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Elusive vintages a little cheaper
By Michelle Locke |
June 14, 2009, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
WINE-LOVER R.J. Hilgers is caught in a cabernet Catch-22. The good news, he notes, is that the recession means once impossible-to-find vintages suddenly are not so impossible to find. The bad news? There's a recession.
"The cruel irony of the whole thing is all of a sudden it feels like these mailing lists are starting to open up," he said of the exclusive buying lists some wineries use to sell their bottles. "So when you get on them you're like, 'Oh great.'
"But then you look at the prices and say, 'Oh'."
Still, when Scarecrow, a much-sought-after, hard-to-find Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon, became available, he couldn't resist.
"Honestly, that's one of the two or three lists I've been coveting for a while," said Hilgers, who works in marketing in the San Francisco Bay area and blogs about his experiences with wine. "That one was kind of a no-brainer for me."
Despite the economy, Americans aren't buying less wine. But they are buying less expensive wines. Wine sales by volume increased 1 percent last year over 2007, to 317 million cases, according to the San Francisco-based Wine Institute
Cult wines
But sales dropped slightly to US$30 billion, compared to US$30.4 billion in 2007.
And even high-end wine prices are down, say wine merchants.
"The so-called cult wines are not quite as elusive as they were," said Mark Pope, founder and chief executive of Bounty Hunter, a Napa, California, wine shop. "It's a lot more competitive world."
A wine becomes a cult if it's highly regarded and made in small quantities. There's no defined list, but some widely cited Napa Valley brands include Screaming Eagle, Colgin Cellars and Harlan Estate.
To buy cult wines direct you have to be on the winery mailing list, which until recently meant you faced months or years on a waiting list. Now slots are opening up.
Rare wines also are becoming more available on the secondary market, some from restaurants and some from private collectors. But even at a discount, cult wine cellars won't be mistaken for bargain basements.
Last year, a 2005 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, a wine from Burgundy, France, considered among the world's finest, was released at between US$3,000 and US$5,000 a bottle. It quickly worked its way up to US$13,000 a bottle, said Leo Fenn, founder of cultwine.com.
Now, the price has dropped to something around US$6,500.
"The cruel irony of the whole thing is all of a sudden it feels like these mailing lists are starting to open up," he said of the exclusive buying lists some wineries use to sell their bottles. "So when you get on them you're like, 'Oh great.'
"But then you look at the prices and say, 'Oh'."
Still, when Scarecrow, a much-sought-after, hard-to-find Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon, became available, he couldn't resist.
"Honestly, that's one of the two or three lists I've been coveting for a while," said Hilgers, who works in marketing in the San Francisco Bay area and blogs about his experiences with wine. "That one was kind of a no-brainer for me."
Despite the economy, Americans aren't buying less wine. But they are buying less expensive wines. Wine sales by volume increased 1 percent last year over 2007, to 317 million cases, according to the San Francisco-based Wine Institute
Cult wines
But sales dropped slightly to US$30 billion, compared to US$30.4 billion in 2007.
And even high-end wine prices are down, say wine merchants.
"The so-called cult wines are not quite as elusive as they were," said Mark Pope, founder and chief executive of Bounty Hunter, a Napa, California, wine shop. "It's a lot more competitive world."
A wine becomes a cult if it's highly regarded and made in small quantities. There's no defined list, but some widely cited Napa Valley brands include Screaming Eagle, Colgin Cellars and Harlan Estate.
To buy cult wines direct you have to be on the winery mailing list, which until recently meant you faced months or years on a waiting list. Now slots are opening up.
Rare wines also are becoming more available on the secondary market, some from restaurants and some from private collectors. But even at a discount, cult wine cellars won't be mistaken for bargain basements.
Last year, a 2005 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, a wine from Burgundy, France, considered among the world's finest, was released at between US$3,000 and US$5,000 a bottle. It quickly worked its way up to US$13,000 a bottle, said Leo Fenn, founder of cultwine.com.
Now, the price has dropped to something around US$6,500.
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