Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto

June 15 2006

I met a guy that knows a guy that is friends with Robert Parker’s Dry Cleaner

I’m in the Baltimore area for work this week. I thought it might be like going to Memphis where everybody has a second cousin that used to drive for Elvis, or something similar.

Not so much.

I haven’t tried too hard, but I did talk to a customer that has a nodding acquaintance with Robert Parker.

On the plane ride out, I bought the latest issue of Wine Spectator and read through Suckling’s 600 barrel tastings.

Suckling also has a very flattering article on famed wine consultant Michel Rolland. It does round out the laughing, corpulent light as a feather image of Rolland portrayed in Mondovino giving instead very strong credence to his ability to blend wines expertly.

Not a bad issue--the juxtaposition is curious as the next feature after the Bordeaux is on Sebastiani & Sons--the negociant who does Smoking Loon Wine and Pepperwood Grove.

While I pick up wine Spectator probably every third or fourth issue, I am noticing a very gradual and subtle change in the content and it’s aiming at a still affluent customer, but probably more aspirational then truly wealthy.

While here in Baltimore, I didn’t even have wine at dinner, though I did have a crisp Peroni beer at a fabulous Italian restaurant called Sabatini’s.

I did get a chance to hash out 2005 futures with my customer who, by all accounts anecdotal and conversational, knows his French wine and he says he’s not buying 2005 futures--for two reasons:

1) Price inflation—he believes that wines are selling at premiums outside of the first growths that are exorbitant relative to what they might cost when they hit retail--he speculates there might actually be price deflation when on the market

2) He said to drink through a case of futures correctly you have to drink it over the course of 25 years saying, "I’m 55. I don’t have the time to wait 25 years for something."

Fair enough. I’m still on the fence and I might pick up a couple of alleged "sleepers" that are within my budget.

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