Originally Posted by
stimpy
Many Grand Cru's can be easily found in the €50 range if you buy early. For example I bought a case of 2010 Corton Grand Cru Rouge (Cuvée Charlotte Dumay) from the Hospice de Beaune auction at €53.21 per bottle. I won't actually get the wine til sometime this spring but once it is bottled and put on sale through normal channels it will likely go for over €75 per bottle. And if you happen to see this wine at one of the worlds top restaurants sometime after 2015, it will cost hundreds. The same can be said for the two cases of 2009 Château de Pommard I put on reserve long before it was bottled. It is already going for over €75 per bottle direct from the Château.
But finding Grand Cru's under €40-50 is not easy for the public. You have to know someone, or be in the wine business yourself. Gaucho, as I think you are in the wine business, perhaps you should come to this event?
http://www.grands-jours-bourgogne.co...,798,4545.html
That being said, the Hospice wines are sort of a special case because you are buying a future through a wholesale channel in bulk, and the Chateau de Pommard is not in fact a Grand Cru. It may well be as good as many a Grand Cru, but it itself is merely a monopole Premier Cru. But that was one of my points in my earlier post, that Grand Crus are essentially unattainable at those prices, but if you really know what you are doing and have access directly with the producers (and apparently, both of these factors apply to you, Stimpy), you can buy some of the handful of very select Premier Crus that are as good as many an actual Grand Cru, at more reasonable prices than the Grand Crus can be obtained. I used to make a buying trip to Burgundy every 2-3 years during which I would buy several cases of these handful of Premier Cru wines that are actually hitting above their class, and which are in fact at the Grand Cru level. And I found that the sweet spot of these wines tended to be in the $35-50 USD/bottle range circa a decade ago bought directly from the domains they were produced at, and even then, they tended to sell in the U.S. for at least double, often 2.5x the prices I paid directly at the producers (I had a deal with an importer in Dijon who would bring the wines into the U.S. for me for $25 a case).