, and crestfallen when he didn't. (He won half of his lots, two 1990 red Burgundies and a late 90's Chateauneuf, losing out on three bordeaux from the morning session.) As he got up to leave, his nose was red from his lunch bottle, and cheeks flush with the excitement of winning.
Hell, he should be flushed! He picked up some great bottles that he was going to enjoy with friends over a great dinner. At least, that is what I like to think. maybe he was going to have them while laying down in a dirty closet, crying about how much he spent. Regardless, I love the idea of wines actually being consumed. After one auction, I pulled an order that was just over a quarter million dollars worth of wine, that I knew was going nowhere near a Laguiole. It was going somewhere cool, dark and still, and was not to reappear until the market had an uptick or this gentleman needed to buy his company back after the crash of 2008.
On one hand, I was very disappointed with the future of the wine in front of me. It was like looking at a prize racehorse put out to stud, but it was too expensive to get in your mare's sack. It was going to sit around, be pretty, talk about how incredible it should be according to past performances, but when was it going to get laid?
The one nice thing is that there are lots of collectors out there, paying for proper storage, aging wines without the thought of knocking the neck off of any of them. This means, yes, someday these wines will be available for the rest of us to purchase, though at a serious premium. A look around at any of the fine wine retail websites will show how it is becoming prohibitively expensive to get into some of the vintage wines. Not to mention the absolute joy of seeing how much your favorite fine dining establishment will charge for said bottles. Paying for storage isn't cheap! After all, there are so many things that can go wrong while a bottle is aging. Corks dry out, seepage, bottles break, labels fall off... really silly things to think about, but these are horrible risks for the investor. Honestly, how would you want to set a bottle upright with the intention of having something special with friends, only to find the cork floating on top like an unflushable?
I won't say that I encourage all of these wines to be opened before their time; in fact, I prefer a wine that has had a little time to develop the nuances that come with a little age under the belt. But, at the auction house, or at the restaurant, I am indeed chagrined that so many beautiful bottles will be enjoyed by so few, if enjoyed at all. I have seen bottles that have made me want to cry because they had gone nowhere and were now little more than pretty paperweights.
To this end, I celebrate and tip my hat to friends who purchase with an eye toward drinking. Perhaps a case to save and flip all with the goal of using the profit to purchase more to drink! We could all use a little flushing of the cheeks, and a good bottle of wine always helps.
