Memoir: The First Time I Bought a Whole Case of Wine Importers
The first time I girded up my courage to buy a full case of wine was in the summer of 1972.1 had been working in a San Francisco wine shop while attending law school, and the owner had given me a bottle of 1964 Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour Private Reserve the previous Christmas. It had seemed to be pretty good stuff.
Even then Beaulieu was allocating the Private Reserve, which meant that one could only purchase six bottles of the precious fluid at a time. If one were alone, that is, and not bent on subterfuge. And a little lucky. As it happened, twice within a period of three weeks from the day the '68 Private Reserve was released it just happened that my work took me to the sleepy little hamlet of Rutherford. (You think it was a coincidence that the first expensive bottle of wine I ever bought ateo sported the name Latour? Chateau Latour? A chess player, I liked the castle/rook on the label!)
On the first occasion a friend was traveling with me. John had just retumed from Malaysia, where he had been teaching science with the Peace Corps, and had brought one of his students back to be his wlfe. He had no interest in wine at ali, his mind being otherwise occupied, so through his agency I was able to secure a full case of this rare wine. On the second occasion it was my father who was along to provide a body to secure the second half of my second case of this great wine.
You have to understand the near-Scottish thinking that went into this. I had a hunch that this was going to tum into a moderately valuable wine. At $5.25 per bottle. those two cases set me back
$132.32, which was tnen a full week's wages! [A couple of cases today will set you back more than two grand!] But I had a pian. Eventually, I reasoned, this wine would doublé in value and I could seti one case and drink the other for free. A month after I had secured my two cases, the winery raised the price to $5.65 per bottle. Ha! I was already on my way!!
But there was one factor that I hadnt taken into account. The wine itself. The rich, green olive, herbaceous fruit. The texture that, with age, rounded out into a silky, supple, mouthwatering jewel that made my poor attempts at culinary expertise glow. In a word, the wine was too bloody good to sell. Indeed, over the period of nearty two decades that I drank—and immensely enjoyed that wine—only a single bottle was not uncorked at our dinner parties. (A gift to a winemaker friend on his weddmg.) Even when the auction value of the '68 punched through $200 a bottle, I never had the slightest thought of relinquishing more than that single bottle... for any price.
As it happened, I moved from wine shop clerk to tasting room host and tour guide at Sebastiani Vineyards two months after making my grand purchase. Shortly after that I began a career writing about wines. It didnT take me long to recognize just how valuable and exquisite BVs '68 Private Reserve was. Beaulieu's late winemaster Andre Tchelistcheff—I dubbed him The Russian Leprechaun—told me that it was the finest Napa Valley Cabernet in his considerable memory.
When my wife and I finally drank our last bottle some years ago, the only thing I could think of was: Why hadnt I bought three cases?!