I guess we need to learn this lesson over and over again as company heads continue to run their corporations by wearing 90-day glasses. Bordeaux again is myopic in raising prices beyond what I think most Americans are willing (or able) to pay for wine, with the 2009’s now coming to market en primeur with prices not before heard of. With these futures, like pork bellies or any other commodity, there will be speculators for sure but probably not so many American speculators. The US, one of Bordeaux’ most important customers, may eventually shun the region entirely as it continues to get shut out due to increasingly upward and extravagant pricing along with endless vintage hyperbole.

Here’s the issue: the 2009 Bordeaux vintage is again being touted as the most important, highest quality, best, incredible, unbelievable, fantastic, unrelentingly phenomenal year for the region since dinosaurs were roaming the earth. These nearly risible accolades are pouring in not only from the châteaux but also from critics, distributors, and retailers. It certainly appears complicit, especially when you consider all of them said the same thing about 2000, 2003, 2005 and now ’09. Four incredible years in one decade is pretty damn good, yes? Critics are going to have to soon raise the scale of their point system to “11” (it’s one louder than 10, isn’t it?) just to accommodate successive vintages of ever higher quality wine. But really it’s like the ‘boy that cried wolf’ story, where eventually no one believes it anymore. We’re already seeing some backpedaling from critics on older vintages that were once sold to us as being better than sliced bread.

Classified Bordeaux being sold as futures are priced the highest in general, than ever before in its history. Château Lafite-Rothschild is being sold as a future for $1400 per bottle! Lafite’s second label (Château Lafite-Rothschild Carruades de Lafite) is selling for the ridiculous price of $300 per bottle and is plonk, downright swill, compared to its parent label. The ‘most incredible and great’ 2005 vintage of Carruades de Lafite scored 89 with Wine Spectator and was released at $103. So what’s changed since ’05 to cause a 300% increase? These wines (second labels) are made with grapes from vines that are too young to produce high enough quality to be blended into the estate’s top label, but some people will apparently pay $300 for pretty much a junk wine as long as those magic words are imprinted on the label: Lafite-Rothschild.

Other First Growths are clocking in as follows: Château Margaux - $1000, Château Mouton-Rothschild -  $825, Château Haut Brion - $900, and Château Latour coming in at $1500 per bottle. The super-seconds (Second Growth Bordeaux) are mostly around the $300 range and the value leader so far is Third Growth Château Malescot St-Exupery scoring somewhere from 95 – 100 points between Robert Parker and Spectator’s James Suckling, priced at about $98. It is usually released at around $35.

So after American wine collectors jumped into the deep end with expensive but ‘spectacular’ 2005 futures and ended up loosing money (some people I know still cannot sit down very long), who is going to take a chance on, and buy, these even more expensive ‘09s? The Chinese.

As I have said before, I have no problem with Chinese people. The people I know from China are industrious, hard-working, humble, and very nice people. The problem is that Bordeaux’ immediate future lies with China, and to a lesser extent, Russia. However, as we have witnessed in the last couple of hundred years or so, America comes back around on a fairly regular basis. We’ve seen this from at least the early 20^th century when England and Germany owned a lot of American assets, whose economies later crashed, then it went to Japan, then to the Middle East, now to China. With all of these cycles, America may just loose its taste for Bordeaux if we’re kicked to the curb for the sake of short-term profit, especially as Argentina, Chile, and other regions gain favor. Another point to ponder is that many châteaux in Bordeaux are beginning to fashion their wine in a new world style, so what’s going to make a difference between Bordeaux and any other quality producer of new world wine anyway? Probably price. When China crashes, and it will, just like Japan and all of the others before it, will Bordeaux come back to America begging for business? You bet.

The long-term solution is to stop price gouging and create a sensible and sustainable price point. Trust me when I say that no one reasonably intelligent person in America begrudges anyone making a profit. We’re the original capitalist society. And I know American corporations do the same thing with their ‘go ahead, kick ‘em when they’re down if it means we can pay our shareholders a good divided this quarter’ mentality and it certainly does not serve American business either, which get proven over and over again.

Bordeaux is like a gift to me and even if you’re a staunch atheist you will believe in, or at least consider the existence of, a higher power once you taste a great and mature Bordeaux. But paying enormous amounts of money for wines that should not be drunk for fifteen or twenty years is completely nonsensical to me (especially at my age) and I know I’m far from alone with this logic. I can still buy mature Bordeaux that is drinkable as fast as I can pull the cork for the same money or less and with as much panache and éclat (read: points) as the so-called incredible vintage of 2009.

I’m all for free enterprise but, for your own good stop catering to the nouveau riche and get your heads out of your French fries Bordeaux! Think about the long-term advantages of doing business with your best customers - there are just too many other truly great wines made available to Americans from which to choose.

Photo: looks kinda good but it’s apparently where Bordeaux’ head is at the moment