Drinking with the Devil

It’s not quite drinking with the devil, as the old rock and roll tune has it, but it’s close. Yesterday, Morell & Co. Fine Wine Auctions sold through every one of the lots that were up for sale in an auction of the wine and booze of Beelzebub himself, Bernie Madoff.

“All 59 lots, ranging from fine Bordeaux to the types of small bottles often found in hotel minibars, found buyers, with 54 selling above the highest estimated pre-auction price,” reported The Daily Mail today. “The winning bids exceeded the roughly $15,000 to $21,000 the auction...had been expected to raise.” Proceeds from it will go to the victims of Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme.

As for the bottles themselves--well, aside from a few trophy lots and individual wines, let’s just say that Madoff didn’t spend his (not-so-hard-earned) money on the kind of things most wine lovers would. Sure, there was the case of Mouton-Rothschild 1996, as well as some other big-name bottles, but there were also airline-sized shots of spirits that some poor sap paid $300 for. (I repeat: $300 for mini bottles!)

CNBC.com quoted Ray Isle, Executive Wine Editor of Food and Wine Magazine, as saying about the collection: “‘It doesn’t strike me as a cellar of a guy who cared much about wine...The collection is so random. It’s a lot of individual bottles, the sign of a guy who received a lot of bottles of wine as a gift.’”

The moral of the story? Billions of dollars don’t necessarily make you a great wine collector, just a rich one. And, in the case of Madoff, a jailed one. I’ll toast to that...with a mini-bottle of booze from his now-sold collection.

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Great Wines

So much of the allure of wine is the aspirational component of it. Not in the financial sense, of course: I personally have a problem with anyone who buys wine for the so-called trophy factor, displaying it with care and attention to its angle and lighting and the perfection of its label...and then never drinks it, holding onto juice that was crafted with care and love for the one purpose that these hoarders eschew: Consumption.

No, what I’m talking about is the aspiration that almost all wine lovers share: To experience a great bottle. And just like music lovers covet the chance to see a favorite reclusive performer in concert--ever talk to anyone electrified by the experience of having seen Sly Stone or Glenn Gould live?--so, too, do devotees of the grape live for those all-too-rare days when corks are popped on the bottles they’ve only read about.

With this in mind, check out this link to the Quarterly Review of Wines. In their words, they “turned to some of [their] experts to inquire about their choices for the top ten wines they have tasted from the 20th-century.” Its as aspirational a list as you’ll find, and composed of wines that many of us may never have the chance to experience. But it’s a fascinating listing nonetheless, and implicitly asks this question: Which wines in your personal collection will rank among the greats either of all time or, more importantly, your personal favorites?

It’s all about aspiration, no matter how big or small your personal wine budget may be.

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2007 Mouton, and the Global Nature of Wine

Bordeaux, as I’ve reported here before, has been back in the news. All of the hype behind the 2009 vintage--or, at the very least, the harvest and fruit-quality--has led to the region assuming the desirable place to which it’s accustomed. Everyone, it seems, is thinking about whether it will live up to the early promise and, if so, how much to invest in it when the time comes.

This follows several years in which Bordeaux was a bit of an uncertainty. After all the drama (and, to be sure, it was well deserved) surrounding the 2005 vintage, the Bordelais arguably made a series of missteps when it came to their pricing, maintaining them at levels based more on what the 2005’s commanded than what was perhaps justified by the merits of the vintages that followed, ample though they may have been.

But the 2009, as I’ve said, has been generating some exceptionally positive buzz. Still, the world of wine moves on, and there’s plenty of wine to think about between 2005 and 2009.

That having been noted, yesterday’s report that, according to Decanter.com, “French sculptor and graphic artist Bernar Venet has produced the label for the 2007 Chateau Mouton Rothschild,” has been met with less fanfare that it traditionally is. This is because, according to the site, “the announcement of the 2007 artists label has been overshadowed by speculation as to who will provide the image for the 2008 Mouton...[There have been] rumours that the wine's label would be painted by a leading Chinese artist – in order to boost sales in the region.”

That would be a significant nod to the ever-growing importance of the Asian wine markets, and an excellent symbol of the increasingly global nature of wine. And that benefits everyone.

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Off to France!

Next week, I'll be posting blogs from France. After spending tomorrow in Paris, I will be co-leading the The Wine School's trip to Bordeaux, visiting such legendary places as Chateau Lafite, Mouton, Brane-Cantenac, Pontet-Canet, and more.

And I'll have both my laptop and my video camera with me the entire time so I can share the experience. From vineyard tours to tasting rooms to wine bars, I'll be recording it all and posting it right here.

So check back regularly to follow the adventure. I'll be just like you're in Paris and Bordeaux...without having to suffer through airline food to get there.

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