On Great and Mediocre Bordeaux vintages

A Rational Approach to Wine Quality and Prices

by Karl Storchmann

The first frenzy of the 2006 Bordeaux future market is over and we still don’t know whether 2006 was a mediocre, a good, or even an outstanding vintage. While the Wine Spectator gave the 2005 vintage a disappointing 84-89 point rating, the influential wine critic Robert Parker deems it “a surprisingly good year for the finest terroirs.” Why is this important?

Because bottled 2006 Grands Crus do not exist yet and they will not be released before 2009. But the châteaux set prices at which one can buy futures in the year following the harvest, i.e., 2007, and – with some luck – one can realize a decent profit in two years. Buyers of Bordeaux wine futures, of course, hope that the market price in 2009 will be substantially higher than what they paid for their future. That is why we all want to know: how is the 2006 vintage? Is the Mouton-Rothschild worth the $650 per bottle future price?

Since private future buyers cannot taste the wine they want to invest in they rely on second hand reports. The top Bordeaux châteaux presented the 2006 vintage in the first week of April of 2007 to the public. However, only 100 wine journalists and about 5000 importers were invited. The wines were tasted fresh from the barrel – tart and astringent with only a slim resemblance to their future taste. Clear cut – only experienced experts are able to predict how a certain wine will develop and what it will be worth on the market place. And experts sell their knowledge. Each April, right after the first tastings, wine magazines are full with ranking, ratings and reports.

From an economist’s point of view, the similarities to the stock market are astounding.  Most of us trust experts and their assumingly superior knowledge. We buy expert-managed investment funds that promise super-natural payoffs, buy power tools that analyze the stock market and calculate future profits or invest our money into the hottest stock of the week. Needless to say that expert knowledge is not free.  

Back in 1973, Princeton economics Professor Burton Malkiel wrote his million-copy bestseller A Random Walk Down Wall Street and introduced an academic approach to the stock market to the public. He shows that a portfolio chosen at random outperforms any expert-managed portfolio rendering expert-knowledge phony and worthless. Or as Malkiel put it, ”the sad truth is that there are only three kinds of financial prognosticators: those who don’t know, those who don’t know they don’t know and those who know they don’t know but who get paid big bucks to pretend they know.” Instead of paying an expert, you are better off picking your stock by pinning the Wall Street Journal at your wall and throwing darts at it.

Almost two decades later, Orley Ashenfelter, another Princeton economics professor and longtime editor of the prestigious American Economic Review as well as founder and editor of the new Journal of Wine Economics, applied an academic approach to Bordeaux wine futures showing that wine experts’ knowledge is common sense at best or flawed at worst. 

Ashenfelter noticed that wine prices exhibit a substantial fluctuation from year to year. For instance, while a bottle of the 1991 Lafite-Rothschild was about $100 at Zachy’s auction, the 2003 vintage went for $700. Clearly, older does not always mean better or more expensive. But what makes the 2003 vintage superior? Ashenfelter did not rely on elusive expert opinion but ran a simple statistical model and found out that three factors are crucial for great wine: a warm growing season, the absence of rain during the harvest and a wet winter prior to the growing season. Of course, that wine quality depends on weather has been known for centuries and comes to no surprise for winemakers. He then came up with a mathematical equation that explains market prices for Bordeaux Grands Crus. In other words, if we know the weather of a certain vintage we can statistically predict the quality and eventually the market price of a Bordeaux wine without having drunk a single sip of it.

Ashenfelter started publishing his predictions in a newsletter called Liquid Assets . But his ideas reached a much larger audience in 1990, when his quantitative approach hit the press. Countless news channels, magazines, newspapers and many TV channels covered the Ashenfelter theory (click here for a ABC film clip). On March 4, 1990, The New York Times praised the accuracy of the wine equation on its front page (“Wine Equation Puts Some Noses Out of Joint”). 

Where Parker had rated the 1986 Bordeaux as “very good and sometimes exceptional”, Ashenfelter disagreed. Moreover, he predicted the 1989 Bordeaux, barely three months in the cask and yet to be tasted by critics, would be “the wine of the century”. And, he said, 1990 was going to be even better. As it turned out a few years later Ashenfelter’s predictions were astonishingly accurate. The 1989s turned out to be a truly excellent vintage and the 1990s were even better.

What Ashenfelter’s equation also conveys is the fact that buying wine futures is hardly profitable. Most futures are more expensive than the market price a few years later.  

As you already may have assumed, wine critics are not amused by this approach. After all, it threatens to put them out of work. Thus, Parker calls the Ashenfelter approach “ludicrous and absurd”, others call it “neanderthal and barbaric.”

Sometimes a few data and simple algebra attain more than elusive wine expert philosophy. And most importantly, it is free. Monthly and daily weather data for Bordeaux and other weather stations can be downloaded from the website of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute . 
Using the wine equation that you can get from Ashenfelter’s paper you can decide for yourself whether you should buy futures of the 2006 vintage.

WINE TIME TRAVEL WITH COLORE

I was invited at tonight’s event because 25 years ago I was the food editor at tribeca network, a multi-channel website which later became the celebrated TribecaGlobe.mundis—chances are you’re reading these words at TribecaGlobe.mundis. Back in 2007 I wrote an editorial on Bibi Graetz and his wine “Colore.” The article included a taped interview with Bibi Graetz. Watch some extracts in the window below. The voice asking the questions is mine. 
 

The main dish of tonight’s birthday dinner at Charlie Campbell sumptuous loft on Read Street is “Filetto di manzo affogato al vino rosso con pancetta e radicchio trevigiano.” It’s a signature dish by Heinz Beck, the executive chef of “La Pergola,” the famous restaurant of the hotel Cavalieri Hilton in Rome. Back in 2006, Heinz Beck paired “Colore” to recipe. He even published the recipe in an Italian magazine.

Charlie Campbell is an extravagant fellow. He is a very wealthy man of course. He owns gold mines in Africa. He inherited most of his money from his father, a publishing magnate. Charlie’s passion for wine is an obsession. He owns vineyards all around the world. Every year he insists on making wine with his own two feet. He enters an open-top large French barrique and pounds the grapes with his own bare feet. The resulting wine is for his very private collection. It’s been rumored that he uses the wine for wild orgies in honor of Bacchus, the roman god of wine. His wine collection is considered the largest in the world, 1.252.000 bottles of wine as of this year. On the average, he adds to his collection 100.000 bottles a year.  

  Bibi Graetz
   wine-maker 

“Colore” 2004 by Bibi Graetz was produced in Vincigliata, a territory near Fiesole, a town on the outskirts of Firenze. The wine is the absolute best selection of Colorino (30%) and Canaiolo (70%) grapes from the oldest vineyard of the estate owned by Bibi Graetz. The vineyards of the estate, 60 hectares, are adjacent to a family owned castle. Back in 2004, the vines of Bibi Graetz’s vineyard were between 30 to 65 years old—today, the same vines are between 58 to 93 years old (vines are a measure of time: they are the last surviving tool to grasp the core meaning of the words yesterday and today. As you know, in our time mankind knows nothing about “now” or “then.” It only knows about tomorrow with its certainty of genetic engineering and computer-generated life permutations). 

The soil of Bibi Graetz's vineyard is mostly made from clay and marl, it is rich in salts such as phosphorus, potassium and magnesium, and it can keep abundant water supplies. These two factors assure a complete balance for the grape.

Bibi Graetz's method of growing is Guyot and double Guyot with rigorous pruning. The double Guyot training system ensures that the grapes aren't overcrowded. Yield is controlled by the partial removal of shoots during pruning, and by the elimination of shoots that bud low on the vine. 

Simple Guyot:

The simple Guyot is a stock including a trunk prolonged by a fruiting cane where 6 to 10 eyes are left according to the desired yield.

Double Guyot:

A double Guyot has a trunk prolonged by two fruiting canes where four to six eyes are left according to the desired yield. 

Harvest is totally manual. There are as many as 15 different hand-picking and sorting to ensure optimum maturity. The grapes are then destemmed leaving the berry whole. The resulting must is put in new French open-top barriques of 60 gallons/225 liters. Fermentation is ignited by contact with wood. During fermentation, 15 to 18 days, there may be as many as 6-8 manual punch-downs per day (repeated punch-down homogenizes and aerates the must, stimulating fermentation and promoting even diffusion of the coloring matter). At the end of fermentation there is the devatting of the wine (devatting takes place when most of the sugar content has been converted into alcohol. The wine is run off and separated from the marc, the solid residue composed largely of seeds and skins). Afterwards comes malolactic fermentation, inside the barrique. Subsequently, the wine is aged in French barriques for 21 months followed by 6 months in the bottle. Only 75 cases of wine are produced every year.

 Let’s return to Charlie Campbell’s dinner party. Charlie has insisted on making everything Tuscan tonight, including dinnerware. Silver, glasses, and plates come from a set belonging to Caterina dei Medici. Charlie is convinced that Caterina brought the dinnerware set with her when she moved to France in 1533 to marry the future king of France Henry II  I believe him. He has enough money to pull off a stunt like that. Caterina dei Medici brought to France more than just a dinner set, she brought the entire Italian cuisine. Many dishes introduced by Caterina dei Medici have become French classics. For example the “salsa colla” became “béchamel,” la “zuppa di cipolle” became “soupe d'oignons,” etc.

 Dinnerware is not all. Charlie has created an engulfing Tuscan experience. He has contracted a software company to build a feely, a hologram show. Sporadically, the house main computer launches images of Tuscany in different areas of the loft. The juxtaposition of voluptuous Tuscan green hills and New York’s skyline is breathtaking. Clearly, Charlie aims at transforming tonight’s wine into a full-fledged time machine. I caught Michele in a moment of ecstatic beauty. She was standing next to a hologram of Botticelli’s Madonna del Magnificat. She was drinking a Bellini (peach nectar and champagne). The glass and her slender fingers covered the men on the left of the painting. Her face and the Madonna’s face were opposite. Female beauty is art. 
 

At last, we sit down. Charlie is at the head of the table. I’m at the other end. Michele and Alex face each other. I bet Alex is satisfied with the sitting arrangements. Tonight the appetizer was a simple pass-around, distributed by a robot gracefully wheeling near always at appropriate times. Hence, we go directly into the first course: “pappa al pomodoro,” a true Tuscan classic. It’s delicious, genuine, and earthbound. Tuscan cuisine is a simple cuisine. Its secret is high quality ingredients prepared for what they are. By and large, the food is either roasted, grilled, ore eaten raw. Olive oil is what makes Tuscan food so unmistakably Tuscan. Rather than a dressing, it is the main character in the gastronomic scenario. I congratulate Charlie for his choice of “pappa al pomodoro” as first course for our dinner. It’s a delight to savor Tuscan bread soaked in a delicious acrid tomato sauce and watch images of the Tuscan countryside hologramed  before the eyes. It’s simply unforgettable. We drank another Bibi Graets red wine with our “pappa al pomodoro,” Testamatta—one more Bibi Graetz little masterpiece (for more info about Bibi Graetz's wines write to: niccolo@bibigraetz.com).

The big moment has arrived. Charlie himself opens the bottle. He is using a golden corkscrew. Obviously he’s opened many bottles of wine in his lifetime. His movements are graceful and decisive. He pulls the cork three-quarters out and stops. He smiles at all of us. Alex gets up, produces a violin, and begins to play. Lower Manhattan visible through the wall-to-wall window of the loft is suddenly covered by a gigantic reproduction of Botticelli’s Bacchus. 

Charlie gives one last pull and the cork comes out. It’s nice and wet. Charlie smells it. He utters “perfect” wearing a wide grin on his lips. He pours a little taste. He swirls. He smells. Alex hits a high note. Charlie brings the glass to the lips. His eyes have a fixed and vacant expression. He is totally concentrated on the experience. At last, he raises the elbow and takes a sip. I lower my eyes not to encroach on the privacy of the solemn moment. After tasting “Colore,” Charlie says the following words: “Wine nourishes mankind. I’m a man. I’m nourished.” He then takes the bottle of “Colore,” goes around the table, and stands to the right of Michele. He pours wine into her glass and says: “Wine is mankind’s oldest path to the freedom and sincerity of unrestrained animal desire.” They kiss avidly. Charlie turns his gaze to Alex, who immediately lowers the violin and approaches his glass. Charlie pours and says: “Only few are lucky enough to have the Muses look at them in the act of drinking wine. May our wine tonight call their attention.” Alex bows to his host. It’s my turn. I sit rigid in my chair as Charlie approaches my side of the table. He smiles at me the entire time. He stands to my right, pours, and says: “May your words about tonight rise to the core meaning of the ancient Roman say, IN VINO VERITAS.” I smiled idiotically. Charlie smiles back and returns to his seat. He fills his own glass with the remaining wine. He stands and raises his glass. We all stand and raise our glass. Charlie says: “To the most fortunate people on Earth, us.” 

We all drink our wine. I hold the red nectar on my tongue maybe five seconds moving it with my tongue: the wine is full-bodied, thick, and powerful. I exhale and feel the aroma in my nose: I sense gorgeous aromas of crushed berry and red licorice.
I swallow. It’s really a delicious wine. The finish is long, very long. I finally have a chance to look at the color of the wine: it’s a dark-red but brilliant. I spin the wine inside the glass and then I tilt the glass: long tears furrow the walls of the glass. Charlie is decanting the second bottle of “Colore.”  For sure “Colore” will improve after a time in the open air.

Alex has picked up his violin. Vivaldi’s notes prickle the mind and enter the recesses of the soul. Music and wine are an explosive combination. Michele walks by Alex and her long evening dress rustles against Alex’s clothes. Alex looks at her with lustful eyes. Music, wine, and sex are a rocketing combination. Through the ages, Puritans and other moral watchdogs have always directed their sermons to the vices of food and wine. Philosophers and other intellectuals have also referred to food and wine as a form of human abasement that leads humanity away from the pursuit of knowledge and art. Consequently, the sense of taste and the sense of smell were declassed to the rank of lower senses, as opposed to the higher senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Tonight can be described as the revenge of the lower senses, or else as 3+2=1.

Charlie slipped into a reverie. He stands motionless at the window looking at the Manhattan skyline. Now and then, he takes a sip of wine. I wonder how different is our appreciation of “Colore.” Surely, Charlie has a trained super fine palate. I just wonder how many more nuances he is able to catch compared to me. Sadly, the lower senses bestow different results on different people. To clarify the concept, imagine a ladder with the lower rungs occupied by people with little or no sense of taste and smell—the great majority of people. Midway on the ladder there are those with modest experiences, thanks to a childhood with a mother that actually cooked at home—this group of people has become a rare breed. I stand on the last rung of the midway section, right before the superfine section of the ladder. I’d say Charlie is somewhere near the very top of the ladder. Cervantes has written a beautiful passage about this very topic. I placed the page with the passage near the top of my “sugartome” dessert. I wanted to make sure I would quickly find it. I have personally served to Charlie the page with Cervantes’s words. I told him that my “sugartome” cake was my gift for his birthday. Charlie read the passage out loud. We all gathered to listen. Here it is:

 "But tell me, senor, by what you love best, is this Ciudad Real wine?" "O rare wine-taster!" said he of the Grove; "nowhere else indeed does it come from, and it has some years' age too." "Leave me alone for that," said Sancho; "never fear but I'll hit upon the place it came from somehow. What would you say, sir squire, to my having such a great natural instinct in judging wines that you have only to let me smell one and I can tell positively its country, its kind, its flavor and soundness, the changes it will undergo, and everything that appertains to a wine? But it is no wonder, for I have had in my family, on my father's side, the two best wine-tasters that have been known in La Mancha for many a long year, and to prove it I'll tell you now a thing that happened them. They gave the two of them some wine out of a cask, to try, asking their opinion as to the condition, quality, goodness or badness of the wine. One of them tried it with the tip of his tongue, the other did no more than bring it to his nose. The first said the wine had a flavor of iron, the second said it had a stronger flavour of cordovan*. The owner said the cask was clean, and that nothing had been added to the wine from which it could have got a flavour of either iron or leather. Nevertheless, these two great wine-tasters held to what they had said. Time went by, the wine was sold, and when they came to clean out the cask, they found in it a small key hanging to a thong of cordovan; see now if one who comes of the same stock has not a right to give his opinion in such like cases."

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^{Enzo Capone,}

^{Food Channel editor}

more by Enzo Capone