Well, we finally placed our futures order for the 2005 Bordeaux. We spent a Sunday afternoon flipping back and forth between the Sherry-Lehmann website, Jancis Robinson’s website and the Decanter magazine article that rated the 2005 futures. Much of the decision was made on price, with a wide number of wines priced well-beyond our range. We set a budget of $500, with the intent of purchasing several wines in the $20-$50 bracket, as opposed to a single bottle at $500.

In selecting the individual wines, we tried to find wines that not only scored well, but also had tasting notes, which appealed to our general taste in Bordeaux wines. We also looked to balance high scores with lower prices, in addition to the wine’s pedigree, i.e. third growth vs. cru bourgeois. Ideally, our selected wines have great tasting profiles, reasonably good pedigrees (most of the classified growths were outrageously expensive), high scores across critics and reasonable prices. 

While we don’t generally give considerable weight to critic scores in our buying decisions, in the interest of at least maintaining our investment value in the wines, we felt that such consideration was necessary. We are not expecting to make money on our futures purchase, but we don’t want to buy something now, only to find that it is available much cheaper later on. Of course, despite the machinations we went through to select our wines, it is still somewhat of a gamble. Only time will tell. Check back with me in 2008…