| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 15, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BUSINESSWEEK LIFESTYLE
Serious about Wine (int'l edition) How to track down just the bottle to ring in Y2K Looking for a nice wine to celebrate the millennium? I've already been on the hunt. Along the way, I've learned a lot about the many shopping choices European wine lovers now have, from the traditional marchand de vin to slick online services. Finding the wine I want has taken persistence. And not all the alternatives deliver on promises of wide variety and reasonable price. My comparison-shopping tour started with my neighborhood wine merchant, Vins & Compagnie. in Brussels. There, proprietor Paul van Dievoet recommended three wines to meet my price requirement--something fine, but not too outrageously expensive. He suggested serving aperitifs with a 1985 Salon Champagne. Price: $115. With my planned entree of fresh foie gras, he proposed a German wine--a 1995 Dr. Loosen Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese, for $31. That would still leave room in my budget for a final splurge: Denis Mortet's 1997 Clos de Vougeot, a top-rated Burgundy that costs $97. ''You can't go wrong with any of these,'' says van Dievoet. PREMIUM. Before opening up my wallet, though, I decided to check other options. A quick call to Sotheby's told me that a wine auction was out of the question:Sotheby's tends to sell superpremium wines that go for more than $1,000 a bottle. London wine broker Farr Vintners offered to sell me 1985 Salon champagne for $82--a $30 savings from Vins & Co. But the minimum order would be 12 bottles, and Farr Vintners feared delivery problems in Belgium. I decided not to risk it. That left three other places to shop: my local supermarket, the wineries themselves, and online. Chateau Online (chateauonline.com), the best-known European wine site, promised me a choice of 800 wines at discounts of up to 30% off retail prices, and delivery for $18 or less. But the service features $7 to $9 table wines--not the specialty wines I was seeking. My local Delhaize supermarket similarly let me down. There, the best I could get was a mainstream choice such as Veuve Cliquot for $26. My last option was to go directly to the wineries. Marketing managers at both Salon Champagne and Dr. Loosen were eager to welcome me. A Salon Champagne would cost just $93. The Dr. Loosen winery offered me a 1998 Riesling Auslese--at $27--but was out of the higher-rated 1995. When I called Denis Mortet, whose cellars I had once visited, he was discouraging. ''I stopped selling to tourists,'' Mortet told me. Besides, he was out of 1997 Clos de Vougeot. That's why I'm going back to Vins & Co. If you are fussy like me and want a fine wine personally recommended by an expert, your best bet is still your local merchant or the wine cellar itself. But if you want to pay less and choose from more mass-market wines, you can get good deals elsewhere. Just make sure you ask about any minimum-order requirements or potential delivery problems. Happy New Millennium! By WILLIAM ECHIKSON _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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