Wednesday, June 29, 2011

2010 Bordeaux Futures - in the Twilight Zone



Oh, my. That is Chateaux Margaux on your right. I have stood at that gate and taken the same picture that you see here.


The 2010 Ch. Margaux futures offering came out today. Each bottle of this 100 point wine (rated by James Suckling of W.Spectator) costs $1000.


That's a grand. A thousand clams. For one bottle of really, really excellent wine. And the price will go up from here. The second tranche may be 20% more expensive. Eventual retail price will be higher still, most likely.


I once bought a couple of 100-point Margaux from a retailer in London, for $70 each. Those were 1990 vintage.


My, my. I suppose a few Americans will buy some of these, but it seems more likely that the buyers will mostly be the newly wealthy in other countries, such as China, India, and Brazil. That is what happens when your own country (just like the UK has done) has become a second-rate economic power.


Margaux is a First Growth. La Mission Haut Brion is not, and yet it's priced at $1000 per bottle as well. Palmer is $350; Cos d'Estournel is $319. Montrose is $216. Lynch-Bages a real bargain, stands at $170. It was not so long ago that these wines (2nd-4th Growths) could be had for about $40.


Sure, it's a fantastic vintage, but the industry is really sticking it to the consumers with these prices. It's difficult to spend more than $20 or so to make a bottle of wine, so they can sell it for A THOUSAND? A grand experiment; we'll see how it goes. I will be surprised if these wines increase 12x in value over the next twenty years, as they have in the past two decades. But if the USD falls as precipitously as some predict, that could happen. Capital gains are good, right? Not so fast--you would have a cap gain (on paper) from the sale of the wine, and you'd have to pay tax on that, but in reality inflation might have wiped out your entire gain. In other words, you'd lose money (after inflation) AND you'd have to pay tax on non-existent gain.


We should all pay our respects to the folks in our government who are driving this country into the ground, by debasing its currency with massive debt. (And we're not upset just because it's become difficult to buy fine wine ;) The nation's fiscal mismanagement reaches much further down than that. It reaches all the way past twilight.





No comments:

Post a Comment

Wine and Your Health: Getting Real

 Here are two articles on wine and our health: 1. First article : Grapes are a superfood that lower bad chloresterol. Many of their healthy ...