Bang for the Buck

For today’s Friday list, we are focusing on the best values and highest rated bottles that maybe you’ve overlooked. Also making the cut are some incredibly special wines that we just don’t see that often, so quantities for many of these are very limited.

Most of the mature wines come from one of our long-term storage clients. This collector has always been thoughtful about sourcing and storage, and we’ve been lucky to try many wines from this collection over the years. We think this is an excellent opportunity to acquire back vintages with superb provenance, as well as rarities: d’Angerville from the nineties, 1999 Lafarge Clos des Chenes, getting rarer by the minute; the 99-point beautifully aged and ultra-rare 1994 Zind-Humbrecht SGN Trié Spéciale, and a nearly perfect 08 Ganevat Clos des Mon Peres.

From more recent vintages, look for magnums from Fourrier, Gouges, and Lafon, ’19 and ’22 Bordeaux, and Piedmont shines with 4 bottlings each from Massolino and Oddero: both of these producers make outstanding Barolo, yet somehow the prices are a fraction of what you’d think they’d be for such highly rated wines. Produttori’s Rabaja is one of our favorite values, and standard-bearers Vajra and Grasso should not be missed.

Finally, we often get asked about the latest up-and-comer, and we highly recommend the young superstar Nicolas Barbou’s sauvignon blancs, Folie Insolente and Utopie Creative. A Loire native who trained in Burgundy and New Zealand, Nicolas returned home to nurture his vision of making world-class Loire wines, while starting very small and maintaining a commitment to raising the bar of sustainability and quality in the Loire.