Last sip

'99 bottles of wine to recall

by Thor Iverson

Last December, I made a bunch of predictions about the wine year ahead. I did pretty well: six correct guesses out of seven. On the seventh, however, I was egregiously wrong. And the good calls and the mistake have all taught me the key wine lesson of 1999: never underestimate greed.

My mistake: I predicted that several years of tremendous price increases in just about every category of wine would result in a price backlash. Bad call. In fact, just about everything got more expensive. This was true for the low end (Chilean cabs that were then $6 are now $10) and the high end (you don't even want to know), from long-aging, cellar-worthy reds to drink-tonight sparkling wines.

Ah yes, sparkling wines. Sick of reading about Champagne yet? I know I am. So are most retailers, wholesalers, and importers. Yet for all the hype and hysteria, the dirty little secret is this: there has never been any shortage for consumers. Oh sure, a few limited-production cuvées are a little hard to find, but there is more top-quality Champagne on the market right now than ever before. So do you feel used? You should: just about everyone from producer to retailer has taken the opportunity to jack up the prices of prime bubbly.

Predictably, price escalation trickled down through the entire world of wine. For me, 1999 was the year it became impossible to drink a variety of truly interesting wine for less than $10 a bottle. Yes, there's the occasional great bargain, and when I find one I try to feature it in this space. But realistically, those wanting any reliable quality in their wine explorations are going to have to work in the $15 range. (Unfortunately, I suspect that number will be even higher next year.)

Price was also a factor on the local wine scene. Boston's love affair with the grape continued unabated this year, and restaurant wine lists reflected that interest. There are multiple wine lists in this city specializing in Italian, French, Californian, Spanish, and Portuguese wines, and the general quality of lists continues to improve. For a local wine lover, there's never been a better time to savor the left-hand column of a wine list.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the right-hand column, the one with the prices. Some of the old reliables (like Les Zygomates) held the line, and some newcomers showed worthy restraint, but the Boston restaurant boom has been painfully expensive for oenophiles. The demise of sommelier Harold Toussaint's wonderful wine bar at Marché (the result of a foolish power play on the part of the owners) was only the beginning. The most devastating blow was more gradual. Uva, long a wine-geek mecca for its unbelievable pricing policy (wholesale + $10 + four percent), shifted its focus to more-expensive wines. The wines are still great deals, but when the vast majority of the reds cost more than $90, something special has been put out of the reach of all but well-heeled oenophiles. Thankfully, Uva's Wednesday-night wine tastings remain a good bargain.

The hemorrhaging continued at foodie destinations such as Radius, where an otherwise excellent list was marred by excessive profit-taking. And the worst is yet to come. Nearly everyone in the Boston wine trade has been abuzz over the Federalist, a new restaurant that will have a War and Peace-length wine list surpassing anything Boston's ever seen. Well, I've seen a preliminary version of the list, and it is impressive. Impressively insulting, that is, with many wines at a 350 percent mark-up and more than a few incomprehensibly expensive wines included solely to help the restaurant win a Wine Spectator award (that is, wines so far into the four digits that even drunken businessmen will steer clear, thus preserving their position on the list).

Returning to a favorite subject of this column (and certainly one that falls under this year's "greed" theme): monopolistic wholesalers continued their twisted alliance with neo-prohibitionists in their ongoing attempts to stifle competition from direct shipments of wine. Sticking to their "protecting kids and taxes" nonsense, they enjoyed a lot of success this year, especially at the federal level. Things were looking very grim for wine lovers, but everything changed a few weeks ago, when an Indiana court ruled that state's wholesaler-funded anti-shipping law unconstitutional, and (as many wineries and consumers had hoped) used the commerce clause of the US Constitution to do so. This opens the door for similar suits in other states, and the case seems to be started on an inexorable path to the Supreme Court.

There's more, of course. The promise, and failure, of professional wine education in Boston; the continued improvement of local wineries; a crisis of law and philosophy that will change French wine forever; the re-emergence of Eastern European wine from its long, dark slumber -- all these subjects, and more, will appear in this space during the months to come.

Meanwhile, how about my wines of the year? The 1997 Trimbach Gewürztraminer ($17, incredibly rich, declassified vendange tardive-quality grapes), the 1997 Erik Banti "Carato" ($12, pure Italian heaven), and the non-vintage Domaine de la Pépière "Cépage Cabernet" ($8, a delightful, thirst-quenching red from the Loire's Muscadet region). All three are still available (the first two everywhere, the third at the Wine & Cheese Cask in Somerville).

So, 1999: a good year for wine, but an even better year for greed. A year of which Gordon Gekko would have approved . . . probably while enjoying dinner at the Federalist.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine[a]phx.com.

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