Sour Grapes

And the stock down on Wall Street today as both the DOW and the S&P 500

closed at all-time highs.

If I told you that you could turn your love of wine into an investment return...

We've seen prices go up higher than they've ever been.

Could you forget gold and invest in vino?

And the bottom line is, if you want to own a fine or real wine collection,

the time to buy is right now.

Did you sell 1961 Château La Fleur?

I can taste the Chardonnay on the palate.

Did you sell one or more 1961 Château La Fleur magnums?

I thought it was a little forward.

Who inspected these bottles?

I've got elderflower, perfumed, juicy...

Bright and leafy.

This is the whole "power of suggestion" thing, right?

Did you have any reason to suspect that the wine was counterfeit?

Wine is alive.

It's not a beverage.

It's not a tool. It's not a table or a plate or a car.

It's alive.

I am Laurent Ponsot.

Winemaker, vigneron, in Burgundy.

I was born above a cellar in this village in Morey-Saint-Denis,

in a family that is owning this winery since 1872.

You feel here what I call "the spirit of the vines."

As soon as I started to breathe, I had the smell of wine.

And I can say that I had some blood in my wine, not wine in my blood.

The spirit of Burgundy wines is unique,

with the name on the label representing not only a wine,

but a culture and history.

What people are seeing, feeling, behind the wine has no price.

At 1,600, $1,600, order bidder 1053.

Lot 982, Romanée-Conti. '72.

Two bottles, wow.

9,500, 10,000.

$10,000 bid now for these at 10,000.

At $10,000, give me 11,000.

At 10,000.

$10,000 now, for 10,000.

11,000 these now for 11,000.

Give me 12,000.

11,000.

$11,000 I have now at 11,000, it's in the orders.

Boom for 1019.

I guess the auction scene

really started in the '90s, in the dot-com boom.

Everybody was making money.

There developed this culture of very wealthy collectors, um...

gathering at these auctions to see and be seen.

To be seen bidding.

The prices started to really escalate.

5,500 go 6,000, 5,500 last call.

At 5,500.

Pass then at 5,500.

1987...

I started to get these emails.

It was strange, I couldn't really figure out where they were coming from.

They described these evenings

where these guys, very wealthy collectors,

were drinking like 1945 Romanée-Conti, and 1955 Petrus.

You know really, really expensive wine.

I eventually learned that these emails were coming from John Kapon,

the head of the auction house Acker Merrall & Condit.

OWC, 12 bottles of 1990 Romanée-Conti.

They do not make 12 bottle OWCs anymore.

I think this in fact was the last vintage in this...

Kapon's notes were very colorful.

He had these unusual descriptors.

Trying to make the whole tasting note more interesting

and developing new metaphors.

This culture kind of reached its apogee

under the auspices of Acker Merrall & Condit

and this group called the Angry Men,

all of whom had nicknames

like Mr. Angry and Big Boy and Hollywood Jef.

We missed the tequila party last night.

- But, you know... - I think it was worth it.

It was worth it, yeah.

I drank a lot of that 1907 Madeira last night.

- It was... - It had a lot of layers, that wine.

Yeah, I mean, it was it was coconut, it was nutmeg, espresso.

Yeah, it was really exciting, wasn't it?

I think the '88 has so much acidity.

It can be incredible.

But it's more a hit-or-miss vintage than...

The '88 has a huge amount of acidity.

No, that's absolutely right.

'96, though, is the vintage to buy.

For anyone out there, buy '96 champagne all day.

If you can't afford that, buy '02.

If you can't afford that, drink fucking beer.

The best way to taste high-end wines is with a group,

because there's power in numbers.

- Thank you. - Unique taste of it.

Wines are really, really expensive, and so our group meet eight times a year.

Each time one member hosts and does the wines from his cellar.

You guys drink too much together.

You don't hold back!

Where the "Angry Men" name came from

is you get invited to a wine dinner

and you bring a really nice, a great bottle of wine, okay?

And everybody else brings shit wine, bad wine.

And so you get very angry and...

It was men who didn't want to be angry anymore

and everybody had to bring it, you know, you had to really bring it.

Thank you very much.

My entry into Burgundy was Rudy Kurniawan.

There was an Angry Men that Rudy had invited me to,

and that's where I met that whole gang.

Their dinners were always over the top. Crazy.

Breaking it out with like 100, 200 grand worth of wine in a night.

It was pretty extraordinary.

What these guys actually had,

it's what Americans call "fuck you money."

"Well, I got a $3-million bonus,"

"I'm going to take a million of that and blow it."

And that's their "fuck you money."

They're going to do whatever they want with it.

They don't care, there's no consequences.

And it's a kind of money that most human beings never experience.

Uh-oh. Here she comes.

The fine-wine world, it's really mostly men.

Especially when I was younger,

I'd walk into the tastings and everybody would immediately ask,

you know, whose date I was.

But I had an important job. I ran a major auction house in New York.

I bought like $50,000 worth of champagne in the last auction,

for one of my clients 'cause his daughter's getting married.

It was 2000 or early 2001.

We were doing auctions

and I started being aware of this kind of,

you know, skinny, geeky young guy that liked wine.

For 2,600.

At the time he was somebody that was bidding on Pahlmeyer Merlot.

Pahlmeyer Merlot sticks out in my mind with Rudy.

You know, a high quality wine,

but, you know, it's got one zero, not four zeros.

Now 16, 17, $1,800,

1,800 for the single bottle of La Tâche, 1985.

1,800, $1,800 bid. At 18...

What was really strange was 18 months later

he reached out to me on the telephone and said that he wanted to meet with me

because he wanted to be a player in the auction scene,

which I found kind of odd

because he had just been a geeky kid drinking Californian Merlot.

- Hey, what's up, Rudy? - Hey, what's up, man?

- How are you doing? - How are you, man?

- Very well. - Good, good, good.

I brought some wines for us to drink. Can you help me with this?

His breadth of knowledge seemed to be pretty extraordinary.

He actually taught me, you know, almost everything I know.

He was a real cult figure and everybody talked about him.

My friend.

He had this mysterious background. Where did he come from?

Part of what created his mythology

was he had an extraordinary... Who has an extraordinary palate.

The best palate of anyone I've ever met in my entire life.

Any wine, from California to France, any type of wine, any vintage.

Rudy was extremely, insanely,

unbelievably correct on all the wines.

The art of blind tasting,

it comes naturally, but you have to make an effort.

You know, you really have to work at it.

You taste wine blind, you identify the wine,

and you know, that's the badge of honor for a sommelier.

You do a little swirl and just see if there's anything with the alcohol.

Looking at the legs, how slow or fast they fall.

Smell it, and then it kind of just tingles off senses to your brain.

And then you look through your Rolodex in your mind

of all these different wines you've tasted.

And I'm thinking, "What could this be?"

I think a wine palate is very similar to athletic ability.

Sorry.

Wine tasting is a lot about knowing the vocabulary

and being able to express, using that vocabulary,

to other wine tasters what it is that you're experiencing.

I totally get that peppery citrus that you're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I met Rudy.

Tony!

- Tony, what's happening? - What's up, Tony?

I met him at a tasting. I was very, very impressed.

He identified almost all the wines blind.

He must have learned by drinking an enormous amount of different wines.

That's the only way to learn.

You always wondered why and how.

That's why you know.

You know, 18 months and now I have, what,

pretty much like 3,000 bottles of wine, you know.

We're going to make a booklet, you know, yeah.

Rudy's Adventures.

I met Rudy first in 2004, I believe.

There was a luncheon for one of the producers

and we quickly became friends.

He was very warm to everyone.

I really liked the guy.

It's fun because there's a lot of wines today that I haven't tried.

We hung out a lot and went to wine dinners.

- How you doing today? - Good, man.

Tired, but good.

- Long trip? - From 5:00 a.m. in the morning.