Last week I mentioned Chateau Puygueraud, an underappreciated wine from an overlooked region of France. I opened a bottle of the 2003 Puygueraud last Friday with a steak bathed in pepper sauce. Holy smoke, but that bottle was delicious. It was still too young, meaning that the flavours were tight and partially obscured by powerful tannins. However, it was also layered with complexity, texture and depth. It is an elegant wine that will ripen into a bombshell in three to eight years. That’s a long time to wait, but by 2012 you will thank yourself for providing so wisely for your future.
The 2003 Puygueraud (LCBO #599514 [Ed. note: No longer available], $29) is still available at Vintages; to find a bottle near you, click here. But stopping at 2003 is like mistaking an appetizer for the main course. It’s undeniable that 2003 was a good year in Bordeaux, but 2005 was great. In fact, it is touted as the best growing season in Bordeaux in 50 years. If 2005 is the best year in our lifetime, then getting a little bit of that action isn’t just a good idea, it’s an ethical duty.
However, Bordeauxs are in such high demand that it is now possible to buy them before they are distributed (or even bottled). This is called buying Bordeaux “futures.” Buying futures sounds daunting (or pretentious), but in practicality it is easy as pre-ordering a copy of Harry Potter.
The LCBO’s website is user friendly and allows you to order by phone, email or fax. Hopefully, internet purchasing is on the way. The dizzying variety of Bordeaux is made manageable by the inclusion of plenty of reviews and scores for every bottle. It’s not hard to find a good choice at any price range. Follow these links to order futures for 2005 [Ed. note: No longer available] or 2006 .
The advantage of taking the trouble to buy futures is that you are guaranteed a fair price for wine that might become unavailable or rocket in price. The disadvantages are (1) you must wait one to two years before the wine arrives, (2) you can only buy wine in quantities of three bottles, and (3) you risk being called a wine snob.
As far as I am concerned, the 2005 Puygueraud is worth the risk.
Matthew Sullivan is a lawyer with the Department of Justice in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca.