Your Future Holds...

I had a glass of wine last week, and last month, and last year. And, guess what, it doesn’t take Carnac the Magnificent, Nostradamus or Madame Leota to prognosticate that my future includes the occasional glass of red wine. So, savvy wine buyer, what should you be doing now?

Futures! The future is in Futures, I say. Many wineries offer programs where you can buy wine that is still in the barrel at a steep discount to the bottle price charged in the future. Practiced primarily by French first-growth producers, the sale of futures has slowly made its way to the US. This is a win for the winery which gets its money now, and is a win for the consumer who locks in deeply discounted prices before bottled wine hits the market. Over the last few years, purchasing futures has been a great hedge against skyrocketing wine prices and against vintages selling out early.

Most US wineries who offer this type of program also offer the chance to taste the wines beforehand, so that you’ll know what to expect. For me, I’ve tasted a few wines out of the barrel, and I’m not sure if I could tell what’s going to be good and what isn’t. Perhaps I’m overly trusting, or just simply naïve, but most wineries are fairly consistent over the years. If the winery has a top 10% winemaker (and good vineyard sources), the resulting wine will likely be in the top 10% for a particular vintage. So, if the 2008 vintage is dud, well, at least you’ll be getting a top 10% bottle from that vintage. There you hear that 2008 is looking bad, just pass on buying early that year.

Yes, there is some risk in paying for something to be delivered a year from now, but we’re hopefully not talking about your life savings either. The biggest risk is probably forgetting which wineries have your money. [Hmmm. I wonder who that might have happened to.] Wineries currently holding deposits for the Plonk family are Caffaro Winery (one of California’s pioneers through their Crazy Back to the Futures Program) and Periscope Cellars (run by Caffaro protégé Brendan Eliason).

You can bet that I’ll be enjoying a glass of wine next year – only mine will be cheaper because I purchased early.

Best, Joe Plonk

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