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Asides
(getting warmer)
“Burgundy has got bigger and riper,” wine writer Robert Joseph told Reuters. “Alsace, in North East France, which used to make very light red wine, now makes much fuller red wine. Germany which used to very light red wine, is now making fuller red wine.”
auctions and buying ‘old’ wine
You know that ‘provenance’ – i.e. knowing somethings ownership history – is not just a special thing when buying older (for which I class everything that has been on the market for more than 2 years!) wine, it is everything! That’s not because I’m particularly concerned about where the seller got the bottles from – though I suppose I should be – rather because a few weeks of inappropriate storage will render the contents of those bottles dead.
The main source of older bottles is at auction. Apart from rare sales where bottles come direct from producer’s cellars, buying is, based on my experience, a complete lottery – hence, today I only bid low. There is, however, an outstanding chance to acquire older bottles at a sale in Paris in December. I mentioned it briefly here last week, but having taken a look at the online catalogue I thought I would mention the sale of wines from “La Tour d’Argent” again.
Provenance is perfect, and the bottles even look like they’ve been in a good cellar. Estimates (at least) look very fair, but I expect the realised prices will be higher than estimates.
Anyway, worth a look if you need an 1898 Romanée St-Vivant for the weekend…
what news of france?
A good article from Panos…
And the chance to buy some mature wine…
Paris’ landmark Tour d’Argent restaurant is cleaning out its 450,000-bottle winecellar “one of the best in the world” and putting 18,000 bottles up for auction in December
dominode…
You know, a lot of 2000s have turned the corner and are becoming very tasty indeed. Occasional bottles though, have ‘out-performed the vintage generalisations’ right from the start, the Savigny in my glass is one such wine – only 3 now remain in the cellar, how stupid of me! I’ll tell you tomorrow what this beauty is!
If you ignore libel cases, the post-harvest world of wine is rather quiet. I find a few words of the Côtes here. Also, given Mr Mariani’s observations, I wonder if I should open a 97 Bruno…
the best thing I read in a long time…
Here. You can’t beat irony and sarcasm!
