For those of you with a delusional view of the "Good Old Days" . . .

[Robert_Dentice]

I just had the 76 Schloss Eltz Langenstuck last week and it was outstanding.

I just stood this one up

ED8446EE-7E1E-43B3-8FD1-4E5A12AA1623.jpeg

That could be great! Please report back.

[Julian_Marshall]

I started on Blue Nun, which was $0.89 in Michigan when I went away to college. I remember the day that the guy in the dorm room next to me came rushing into my room and said he had found a much better wine but it was much more expensive. Liebfraumilch. A $1.19 a bottle. We scraped together an extra $0.30 for the good stuff. The advertisement I attached was already after law school when I was a big fancy lawyer with a $19,500 salary in my second year after graduation.

Good old days - “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” as Mr. Seger put it. With $19,500 salary in 1976 you were doing well, Jay, and probably not with a shitload of college debt like some young people today. But I wonder if the 4.3 CPI multiplier that you want to apply to wine would also work for lawyer’s salaries?

Ha! Busted!

I forgot Liebfraumilch - as you say, that was classy stuff for a Saturday night along with Mateus Rosé or one of those Chiantis in straw-covered bottles!

[Howard_Cooper]

Schloss Eltz was an excellent producer that is not around anymore. Basserman-Jordan made excellent wines as well. I had a delicious Ockfener Bockstein Kabinett from 1979 from Dr. Fischer. I think I paid about $60 for a case.

Also, it was not hard in that time period to buy JJ Prum, etc. I got to DC after law school in 1980 and was finding abundant amounts of Prum, von Schubert, etc., at less than $10 for Kabinetts. In fact, a couple of years later I bought Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spatlese 1983 for $7.99. And, in my father’s wine store in the mid-1970s he was selling JJ Prum 1971s (and wines from Schloss Eltz). This was in Savannah, Georgia, so I am sure one could have easily found them in NYC. And, by the 1985 (after dad had sold the store and retired) I was buying from David Schildknecht, who was in retail in the DC area, so as long as I followed his advice I did not make mistakes buying German wines or Burgundy.

Terry Theise was not in business yet in the 1970s. I first saw his wine in the mid-1980s (1985 or 1986). But, when they first came out, the prices for wines from producers like Selbach, Willi Schaefer and Muller Catoir were awfully good. [For example, I bought 1976 MC Scheurebe BA for $10 a 1/2 bottle from David at a store called Rex.]

So, yes, these were great times for wine buying, but only if you knew what you were doing. In the early to mid-1980s, I bought 1982 Cos d’Estournal for $130 a case (on futures at Calvert Woodley), 1980 DRC Grands Echezeaux for $35 (at MacArthurs), 1984 Ridge Montebello for $20 (from David when he was at Mayflower), etc., etc., etc. When a store called A&A closed, I got 1979 Ausone for $25 and 1978 Faiveley Clos Vougeot for $10.

[Howard_Cooper]

Good old days - “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” as Mr. Seger put it. With $19,500 salary in 1976 you were doing well, Jay, and probably not with a shitload of college debt like some young people today. But I wonder if the 4.3 CPI multiplier that you want to apply to wine would also work for lawyer’s salaries?

Ha! Busted!

I forgot Liebfraumilch - as you say, that was classy stuff for a Saturday night along with Mateus Rosé or one of those Chiantis in straw-covered bottles!

I thought Mateus and Lancers were mostly used as candle holders?

[Jay_Miller]

When I were a young nipper, we drank ditch water with barely any age, and ate toad in the hole with real toads. As for spotted dick, the less said about that the better.

And we drank it from a dirty, cracked wine bottle with shards of glass still in it and while we were drinking the sommellier would take the bottle and hit us over the head with it.

[Brian_Glas]

Prices actually seem expensive, no? If you even use a multiplier of 8, which I think is reasonable(?), you have list of Riesling that’s more expensive than your typical Riesling list these days (for the most part).

Interesting.

That was my thoughts. How many of those wines on that list would fetch big $ at auction today? Or would those wines be equivalent to the garbage German Wines Rimmerman was dumping a few years back?

[Tom_G_l_a_s_g_o_w]

Prices actually seem expensive, no? If you even use a multiplier of 8, which I think is reasonable(?), you have list of Riesling that’s more expensive than your typical Riesling list these days (for the most part).

Interesting.

That was my thoughts. How many of those wines on that list would fetch big $ at auction today? Or would those wines be equivalent to the garbage German Wines Rimmerman was dumping a few years back?

So the wines are good enough for Robert and Howard but not you?

[Eric_Ifune]

Eltz was probably the best of the old aristocratic Rheingau estates back then. Schonbrunn and Rheinhartshausen were decent. Johannesburg OK. Vollrads had begun it’s long decline.

[Brian_G_r_a_f_s_t_r_o_m]

Prices actually seem expensive, no? If you even use a multiplier of 8, which I think is reasonable(?), you have list of Riesling that’s more expensive than your typical Riesling list these days (for the most part).

Interesting.

I just checked the CPI history and it looks like a better multiplier would be 4.3. Remember that we were just getting into hyperinflation at the time and we have had very little inflation in the last few years.

Very cool. I’m impressed you looked that up. Thanks!

[Kevin_G]

What a great list! Z.B. Prüm is Zacharias Bergweiler-Prüm, which is related to, but not the same estate as J.J. Prüm. At some point in the 20th century, the heirs of Zacharias Prüm married family members associated with the estates of Dr. Loosen and Robert Weil (Rheingau).

[Howard_Cooper]

Actually, the prices on this list look pretty high for the time, at least as compared with what I was paying in DC in the early 80s. Didn’t NYC stores have price controls for a long time? Did they extend to Scarsdale, or were the prices in Scarsdale then just as high as they seem to be now?

Note that some of the Rheingau wines on this list were among the great estates with some of the best terroir in Germany. Read any old book and you will find that these are supposed to be the great wines of Germany. I don’t know about the 1976s, but by the time I bought things like Steinberger and Schloss Vollrads from the 1983 vintage, they were pretty mediocre. But, the prices never reflected that. I would have loved it if the Staatsdomaine in the Rheingau (owners of Steinberger and a good piece of some other great vineyards) had turned over control to the Staatsdomaine in the Nahe, which used to make great great wines - their 1989s for example were terrific. I would still love to see Steinberger, Schloss Vollrads, Schloss Johannisberg, Erbacher Marcobrun, Rauenthauler Baiken, etc., turned over the people like Prum, Thomas Haag, Hanno and Dorthy Zilliken, Donnhoff, etc. Nobody talks about this terroir anymore but think what it would be like if all the owners of Romanee Conti, la Tache, Musigny and Chambertin made mediocre wine for the past 40 years of more.

I bought some Z.B. Prum wines from 1983 (and probably a bit around that). I thought the wines were good but nowhere near in the top class of German Mosels. Frankly, there were a bunch of underachievers in German wines, which was why Terry Theise’s portfolio was such a hit with German wine lovers when the wines first were intoduced. There were some great producers making great wines and selling them in the US before Terry Theise (and fortunately I was led to these first by my father and later by David Schildknecht), but when I went off on my own in those days to try some of the great names I wondered why they were great names. I learned about Schloss Eltz from my father but I think they were gone as an estate before I started buying German wines on my own, although I occasionally found older bottles around somewhere.

[Mel_Knox]

Technical question: how do we post something we scanned? I have a german price list from the same era.

[lleichtman]

Good old days - “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” as Mr. Seger put it. With $19,500 salary in 1976 you were doing well, Jay, and probably not with a shitload of college debt like some young people today. But I wonder if the 4.3 CPI multiplier that you want to apply to wine would also work for lawyer’s salaries?

Ha! Busted!

I forgot Liebfraumilch - as you say, that was classy stuff for a Saturday night along with Mateus Rosé or one of those Chiantis in straw-covered bottles!

Yep bought all of those. At the time, I had a $10,00 salary as a first year resident/intern. No extra money for wine other than $2-3 bottles.

[J_a_y_H_a_c_k]

Ha! Busted!

I forgot Liebfraumilch - as you say, that was classy stuff for a Saturday night along with Mateus Rosé or one of those Chiantis in straw-covered bottles!

I thought Mateus and Lancers were mostly used as candle holders?

And the Chianti straw-covered Magnums, with really long necks, were used as hookahs!

[David_K_o_l_i_n]

I forgot Liebfraumilch - as you say, that was classy stuff for a Saturday night along with Mateus Rosé or one of those Chiantis in straw-covered bottles!

I thought Mateus and Lancers were mostly used as candle holders?

And the Chianti straw-covered Magnums, with really long necks, were used as hookahs!

And Annie Green Springs were vomit inducers

[NED_VALOIS]

Who could forget; “What kind of bird don’t FLY” ?

THUNDERBIRD!!!

[Howard_Cooper]

I thought Mateus and Lancers were mostly used as candle holders?

And the Chianti straw-covered Magnums, with really long necks, were used as hookahs!

And Annie Green Springs were vomit inducers

These kind of wines seemed to have had pretty definitive time periods. I feel like I was too young for Ripple and too old for Annie Green Springs. I was right in the Boones Farm era.

[Fred_C]

I wonder if in 20 years we’ll be reminiscing about the good ‘ol days when Rousseau and DRC were only $2000…

[Howard_Cooper]

I really hope so. It will mean I am still alive in 20 years.

[J_a_y_H_a_c_k]

. . . These kind of wines seemed to have had pretty definitive time periods. I feel like I was too young for Ripple and too old for Annie Green Springs. I was right in the Boones Farm era.

We did Boones Farm and Ripple together, but I’ve never even heard of Annie Green Springs. Our big score was Zapple Apple Wine. There was a train derailment outside Ann Arbor and an entire rail car full of the stuff ruptured. A couple of guys from our house went there with a VW Microbus and filled it up with cases of the stuff. Four gallons to the case. We used it for everything. Made a great stew.