Many red-wine lovers regard Bordeaux reds as the best there are. Certainly, many of them are marvelous, but most of those seem to cost an arm and a leg. Not anymore. Thanks to lots of new vintners and the advent of new wine-making equipment, facilities, and techniques, really, really good Bordeaux reds are available for — this is true — $12-$14 per 750mL bottle. And 2016 is being touted as THE YEAR. Many local retailers have some of these beauties on hand. But they also have some pretty bland, icky stuff. The best bet, from my viewpoint, is to invest $99 in the Robert Parker Wine Advocate website (get the app in the app store), where you can put in as your search term 2016 Bordeaux, and — presto — there they all are, in the order you choose: for example, listed by price (high (yikes!) to low or vice versa), with price, rating, and availability info accompanying each. I just bought three cases doing that, after finding the lowest prices online using
The wines I purchased were:
- Chateau Laussac,
- Chateau Le Doyenne, and
- Chateau Reaut,
and most will last 10 years or more. If you can wait three to five years, you will be rewarded extraordinarily well, after you either decant the wine (typically a 30-second effort followed by a four-hour wait) or just open it in the morning and enjoy that evening. If you cannot wait years, open and let the open bottle sit for 24 hours. These are fabulous wines dirt cheap.
