They guessed the grape. I never said they weren’t good.
Wine collectors are not like stamp collectors. They are not passive or diffident, and they do not hoard. They are aggressively social, and their labels are their calling cards. They arrive accompanied by Baron Roth-schild of Bordeaux and Rene Dauvissat of Chablis. They do not serve their wines; they trumpet them. When a half-dozen wine collectors of equal stature get together, not one will entirely agree with another man’s choice. They want to drink what they like. They are type A–plus, one and all, correctly perceiving themselves as winners in the wine world.
F O R K I T O V E R
3 0 5
The three words you will never hear one wine collector say to another are these: “You know best.”
My friends frequently argued over who was getting to pick the wines and who was being ignored, but these discussions always took place at lunch, when the wine was not too serious—a modest vertical of young, $200 J.L. Chave Hermitages, for example. Dinners were amiable. No matter how much wine was consumed, the men became more mellow the more they drank, as though the wines passed along their harmonious qualities.
Wine collectors are seldom, if ever, aware of their shortcomings, because they are rarely pointed out. They always assume they will be admired wherever they go, and the fact that they arrive with their wines makes it so. They are certain their ability to drink well and con-verse articulately about what is in their glasses makes them desirable companions. So self-assured are they that they believe people in less fortunate wine circumstances are pleased to have them around. Generally speaking, they are correct.
I have sat spellbound, listening to their tales of excess. A few years back the two merchants and the two collectors lunched at Alain Chapel and noticed a 1929 DRC Romanee-Conti on the list, although without a price. They inquired and thought they heard the sommelier say 14,000
francs (just over $2,000). When the bill came, the price was 40,000
francs. Even after paying just under $7,000, they reveled in their good luck. The wine was that wonderful. It is probably unnecessary to add that these gentlemen are willing to spend fortunes on wine but nothing on French lessons.
So it was on this trip when the connoisseur of rarities saw a 1929
Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle on the list at La Beaugraviere for $1,300. By reputation, this is a wine of majesty, produced in a region beloved by Thomas Jefferson and the Russian imperial court. The owner of La Beaugraviere announced that it was the last of a full case of twelve bottles that had been topped off and recorked at the winery in the 1990s. Knowing something is the last of anything makes my friends want it all the more.
3 0 6
A L A N R I C H M A N
A bottle that old is not a guarantee of pleasure but a venture into high-stakes poker. If it is as magnificent as the 1929 Romanee-Conti consumed at Alain Chapel, the experience can be existential. If not, it is merely expensive.
Sommelier No. 2 accepted the responsibility of tasting the ’29 Hermitage.
Merchant No. 1 whispered to me, “I wouldn’t order it, because I don’t want to take the responsibility.” Sommelier No. 1 disagreed. “It’s worth having so we don’t regret not having it for the rest of our lives.”
The cork came out, perhaps too easily. The wine burbled into the glass. The designated taster sniffed, then breathed deeply. I looked at his face and did not see rapture. I saw $1,300 worth of perplexity. I saw costly indecision. He chewed. He stared. The table hushed. He spoke the three words I would soon learn to loathe.
He said, “Tastes like wine.”
I felt as though I had opened the door to greet my mail-order bride and the best I could utter was, “Well, it’s a woman.” (Did I mention the testosterone level of wine collectors?) He tasted again and added, “Wine’s been cooped up a long time. A slight Madeira and chocolate to it.”
To that I’d add tea. We had a $1,300 bottle of Lipton’s. La Beaugraviere’s owner tasted and pronounced it fine, one of the best bottles from the case. Added La Beaugraviere’s sommelier, “Very good.” I felt these were not disinterested opinions.
We drank it in silence, and silence is a bad thing at dinner, particularly the silence of despair.
In the course of our trip, we sent back just one bottle, a 1989 La Mouline from Guigal that was indisputably corked. We accepted many that I would have sent back had I any influence with my friends. Their attitude seemed to be that if it was still recognizable as wine, we were obligated to pay for it. Their most charitable act, in my opinion, was accepting a 1967 Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape that cost $380 at La Beaugraviere.
F O R K I T O V E R
3 0 7
It came to the table with such a low fill that I immediately would have said non, had I spoken French. As the bottle was being opened, the glass collar that holds the cork, in essence the entire top, snapped off. To me, this constitutes defective goods, since I’m the kind of picky fellow who doesn’t like drinking beverages containing shards of glass.
The wine was accepted and it was surprisingly good, with a lovely, complex nose and fast-fading, dark berry flavors, more Burgundian than Rhône-like. Nevertheless, drinking it gave me the willies.
The worst bottle we accepted was at Paul Bocuse, the gaudy shrine to the most famous chef in the world. For sentimental reasons, Sommelier No. 1 wanted to have 1976 Guigal La Mouline ($770). He told us he was working as a waiter in 1983 when he bought this wine in a shop for $30. It convinced him that he wanted to spend
