Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
What typical table wines were between 11% and 12% in 2000?
OMG! WSJ Hires Teague
- Thread starter SFJoe
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scottreiner
scott reiner
jay had one sentence in bacchus and me that i love:
"the chardonnay made in california is very much like the women one encounters in los angeles; their beauty has very little to do with nature."
"the chardonnay made in california is very much like the women one encounters in los angeles; their beauty has very little to do with nature."
Is there a reason to talk about anyone but Knoll when talking about gruner?
On a related note, the long term credit bubble which drove asset prices to unreasonable levels essentially destroyed an crucial aspect of wine for young people ITB and out.
When I was coming up in the wine business in the early 1990s, I could drink 1982 LLC for $80, 1982 Mouton for $120, 1990 La Tache for ~$130 (it was only sold in mixed packs, so pricing was odd). Petrus was the only thing that was consistently out of my price range. Bea at $25, Quintarelli, etc, etc.
But you get the general idea, you and a buddy could afford to split a bottle of "important" wine on a Friday and get a sense of what it was all about and understand them. Hell, in graduate school when I first started drinking autrian wines I could get all the Hirtzbereger and Knoll, etc that I wanted at about $25-30. 1er Cru from Chevillon, Barthod and Mugneret for sub-$40.
The situation we are in now is that people coming up rarely have the opportunity to drink these wines. They may try some at a tasting of some sort, but to sit down and drink these wines with a meal is an important experience. You might just realize that "important" wines are not always that interesting and you just might want some Grzeaux instead.
This why I hope for a massive correction in the wine business. Young people should be able to afford to drink most of these wines.
Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
This is a good point.
I don't know if I've ever had an 'important' wine, but the more expensive ones haven't as a rule, knocked me out. But I'm pretty thrilled at the number of extremely good wines under $25, many of which come from areas along the Loire. Reading the chat here has been an education in this regard.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
I don't believe that will happen anytime soon. They will have to wait, or find some other way, to learn what grand cru really means.
Sharon Bowman
Sharon Bowman
VLM: Brilliant.
Though damn for your early '90s pricing.
Though damn for your early '90s pricing.
DRC, Mugnier Musigny, Monfortino, Quintarelli Amarone, Haut-Brion are all sui generis. There aren't really substitutes.
It's not that there aren't other wines that are great, it's that it bumbs me out that an entire generation of ITBers are denied the opportunity to put these wines in context.
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Here, here!
Heh. Early '90s were already spiraling outta control. I owe most of our meager stock of Bordeaux to purchases made in the mid '80s ('83 Ch. Margaux for $35 in 1986 IIRC) and I was buying Chave Hermitage for $15-20 a pop (don't even think about what Verset and Clape were selling for then). Would that I'd known more about Burgundy and Piemonte then *sigh*
Mark Lipton
You should.
A good wine merchant should be really important to you.
Where the fuck do you think all these wines we love come from? The wine merchant is the customer who does a lot of culling for us, the end consumer. You have no idea how much bullshit wine you have to taste through.
The fact that I have tasted wines from the great terroirs of the world is what gives me confidence that Croix Boise, Pergault, etc. are great terroir.
Steven Spielmann
Steven Spielmann
VLM and Rahsaan are both right: wine appreciators in general should be able to have these experiences as a way of developing their sense for the possibilities of the vinous medium, and ITBers need to be good wine appreciators more keenly than most.
Imagine a community of students of painting who had some access to most of the history of the subject, but only the very wealthy ones could ever look at say Titian, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Monet, Picasso, and Pollock. Now, there is a hell of a lot of good painting outside these folks; plenty of people who were rich enough to afford the special museum where they were exhibited wouldn't really get the benefit of what they were looking at, and plenty of people who weren't but really paid attention to the works that were more commonly available would develop a keen critical sense. But there's no doubt that the latter would be missing something even so, and that more in the latter group would rise to a higher level of critical understanding if they had access to the omitted masters.
This is exactly the situation facing the middle class wine appreciator and aspiring ITBer today.
Imagine a community of students of painting who had some access to most of the history of the subject, but only the very wealthy ones could ever look at say Titian, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Monet, Picasso, and Pollock. Now, there is a hell of a lot of good painting outside these folks; plenty of people who were rich enough to afford the special museum where they were exhibited wouldn't really get the benefit of what they were looking at, and plenty of people who weren't but really paid attention to the works that were more commonly available would develop a keen critical sense. But there's no doubt that the latter would be missing something even so, and that more in the latter group would rise to a higher level of critical understanding if they had access to the omitted masters.
This is exactly the situation facing the middle class wine appreciator and aspiring ITBer today.
Claude Kolm
Claude Kolm
Before the establishment of museums at the end of the 18th/early 19th century, that's the way it was. You either could afford to travel and were able to get introductions to the palaces and country homes where many of the works were (in Italy, of course, a lot were in churches) or you made do with prints.
Of course they are important. They are essential.
They taste a lot of wine (from great to bad) to make their decisions.
But us average consumers taste a lot less wine and have a lot fewer 'connections' so those are the folks I'm more worried about.
Not that there isn't plenty of 'worry' to go around the wine business. As we've been discussing in recent days.
Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
Funny you should say this; I was just having a conversation with myself the other day about how much more a good importer counts than a good wine critic.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
In this case, yes, it's about access to money, either your own or someone else's (who likes you enough to pour wine in your glass).