Looking for wine recommendations
 

Apologies if this is misposted, but I'm looking for some assistance in selecting an excellent bottle of wine, but the caveat is that it must be a 2004 vintage.

I'm not looking to break the bank necessarily with a Mouton or a Lafitte or Petrus or something, but I am looking for a truly high-quality heirloom bottle of wine... the kind of bottle that may be kept for ages and never consumed. Or it may be consumed in 10 years or so. Immediate drinkability is not required at all, as I don't mind aging it for a decade or so.

It would be a plus if the bottle was from a California vintner, but that's by no means a requirement. I have looked around online for some recommendations, but I've not yet found anything I'm really excited about. The FT community has such a breadth of knowledge that I'm sure someone here can recommend something outstanding.

Thanks for all the help and guidance you can collectively provide! :)

Here is a "score card" for French wines (out of 20) along with recommendations whether or not to drink now or keep. This trusty guide does not rank individual wines or chateaux but rather broad types of wine. It is compiled and updated annually by Jean-Claude Vrinat, proprietor of the Michelin 3 star temple of gastronomy Taillevent in Paris along with his sommeliers. I hope that this Cotation des Millésimes is helpful to you.


http://www.cavestaillevent.com/engli...n_vins2005.gif

Finally, I would imagine that 2004 vintages would only be available en primeur by the case currently if available at all......

I cannot think of a single CA of '04 that is long term collectable that has even been barrel sampled, let alone bottled. Delivery is well over a year away.


I have not seen any comments on the 04 CA vintage that mean anything.

03 CA is quite good, and available only as a future. Delivery may be this fall, or maybe not until spring.

Perhaps you can buy an 04 future directly from the vineyard. I have no experience with that. Collectable CA's are $100 to $150 a bottle. Look at Diamond Creek, Paul Hobbs, Phelps, and Peter Michael. For a bit less, (maybe $80-90), one can get a Ridge Montebello, or a Montelena. All have good label recognition.

Bordeaux 04 has been sampled, and futures are coming on the market now. The wine will not become available for a year or two. The firsts are under $2000 a case, so the CA firsts are the same price as the French firsts!

You're gonna have to buy a future as suggested above if you want a collectible '04 red - the Bordeaux to be delivered starting around 10/2006 I think. You can get some whites now, as they were harvested late last year and fermentd/bottled already (assuming no oak cask aging for any length of time) but these are meant to be consumed fairly quickly.

I can think of one suggestion on the more unique side. Consider a good bottle of German wine, as top shelf rieslings can certainly withstand a decade or more of cellaring. Start with those categorized as "auslese" or higher - your wine merchant should be helpful. And you will be getting a delightful bottle of wine.

Yeah, you're not going to see any of the top reds from 2004 until 2006 at the earliest. Bordeaux will start popping up near the end of 2006 but more throughout the year in 2007 -- St. Emilion and the like, I've found, show up earlier in the year, with the Pauillacs and such coming through the late spring and into the summer. Many California Cabernets are somewhat the same.

The German suggestion is a good one -- you'll be finding those on the market toward the latter part of this fall and around New Year's.

But if you're in no hurry, I'd just wait. The prelim reports on 2004 aren't widely glowing, so it probably doesn't make sense to plunge into the futures market because the prices won't be going up dramatically.

The terriffic 03's from France are just hitting the market now, and some of them are still releasing only the 01's at this time. It's way too early to get a handle on what the 04's will taste like if you are looking for a red.

Some 04 rose's may be out from California, but don't think any regular reds will be for a while, like another year or so, but most California stuff is 02 or earlier in current release.

I appreciate the insight here. I figured it might be wishful thinking to expect any 04's to have been already been released, but I thought I'd ask the seasoned pros here.

Where does one buy wine futures? Is that like stock trading? I think I've heard of a place in Chicago that does that. How does it work?

In case you all might be wondering, this was going to be a one year anniversary gift... with the hope being that it would be saved for awhile to be enjoyed later on for a ten year anniversary. Thus, 2004 was kind of a key element, though more symbolic than anything.

The 04's from the other half of the world may be here before the end of the year, but may not, they are six months or so ahead.

Futures work like this:

You find a store that sells them, lots of places do, if you have a wine section in your paper one day a week there will be in the ads.

You pre order a case, two, three, whatever, and when the wine is released, they ship it to you. Sometimes that's a year or two down the road, sometimes more, but it will eventually show up. Some places take delivery and you have to pick it up. The winery may prefer to hold the wine in the barrels another year or two. Ask your favorite store if they take orders for like that, if not it's no big deal, when the 04's come out, just get a case.

I figured that was what you are doing, I do that all the time, just did it for somebody a couple weeks ago. What I do is for the wedding I'll get them a nice decanter (I love decanters) and a couple of the 28 ounce ballon glases, the ones that can hold a half bottle of wine each, and toss in some wine that is decent. I'll include in the card a note that once the vintage of their wedding is released, I'll get them a case to enjoy on their anniversaries for the next 11 years (the year they get it and the other 11 bottles).

A good friend got married at the end of August last year, so hopefully, without not much trouble I'll be able to get one of my fav's that was harvested on their wedding day.

It's great to have the wine grow with the couple.

A possible suggestion- what are your birth years? One bottle is never enough for two people, so get two bottles- one for each of your birth years. Hopefully you were born in a great vintage year like 1961.

Yes, I've thought about that, too. I'm 1978 and she's 1976. There are some good looking 76's around, at least from what I can gather with my limited knowledge. I'm just not certain about spending one or two hundred bucks on a bottle wine whose provenance I can't be completely sure of. How do I know the wine was stored properly for 30 years?

Besides, I imagined with a wine of birth-year vintage, we'd never drink them since it wouldn't have quite the shared sentiment behind it as an anniversary year vintage.

An interesting alternative for a wine selection
 

http://www.mrwines.com/ is the website for the Margaret River region in SouthWest Australia. I find that there are some wonderful wines in this relatively "new" area. Take a look and you just might find what you are looking for. You will definitely be intrigued by the selection available although many are not available yet in the US.

RMB

I would say that you can't go wrong with a Ridge Monte Bello (cabernet) or a Rafanelli cabernet. These are two wines of which I've purchased every vintage since the late 80's and they are consistently awesome.

1978 was not a bad year at all for Bordeaux, and you can still find some of the premier cru wines around. A reputable merchant like Sokolin out of NYC or Hart-Davis-Hart in Chicago would be able to set you up with excellent provenance. If you aren't sure if the wine will be over the hill (the last 1978 I had was back in 2002; an Haut Bailly that was certainly at full stretch), you might think about getting a magnum, since the theory is that they age slower.

Also, 1978 was a terrific year for red Burgundy. If money were no object, you could get DRC's La Tache and call it a day.

I agree with the call on Ridge Montebello, typically one of the most ageworthy of California's cabernets.

You can buy futures directly from the winery here:

http://www.ridgewine.com/taf/store.t...l&sku=04CMB1-6


for more guidance and information from lovers, sellers, and/or makers of wine, try going to one of several wine forums on the 'net. Here's my favorite:
http://www.vinocellar.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?Cat=

Major futures seller in a major wine area:

http://www.bassins.com/wine/bordeaux/2004bord.html

You buy futures bu the case, or 1/2 case if offered. A future is a piece of paper that guarentees delivery by the seller of the paper delivery of the wine to the buyer. This paper is only as good as the seller of the paper.

A few years ago, a number of wine retailers bought a lot of futures from some people in Michigan. These futures were worthless paper. Many retailers did not deliver.