Wine Pricing, the Sky is Falling

I have watched with curiosity as 2005 Bordeaux futures have stretched to the most ridiculous heights ever seen due to speculation by jerkoffs who will try to sell these at auction in a few years to make money. How anyone can speculate on a consumable, fragile item like wine is beyond me. But there is absolutely no way that first growth Bordeaux's should be going for $700, $800 even $1000 a bottle two years or more before they will even be released to the market. What a freakin' joke.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have purchased fabulous wines like 1998 Terrabianca, 2002 Rieslings and Gruner Veltliner from Birgit Eichinger, 2004 Shiraz and Cabernet from Marquis Phillips and other wines on closeouts at literally half or less of their original price. At the prices I paid, the QPR (quality to price ratio) was huge. I doubt if the same will ever be said by those fools paying for the '05 Bordeaux en primeur.

So what is going on? On one end of the spectrum you have the Bordelaise screwing people and on the other end you have many wineries and distributors dropping their pants just to get people to buy their wine, and these are pretty tasty wines. From what I see, there appears to be two main contributors to this closeout phenomenon. First, there seems to remain a glut of juice flowing about in this global wine market. No wine producing area in the world seems to be immune to this price war. I have heard stories of wineries around France shuttering or being purchased at pennies on the dollar because they just cannot sell their juice...not enough demand.

Now the second thing going on, and I have been bitching about this for years, is that wine is just too damn expensive, 24-7-365 across the board. Those guys selling their wine at half or less of the original price would not be doing so if they priced it right to begin with, now would they? They always say the key to selling a house is setting the price right. Why would wine be any different?

And the fools buying '05 Bordeaux futures, well, I predict that they will be sitting on some good juice that does not appreciate in the next 10 years. It will not be the investment those greedy bastards hope it will be because wine demand will slow with the slowing economy and continued plantings of grapes throughout the world. More competition and a softening economy, embroiled in war and gas at $4 per gallon (in the US) will spell disaster for this industry. And the high priced gougers like Margaux, Mouton, Cheval Blanc and the lot will potentially suffer the most...or not. Maybe rich idiots will still covet this stuff for the name, even though they have no idea what they are buying. I, for one, hope the people hogging up these futures and driving up the price, end up with the same situation we saw during the internet stock crash in the late '90's. Sure they will have great wine to drink, but I hope they are forced to drink it because they cannot sell it for what they paid for it. Boo hoo, I have to drink my wine instead of trading it like a commodity.

So I say to the big corporations running the wine game and also the individual producers, price your wine fairly and we will buy and drink it. Wine is a consumable beverage meant to be enjoyed and you are ruining the fun for 95% of us drinking the stuff. I am a capitalist, so make a good profit. But quit screwing us consumers, who do you think you are, ExxonMobile?