Aim for These Bordeaux, and You Can't Miss
The economy might force us to "buy down," but that doesn't mean we have to drink plonk. Nor does it mean we must forsake prestigious wines. Or at least prestigious wine regions.
Bordeaux, for example. This most famous land of wine, where cabernet sauvignon and merlot reign supreme, is well known for its "classified growths" that fetch hundreds at retail or thousands at auction and require aging for years in a temperature-controlled cellar. But if we brush aside the pricey appellations -- your Margaux, your Pauillac and Pomerol, St. Estephe and St. Emilion -- and focus on smaller districts that surround them, there are some terrific values to be found and wines ready to drink now.
Even better, you can still find several value-priced Bordeaux from the spectacular 2005 vintage, a textbook growing season that had the Bordelais singing "California Dreamin'." The summer was unusually dry, but the drought was moderated by fairly cool temperatures. That combination, bolstered by cool, dry weather during the harvest, produced wines of great concentration and structure throughout Bordeaux. Vintage reports from 2005 burst with enthusiasm, with none of the namby-pamby language of troublesome years in which careful vignerons use all the techniques of the trade to pull off a miracle. There are no accounts of harvest rains falling on the neighbor's vineyards, because the sun shone on all of Bordeaux that year.
I decided to test the market for good-value Bordeaux by seeking out 2005 reds that retail for $20 or less. My conclusion: You can't go wrong. The worst I found -- aside from the occasional corked bottle, which is a lingering problem -- were wines that can be described only as "correct." Better ones showed impressive depth and concentration, hinting that their wineries take extra care in the vineyard by reducing yields to increase flavor intensity in the fruit.
These wines typically spend little or no time in the barrel, and any barrels used rarely are new. That means the flavors are not masked by wood, and the wines do not need to age in your cellar, though some clearly will continue to improve for a few years.
Some of the best wines I found came from vineyards owned by famous-name wineries or winemakers. Chateau de Francs, for example, was bought a few years ago by the owner of Chateau Angelus and a former owner of Chateau Cheval Blanc. Together they produce a classically styled merlot-based wine that is delicious now but is clearly age-worthy. Gérard Perse, owner of Chateau Pavie, whose wines sell for hundreds of dollars a bottle, also owns Chateau Sainte Colombe, where he produces a merlot-based wine that chimes the cash register in the low two-digits.
The Bordeaux distribution system is a tangled skein of negociants, merchants and importers in which wine changes hands several times and often is traded like a stock commodity. The District of Columbia's liquor laws allow retail stores to enter this jumble through "direct imports," essentially acting as importers and bypassing one or more steps in the distribution chain. So you might find the same wine imported directly by different stores and for sale elsewhere with a traditional importer's name on the label.
Bordeaux can be intimidating, with its dicey futures market and wild price swings on top wines from vintage to vintage or month to month. But in the under-$20 range, we don't have to worry about the drama. We just need to worry about availability, because these gems from 2005 will not be around much longer. If you haven't tried them, now's the time.