Why is Gaja's wine so expensive??

[onetoad71]

me went for wine shopping last evening. Quite curious to see that the prices for Gaja barbaresco 1998 is couple of time more expensive than the rest. Is it worth the value?? I am quite keen to give it a try.

[Botafogo]

Because some fool will pay for it...


He woke up one morning and decided A) My wines are as good as (insert famous French Burgundy or Cote Rotie here) so B) I should get as much as they do. He teamed up in the go-go 80's with an importer in the US who thinks 100% or more is a normal mark-up and the rest was history....

He also sells some California and French wines in Italy and at outrageous pricing too.

[This message has been edited by Botafogo (edited 05-23-2003).]

[Thomas]

Roberto got it right--finally!

[winoweenie]

Musta' made this post 'afore lunch! WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/biggrin.gif[/img]

[onetoad71]

Thanks for the advise.. i quite new to wine. Can someone please recommend me a good wine rating/review web site?

[stevebody]

I met Angelo Gaja a couple of years ago and asked him point-blank why the wines were so freakin' expensive (to the horror of my distributors' rep, who turned a lovely shade of green), to which he replied, "I think they're good." (huge Latin shrug)

For that matter, why is Romanee-Conte so expensive? Bize-Leroy? Screaming Eagle? (Jean Phillips is no less appalled than we are at that $1000-a-bottle thing, especially since she sees very little of that) Same answer: someone will pay it. The root of it, as with all things wine-ish, goes back to Bordeaux. Gaja genuinely thinks his wine is as good as Mouton-Rothschild, so he charges for it. While humility is not something he's afflicted with, I can see his point. He didn't invent wine pricing and he believes what he sells is on a par with wines that get that sort of jack. What should he then charge? I believe he made the wrong choice and evidently Roberto does too. What would you price that bottle at? I'd ask maybe $85, all things considered. People do love Gaja wines and they pay it willingly...so maybe he's right and Roberto and I are dunces. There's no one final answer.

[wondersofwine]

My only taste of a Gaja wine was a young ('96) Barolo Sperrs against a '97 Giacosa Barolo. I prefered the Giacosa wine although both wines were too young to be consumed (and too young for me to really judge.) I'm still waiting for a chance to sample a Barolo at 15 or 20 years to see if I really like the wine or not.

[Grape Stuff]

You see, this is one of the things that drives me nuts about trying learn about wine!!! I'm trying to educate myself, and love experimenting, and trying different types, and you read about these supposedly fantastic wines that you CAN'T DRINK for X many years until it's ready? If they're really that good, I might pop for one or two to lay down.......but how do I know I’ll like it? You can’t go out and buy one that old, or if you can, you’ll need a 2nd mortgage!!

Sorry, little rant I guess

[Botafogo]

Grapestuff, you need to redirect your rant. Against puritanism, Prohibition and, most especially, beancounters. In most wine drinking countries institutions exist to supply you with affordable, aged, ready to drink wines:

First and foremost, the tradition of laying down wines for the next generation and drinking those lain down for you (at much lower costs than current replacement) is a very real type of social security practiced in many (and not just rich) families.

Secondly, in many European countries, if you are, say, a teacher at a college or an architect working in a large firm or even a professional soldier, there is a well stocked and perhaps even subsidised cellar from which you can draw at reasonable prices maintained by the human resources dept. Here it would be a scandal to have a community college provide alcohol to its faculty wheras in many places it would be a scandal if they did not.

Thirdly, in the not too distant past, restaurants would actually cellar wines and serve them when they were ready and at somewhat reasonable pricing. When I was at Antoine's in NO in the 80's, I was selling wines bought twenty years earlier and buying things that are being served now...

Roberto

[Thomas]

Ah! Grapestuff, you touch on a delicate subject. Just a couple of days ago an Italian wine salesman was "educating" me on why so many Italian wines taste like California wines. His reasoning: the old days are over, when the producer aged the wine BEFORE selling it. Now, it is too expensive for the producer to do the aging, and so we are asked, as consumers, to pay not only for the wine, but for its future potential, and we do it because, apparently, we are told it is right and just.

In my opinion, we should seek wines that are ready to drink now: leave the guessing game to those who have the money, the time, and whatever else it takes to finance someone else's business.

[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 05-27-2003).]

[Innkeeper]

So much for the age of instant gratification. We will be 64 this year, and a certain other person on this board just turned 77; and we are all putting wines down that can't be enjoyed for ten or fifteen years, and you can't convice a twenty year old to put one down for five. This is a highly mobile society they say, we won't be here five years from now. Oh! I'm retired military, and have thoroughly enjoyed wines I've moved four times; including half way around the world. My only regret is that I didn't buy more agers over the years.

Have I ever opened an old wine that was a total dud? Came close, but the answer is no. Have always been able to get good advice such as what is available on this Board.

[quijote]

IK and others, I'm interested in buying agers--and probably will do so--but don't yet have a wine fridge (and that's my only option, 'cause I can't have a cellar in a condo). For me, that's the one barrier to starting up a long-term collection.

In your days of mobility, did you always take care to store wine at proper temps? Did you start off knowing how to store them? Wisconsin is cold much of the time, but the summers can be quite warm and humid.

[Innkeeper]

Always just kept them in the coolest place I had. That includes in Hawaii! Never had a "wine cellar" per se until moving here in '88.

[stevebody]

Stunned that I agree so totally with Foodie on anything but there it is: Wineries selling wines and telling me to lay them down for ten years is like a plumber telling me I can't use my new bathroom until I caulk the pipes. If you make wine, MAKE FREAKIN' WINE - ready for consumption, best foot forward, heavy lifting done for the CONSUMER. I don't doubt that Europeans have a different attitude about this but we just ARE, doggone it, different from Europe. We except, here in our free-enterprise society, to have the work done when the bill arrives. There's an ocean of wine out there. It's gonna take a heap of fancy 'splainin' to convince me why I should drink your prissy little cellar job in ten years when I can drink something every bit as good NOW.

[Botafogo]

Steve, "ready to drink on release" does NOT mean "every bit at good" as a well cellared traditional wine and you know it.

There is no free lunch: fast food vinificaton gets you completed different results than the sort of aromas, textures and flavors you get in a ten to twenty year old Bordeaux, Barolo or Rioja from an old school producer.

We always tell folks looking for Jordan Cab that they have said two things from the day they opened the winery: "We are the Chateau Lafitte of California" and "It's ready to drink as soon as we release it" and only ONE of those can be true....

Roberto

[Thomas]

Yeah, but what about the point my Italian wine salesman made: the wineries USED to release the wines when they were ready, not before. If producers cannot afford to age the wines themselves, then they likely are producing wines to be consumed when released.

[Botafogo]

NO, NO, NO! The Port and Bordeaux producers have ALWAYS released at about four years and the trade and / or final consumer aged the wines (for decades in the case of Port).

To me the single most fascinating thing in the book "Wine and War" was how, when the Germans rolled into Paris in 1940, the hotel and restaurant cellars were full of vintages from the 1911 vintage and even lots of wines from the 1890's!!!! The difference is that they had CELLARS, grand, huge, mulileveled cellars underground. AND, they didn't have beancounters screaming at them about return on investment and what else they could do with the money.

After the lawyers, we kill the CPAs, Roberto

[winoweenie]

After digesting lots of very relevant material I have to jump in. I've been cellaring wines in an honest-to for over 40 years. My original cellar in Denver was a conventional cellar, dug outta' the hill and lined with cement and completely passive. Had an average temp of 53 to 58 and average humidity of 45 in the summer to 65 in the winter. When I moved to Phoenix in 1983 I built my current cellar ABOVE ground with a refrigeration system that keeps the wines at 52 to 55 and 50 to 70% humidity. The whole cellar is wrapped in 2" of solid insulation and 19&1/2" fiberglass. Can guarantee that in the almost 20 years here in Phoenix I've experienced exactly 1 ( ONE ) corked bottle and in Denver I had at least one to two a month. Am absolutely certain the refrigerated system and the layout of the cellars are relative to the difference in the numbers. Great Aged Wines are one of lifes great pleasures. Strongly urge anyone who can start putting back some wine for down the road, do it! By-the-by Robo-Baby youse ignored them Californi' wines agin. They be the ones that gots me in this mess originally Ollie. WW [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/wink.gif[/img]

[stevebody]

Okay, small example but a relevant one:

Taurino Notarpanaro. The pride and joy of the late Dr. Cosimo, who berrelled it until he LIKED it, bottled it and laid it until he thought it was ready, and then - ONLY then - released it. In the summer of '00, I was selling the current vintage: the 1993. It costs about $13 and is worth a lot more. Certainly, aged wine is more enjoyable then something green and rebellious. But I, personally, don't require a profound wine every time I open a bottle. I opened a 1995 La Grange tonight and it's wonderful. But so was the Umberto Cesari Tauleto I had last night. So was the Broquel Malbec two nights ago. The Novy Bordeaux blend I had over the weekend. And the Il Borro I had last week. On that list, the La Grange probably would have come in, IMHO, fourth or fifth. The point is, they were ALL good. And only one required my investment of eight years and schlepping from one house to the next.

I age a good amount of wine but a lot of that has to do with a trusim I had laid on me by no less a personage than Serge Hochar: "There's a whole lot of wine out there," he told me, "Have many romances but few marriages."

[winoweenie]

And Serge releases his wines 8 (EIGHT) years after vintage. WW