Sour Grapes

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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 Chteau La Fleur?

I can taste the Chardonnay on the palate.

Did you sell one or more

1961 Chteau 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.

You can see how the branches of the vines

are all twisting, tortuous.

It's very traditional.

It's an ancient pruning process,

hardly ever used any more.

We call it 'cup pruning'.

Over time, the branches have grown

and now they look like statues.

It's phantasmagoric,

especially now, in the fog.

But it's also a part of our history.

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, Romane-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 90's, in the dot-com boom.

Everybody was making money.

There developed this culture

of very wealthy collectors

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 Romane-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 Romane-Conti.

They do not make 12 bottle OWCs any more.

I think this in fact was

the last vintage in this...

Kapon's notes were very colourful.

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 f***ing 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 meets 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

sh*t wine, bad wine.

And so you get very angry and...

It was men who didn't want to be

angry any more

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,

is what Americans call "f*** 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 "f*** 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.

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 Tche, 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...

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