In the beginning, it was all about Bordeaux for me. Packed in wooden cases and bottled in broad-shouldered dark green glass, each bottle inspired visions of expansive vineyards, dark, cool cellars and French castles. Bordeaux was – and remains to this day – the Mecca of the fine wine world. The home turf of such noble grape varieties as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc, this was the region where one could cut one’s teeth on the fruit of the vine and truly gain a meaningful understanding of the term “fine wine”.
My friends and I called it Bordeaux Bounty Hunting and it was a whole lot of fun. One or two Saturdays a month, we would head out in our Range Rover (I use poetic license here), our wallets full of Jacksons and our car trunk bare down to the spare. Our mission was to bag big game – classified growth Bordeaux. The wilderness of the small town New England packie back in those days, pre- Wine-Searcher and e-robertparker.com, was a fertile oasis of fine wine treasures and classified growth Bordeaux was the king of the jungle. “Do you have anything packed in wood?” was always a good opening question. “We’ve got a friend who likes French wine. Do you have anything laying around?” was a reliable follow-up. It wasn’t like shooting fish in a barrel (what’s the sport in that?) but we nearly always arrived home at the end of the day with something more than an empty gas tank and memories of classic New England back roads. If we had wood, we had won.
The bounty of those vinous expeditions is down to a spare few bottles today. What a pleasure it has been to pull those corks, pour a little magic into a glass and reminisce. The 1983 Chateau Potensac was a simple Medoc that, despite its modest Robert Parker rating of 84, was alive and kicking well over 15 years post vintage. The 1985 Chateau Le Tertre-Roteboeuf, a seemingly toss-off St. Emilion, continued to smoke bottles costing 3 to 4 times as much long after the glue on the front labels failed, rendering them faceless though not forgotten. On what is still to this day a surreal memory, we struck pure gold in the cellar of a package store in Allston, of all places. The outside of the cases read Lynch-Bages, Pichon-Longueville, Comtesse de Lalande, Palmer, Cos d’Estournel and La Dominique. The vintages ranged from 1982 to 1985. “The previous owner bought them and left them down there in the basement to rot, ” said the person who waited on us. “I’ve got no idea how much he paid for them, but they take up too much space. Give me $100 a case and they’re yours.” Yes…they would be ours and we would treasure them for a very long time to come. Some might be tempted to sell wines like this at auction, but we preferred to revel in the pure pleasure of appreciation for something so perfect and priceless.
Discovering those wines was truly like “finding a Picasso at a Yard Sale”. The fine wine market has changed a lot over the years, in large part due to the Internet. With a couple of key stokes, one can conduct an appraisal of virtually any wine sold anywhere in the world. Does this mean that there are no longer any buried treasures waiting to be discovered by the avid fine wine bargain hunter? Hell no!! With the ever-growing abundance of fine wine from every corner of the globe exploding onto the American marketplace, there are plenty of fine wine treasures out there. Today, treasure hunting for wine is not just about Bordeaux; is also about everything from Australia to Italy, from Paso Robles to Spain. This makes the whole sport even more fun than in the good old, pre- worldwide web days. There is still gold in them there hills!
This is what Bin Ends will be all about. The appreciation of fine wine has always been a great equalizer. An interested, passionate consumer can consistently enjoy a superior bottle of wine simply by acquiring a few, relatively easy to learn skills. I know this to be true because I have lived it first hand. Bin Ends brings me back to my “Bordeaux Bounty Hunting” days. There is a tremendous amount of quality fine wine to be found if one knows where to look and how to acquire it. At Bin Ends, “Great wine at Serious Savings” is our mantra and our mission.
If you plan on attending the 12th Annual Nantucket Wine Festival from May 14th to May 18th, we invite you to taste and learn more about “Bargain Hunting for Fine Wine Treasures” at a seminar that I will be hosting on Friday, May 16th at Le Languedoc. For more information and to sign up for the seminar, go to the following link: http://www.nantucketwinefestival.com/html/events.asp.
jh
