With Bordeaux, What a Difference a Year Makes

Bordeaux gone mad: $8,000 and more for a case of wine! The headlines made even the mainstream media last year as futures prices for the great 2005 Bordeaux vintage brought sad news for wine lovers. The wines of France's top-ranked chateaux, already expensive, had appreciated so strongly that they had become international luxury items, out of reach of the average buyer.

So what's a Bordeaux lover to do? Simple: Continue to drink Bordeaux -- with a few adjustments.

"I think 95 percent of Bordeaux is affordable," says Michael Sands, vice president of Washington wine merchant Calvert Woodley in Van Ness, "but the focus, understandably, is on the big names."

First-growth wines, produced by the five top chateaux in the M-doc and Graves districts -- Haut-Brion, Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Mouton-Rothschild -- have been investment commodities for years, and their great vintages regularly appear at auction or on brokers' lists. Anyone still holding stockpiles of the best 1982s, which looked pricey 25 years ago, can fund a comfortable retirement. Cash-conscious Bordeaux proprietors saw the more reasonable secondary-market prices for 1982, 1986, 1989 and 1990 and naturally wanted larger shares. The trouble really started at the turn of the century.

The highly acclaimed 2000 Bordeaux opened at prices 50 percent higher than for the 1996, the last comparable vintage, but that was the millennium year -- a once-in-a-lifetime event, or so said optimists. Offered as futures in 2001, the top wines of 2000 commanded prices between $3,000 and $4,000 per case, even though they were still in the barrel and would not be delivered until 2003.

Neither 2001 nor 2002 was good enough to elicit interest as futures, but the hot summer of 2003 produced some outstanding wines. Futures prices rose, but only slightly; perhaps the market was stabilizing? Then, on the heels of the good vintage of 2004, came another potential "vintage of the century," the second in five years.

There is no doubt that 2005 is outstanding, consistently strong across appellations and grape varieties. From the primarily cabernet-sauvignon vineyards of the M-doc to the merlot-dominated sites in St. Emilion and Pomerol, and through lesser communes in between, 2005 is a home run. For top wines, the prices are a grand slam. The first growths opened at $6,500 to $8,000 per case, double the prices of the 2000. A weak dollar takes some of the blame, but not much.

Those astonishing first-growth prices in turn pulled prices to record highs for so-called super seconds -- the top tier of second-growth producers -- and for boutique estates in St. Emilion and Pomerol. And the gap between those wines and everyday Bordeaux became a chasm.

Sands, who visits Bordeaux every spring to taste the new vintage, does not predict a change. "We haven't bought a number of wines [from the 2006 vintage] that I thought we would," he says, "simply because of price. They have such demand for these wines, they don't feel the need to discount. We are looking for better value." Traditional markets in North America and Western Europe are still the main buyers, but they are joined by buyers in Russia, China, India and other emerging economies. New, affluent buyers tend to choose great wines with long track records, including the Bordeaux market, or at least a tiny slice of it.

With about 300,000 acres under vine, compared with the 475,000 under vine in all of California, Bordeaux is a vast region, and the famous names represent maybe 1 percent of the total production. There is plenty of mediocre wine, and even good producers in less-favored appellations can struggle to earn a living. It isn't easy picking great values from a region with such wide disparities in quality and price, but there are strategies to help improve your odds:

- Even if you already have a trusted wine source, you might need to branch out; the best merchant for Italian or California wines may have a blind spot when it comes to Bordeaux. Anyone can buy great names or wines that have been favorably reviewed, but a good wine merchant also buys value. For today's purposes, here is a good test: Tell your merchant that you love Bordeaux but are troubled by the high prices. If he recommends a Chilean cabernet, find another merchant.

- Buy the best wines you can afford from good, rather than great, vintages. There is no question that 2000 and 2005 are the best vintages of the new millennium, but 2001 and 2004 produced a number of outstanding wines, and the 2001 was purchased with a much stronger dollar. The American market is vintage conscious; there are always bargains to be found in lesser years. (See the list of five of my favorites, below.)