After reading 120+ pages of the Rudy thread and the Premier Cru, I am left worrying that all DRC is either fake or fantastically nonexistent and likely never to wash up on these shores.
I have a daughter born in 2014 and would like to have a bottle or two of DRC Richebourg and La Tache for her when she grows up, and truly have no idea how to get a hold of them. I understand that they are allocated, but I can’t just sign up to a mailing list, and I have zero faith in auction sites at this point. I assume it’s around a year before these wines are released, but was wondering how those who buy go about doing so. Feel free to PM if you wouldn’t want the Information widespread. I appreciate the help!
Thanks
Noah
(Btw, the idiot is me, not my daughter for who. I am buying the wine…)
As has been said Noah the wines are made in decent quantity. The LT and RC do get sold at a premium but you can normally buy the others at release price. Just put a notice here in about a year and a half as the good doctor says.
Just my personal opinion, but…laying down birth year DRC for a one-year old seems like an exceedingly overpriced option. Obviously, at this point you have no way of knowing whether your child will grow up to be an adult who even likes to drink wine. Plus, even if she does, the value of that bottle may increase to the point that after 21 years you can’t bring yourself to open the darn thing!
There are lots of wines that have the track record to age without the nose bleed prices commanded by DRC. I couldn’t justify spending the $$$ for DRC for a child who may not even care about wine down the road.
Bruce…any investment has risks…even an emotional investment like buying some rare Burgundy for a child from the year they are born. I think this may be more about creating or offering an experience for his child that will most likely be out of 90% of the population’s budget when his child grows up. As a more sentimental guy than most…I’m afraid of what will happen when/if I get married again. I can’t even imagine how far back my bank account will be set by my need to have “special wines” from that year for future celebrations.
I think it would help to choose one business that probably gets a decent allocation and start buying a good portion of your wine from them now. After your first couple of orders, you could mention your interest, and then mention it again in a year or so when the release is approaching, at which point you’ll have hopefully become a good customer of theirs. It probably wouldn’t hurt if some of your purchases were from the Wilson Daniels portfolio.
You can take this, or not, with a grain of salt given that I don’t sell DRC. I do, however, have some idea of how retailers tend to deal with allocated items (often being the person who does that where I work). Even though prices are very high on these and supply is not as short as it is for certain other Burgundies, there is a lot of demand. Most retailers like to know they’re selling items like this to existing customers who support their business, rather than people just trying to cherry pick.
I didn’t know these wines were actually opened and consumed…
Again, just my personal opinion, but I think there’s something very off about wine geeks who think they have to spend thousands of dollars and engage in a rarified treasure hunt just to find the one bottle of DRC that is the same vintage as their child. There are so many excellent bottles of wine that will age appropriately, that are relatively easy to find, and that don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Now, if someone were regularly buying DRC every vintage and just wanted to get one bottle from their child’s birth year, that makes a bit more sense to me.
Yeah, I can’t imagine why someone would want to splurge on something more expensive and of potentially greater quality than what they normally buy to celebrate the birth of a child. How pointless. I’m glad I could make this worthwhile contribution to the thread.
Doug–Do you really think an acquisition like this is about the child? I don’t–I think it’s about the adult trying to rationalize a purchase they probably wouldn’t otherwise make. If someone wants to buy a bottle of DRC for whatever reason, knock yourself out. But if you’re going to spend $$$$ on a bottle like this, I think one should at least be honest enough to acknowledge it’s not necessary and it’s not really about the kid. It’s a rationalization to buy a bottle for yourself that you probably wouldn’t buy otherwise.
First, a good, well established retailer should prove to be a completely fine source of this wine.
The fun part of the question is the next part…
You will be throwing, say, 4 grand at these two bottles. (Just picking number folks, please don’t over-shop for me.)
If you look at a 7 year doubling of value if you invested the same moneys, you could be staring at 32,000 dollars when she is 21. (No matter who becomes President in 2017, this will still be a considerable sum!)
I would bet that you could simply buy the wine at that date and have change left over if you put the cash into your portfolio now.
You could offer her the wine, or the cash.
However, the current 4 grand may be so trivial an amount to you that these considerations may be meaningless. In which case, order from Premier Cru and the wine might be delivered just in time for her to legally drink it!
Buy some Maison Ilan to have as back up, just in case, though.
Glad this turned into a discussion of birth year wines and how I’m an idiot to think about purchasing them. Bruce, Anton, your point is actually well taken, but I was merely looking for logistical information. I understand it may not be the most prudent financial decision.
I’m thinking I will just order for half as much through Premier Cru, wait for WB fall out and then we can fold this into the PC thread.
My read of the OP doesn’t make me feel like he is trying to rationalize anything. But really asking about methodology in acquiring something somewhat rare.
I think you are making an assumption here that may be accurate but nonetheless an assumption and doesn’t really answer the op’s question
Noah–Actually, I don’t think anyone is an “idiot” for buying birth year wines for their kids, and I didn’t mean to suggest that at all. Many of my friends have done that, and I understand why they do it. But none of them are buying birth year DRC for their kids. And when you see these threads on WB about birth year wines–my kid was born in 2010, what birth year wine should I buy for them–no one suggests DRC.
Imagine you’re taking a survey of seniors on college campuses, and you ask seniors to come up with a list of what they would most like to get for their 21st birthday. Do you imagine that birth year wine, much less birth year DRC, would get mentioned often in seniors’ repsonses? Isn’t it much more likely that the seniors would prefer a trip to Europe?
I think we wine geeks tend to view the world through our own wine geeky lenses. What we think is cool–a birth year wine–may not have anything to do with what our kids will think is cool. There are lots of wines you can buy for your daughter’s birth year wine that are readily available (or will be) that are much less expensive than DRC and that don’t require jumping through hoops to buy. Frankly, I would be much more inclined to get a selection of birth year wines–a Bordeaux, a Barolo, a German Riesling, a Sauternes, a Port, etc.–without spending the $$$ and time & effort just to track down a bottle or two of DRC. When my friends have asked me for suggestions for birth year wines for their kids, that’s the direction I suggest for them.
Jeez, you guys are tough… As original poster, I guess I will just have to pick up a few bottles of Thunderbird and mark the “disgorgement” date with a sharpie.
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