The Wine Collector

I don't review many books on this blog but Living with Wine by Samantha Nestor was too tantalizing to pass up.  What wine collector wouldn't want a voyeuristic photographic tour of some of the most luxurious, tasteful, "high design" wine cellars in the U.S.?  After all, how could you possibly design a better one than your friends if you don't have sufficient examples to stimulate how high to set your standards?

"Wow" cellars

Living with Wine showcases 30 cellars in 256 pages including associated tasting rooms, storage areas, and some perspective from the owners (some of whom have celebrity status).  The cellars are split into five categories with names like "The Gentlemen's Haven" and "Urban Retreats and Inspiring Spaces."  Each cellar is aptly named too with appropriate (and clever) names like "The Man Cave". "Chelsea Girl", and "Morrocan Moods."

The good news for those of you looking to use this book as a guide to finding the right resources for your own purposes is that Samantha included a detailed list of resources used to create each cellar from designers to architects to cooling system providers.

Bottom line: Every wine collector would love to have this book.  As the holidays approach, it's a great gift idea instead of the latest wine accessory or botltle of wine for your wine collector friends (or spouse).  The book retails for $75 but you can pre-order it at Amazon using one the links above for $47.25 (it releases in two days on October 27).

P.S. All book reviews such as this are offered to readers without receiving any compensation from book publishers (other than a free copy of the book to review) or commissions from book sales.

Ever wonder whether you're permitted to bring wine to a restaurant and what the corkage and other wine-related policies are?  Now there's a new free (ad-supported) website called GoBYO.com (also see their iPhone app) that is essentially a restaurant guide viewed through the eyes of wine lover.  Read the story on the Springwise.com site titled Guide to BYO-friendly restaurants.

The site provides a variety of ratings including a composite restaurant rating from multiple online guides, a most popular list, Yelp ratings, and perhaps most importantly for readers of this blog, the "Wine-Friendly Rating."  The wine-friendly rating formula covers the basic wine policy and its restrictions (if any), corkage fee levels (over $20 is the worst category), the number of wines offered by the glass (50+ is highest score), and whether the restaurant's wine list is online and if it's at least 50 wines.

Join "Mr. Burghound", Allen Meadows, and Vinfolio at Spruce Restaurant in San Francisco on the evening of Tuesday, October 14 for a tasting of a dozen fine Burgundies (learn more, including the list of wines being poured).  Allen will provide his usual entertaining explanations of each wine and producer so if you'd like to meet Allen in person or just learn a bit more about Burgundy from one of its masters, purchase tickets for the tasting now at $225 each (note: the dinner event is sold out).

To see a selection of notable wine events for the remainder of 2008, including other Vinfolio events focused on Champagne and caviar in November and on Cult California wines in December, click here.

If you're a regular wine consumer, you can no doubt remember some occasions when you've had too much to drink.  While you shouldn't be drinking and driving at all, at least developing a self-awareness of your exact blood alcohol level by using a breath alcohol testing device can help modulate your consumption or stop you from driving drunk.

In the future, you might also encounter an alcohol breath testing service as you depart a corporate or private event.  Springwise, the global trend-spotting site, posted a brief story about Blow Me, a UK-based company offering such services.  With a name like that, it's hard to believe they haven't been in the news more often.

If you consider yourself a Burgundy enthusiast or perhaps wondered what the excitement over Burgundy wine is all about, attending the next La Paulee (in San Francisco) on March 1, 2008 is your chance to taste a cross-section of the best wines from the region, both supplied by the event organizers as well as other guests who bring fantastic bottles to share.

There are three events:

1. Grand Tasting ($300) - Held from noon to 3 pm on March 1, this is a walkaround wine and food extravaganza. 
2. Gala Dinner ($1,400, includes admission to Grand Tasting) - Starts at 6:30 pm on March 1. Guests are encouraged to bring a special bottle to share in the spirit of the La Paulee tradition. 
3. Exclusive Rarities Dinner (Est. $5,000, includes admission to all other events) - Limited to 50 people. Very special wines are served. This event is held on the Friday night before the Gala dinner.  The final schedule and price is still to be determined. 

Vinfolio issued a news flash email inviting our customers to sign up last week which contains more details of the events as well as a reservation form to download (provided again here).  You can send the form to Vinfolio at service@vinfolio.com or fax it to 415-946-1359 and we'll take care of holding a spot for you.

A few considerations in case you are hesitating

1. Daniel Johnnes (Wine Director of Daniel Bouloud's Dinex group) normally holds this event in New York every two years and he has not held it in San Francisco since 2001.  I suspect that there is pent-up demand on the West Coast which will result in it selling out quickly (all prior years sold out months in advance).
2. The response to our news flash email confirms that interest is running high.  E.g., we already have reservations to fill 50% of the seats at the Rarities dinner!
3. Read some press reviews from prior events which are glowing.
4. There will be plenty of interesting people to meet, from Allen Meadows of Burghound to winemakers from the Burgundy domaines whose wines are being served.  And "yes", I will be attending and would look forward to meeting readers of this blog and/or customers of Vinfolio.

Certain wines have achieved the status of "luxury items".  The other day, Robert Frank's Wealth Report Blog in the WSJ had a post titled "What counts as "luxury?" in which he says "luxury by definition should be exclusive.  So the idea of mass luxury... is a fiction.  If everything is luxury, nothing is luxury." 

Why is fine wine susceptible to being treated as a luxury item?

1. Rare, hard-to-find bottles from sought-after producers (even from current vintages much less 1947) are essentially exclusive goods as they are made in finite quantities that become even scarcer as they are consumed.
2. Fine wine possesses characteristics that drive consumers to be willing to pay a significant premium.  The willingness to pay a premium, as described on the book jacket of Trading Up: The New American Luxury, occurs when a product or service is emotionally important to the consumer and delivers "the perceived values of quality, performance, and engagement."  Sounds like great wine to me.
3. Prices have climbed steadily for highly-rated wine as demand appears to be growing faster than supply.  For evidence, read my prior market-related posts in this blog.  One driver is the rapid pace of wealth creation.  E.g., the number of U.S. households worth $5 million or more (not including one's primary residence) rose 23% in 2006 to a record 1.14 million.  Read more in another recent post by Robert Frank called "Five million is the new million."
4. Even with higher prices, wine is still a relatively "affordable" luxury within the financial reach of many more than just households with $5+ million net worth.
5. Merely owning certain wines confers a halo of prestige upon the owner.  It's almost as if being willing to pay a high price signals that you have the sophistication to value the nuances of the wine.
   

High prices alone don't deliver "luxury" status

Drinking a $150 bottle of lousy and generally available wine wouldn't be considered a moment of luxurious self-indulgence.  To "qualify" in the luxury category, the wine must also be relatively scarce and of high absolute quality (often due to a respected reviewer's rating) to make you feel that you're having an out-of-the-ordinary experience.

If you're a wine collector and haven't been to the annual Napa Valley wine auction, pay attention.  The 2007 auction is scheduled for June 7-10.  Invitations were mailed in late March but you can also visit the auction home page of the Napa Valley Vintners and register directly. 

This event will sell out so don't dawdle.  The full weekend package is $2,500 a person and a daytime package of events is $1,000 a person.  Read about what's included in each ticket package.  The ticket prices may seem high, but keep in mind it's a charity event to benefit Napa county health, youth, and low-income housing non-profit groups.  

Vinfolio co-sponsors Auction kick-off event 

Vinfolio just agreed last week to co-sponsor a kick-off food and wine tasting event at the Beaulieu Garden Estate in Rutherford on Thursday night, June 7th, in conjunction with Departures magazine, the Mandarin Oriental hotel group, and Blackbird Vineyards.  All auction ticketholders for the full weekend package will be invited (200 person capacity).  There'll be about 15 top wineries pouring their wines; plenty of great food from Paula Leduc catering and Mandarin Oriental hotel chefs from New York, Miami, and San Francisco; and Vinfolio's Doug Wilder will be pouring a range of his favorite Napa wines (as will I and Vinfolio's executive wine specialist team).

Meet me there

My wife and I are attending the full weekend's events and would love to meet any blog readers or Vinfolio customers who plan to attend.  Please feel free to email me to let me know (use the "Suggest a Topic" email link in my blog located under my photo).

A news item on Decanter.com last week titled "Yquem goes into nebuchadnezzar" notes that Yquem is creating a limited series of 120 of these 15 liter bottles for the highly-touted 2005 vintage.  This marks the first time in the long history of Chateau d'Yquem (since 1593) that this bottle format, named after a King of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II, has been used.  Until now, the largest bottle format available has been 6 liters which only began in 1982.

The facts

• 120 15L bottles to be produced: 20 to be retained in the library of the Chateau
• 100 of the bottles to be sold via Bordeaux Wine Investments (BWI, UK-based) and Bordeaux Wine Locators (BWL, US-Based), which are sister companies owned by the same sole shareholder.
• The BWI/BWL's price per bottle is €12,850 (about $17,100)
• The wine will be bottled during the first quarter of 2009
• The Wine Spectator has scored the wine its highest possible rating in barrel which is 95-100.  Robert Parker has yet to rate it but in writing about the 2005 vintage, he said the 2005 Yquem "should be utterly amazing when released" given that it is a "towering example of profound Sauternes."
  
• Each bottle is etched and engraved with a bottle number.  Bottles will be presented in a special wooden presentation case.
• The names of the 100 buyers will be drawn in April 2007 at the Chateau, providing each purchaser with the opportunity to own bottle #1.
• Special glass was needed so that it would not yellow over an extended aging period.
• Two people are needed to handle a bottle given its weight and size.
  
• Special Styrofoam shipping cases are to be used for delivery.
  

Why now?

I decided to email Robert Lench, Managing Director of BWI, to ask if he knew what the motivating factors were behind the decision to produce 15L bottles.  Here is his response:

"The idea was conceived and initiated by my brother, Andy Lench [the owner of BWI and BWL]. We believed this would be a unique format for the greatest Sauternes in the world in an historic vintage, the 2005. The 2005 has received a generally high profile and acclaimed as one of the greatest Bordeaux vintages. A very special bottle for both investors and connoisseurs. This is a high profile opportunity to have a piece of history."

Apparently, the market seems to agree as there are less than 10 bottles left for sale between the two companies.

Other questions you might ask

1. How do I buy one? The bottles are only available through retailers except in the UK where an individual may buy directly from BWI.  Or just email service@vinfolio.com and we'll try to snag one for you.
2. Does this portend a new supersizing trend for Bordeaux?  Robert Lench did not think so.  This concept was something they initiated as wine merchants.
3. How much of Yquem's typical production is being diverted to the 15L format? About 65,000 bottles (750ml size) are produced annually.  The 120 15L bottles (20 750mls in each) translates into the equivalent of 2,400 750ml bottles or about 3.7% of annual production.
4. What is the price premium compared to the 750ml bottle format? $675 is the median 750ml price based on 23 U.S. retail prices taken from Winesearcher.  Using $17,100 as the minimum price one could pay, this equates to $855 per 750ml equivalent or about a 27% premium.  Two different U.S. retailers have both offered the wine at $20,000 which would be a 48% premium.
5. Would this be a good investment? My guess would be "yes" given the quality of the vintage and the producer, the limited number of bottles produced, rising global demand for top wines, the unquestioned sourcing of the wine, and the ability to prove the authenticity of the wine over time (via etched bottles and other certification).  The fact that over 90 have already been sold tends to confirm my guess.