Max Hauser wrote:
(From an old inventory,
> 1976 Rutherford Hill cost me $6.80, 1976 Jordan $9.64, 1977 Stag's Leap S.
> L. V. $8.00, 1977 Dehlinger $7.00, 1977 Raymond $8.21. These prices are not
> fully comparable to each other, because some of them had quantity
> discounts). Crudely, a factor of four or so for equivalent dollar buying
> power would give you in 2004 US money, $25 to $40 for those wines.

Yup, I bought my first Caymus cab for $10.45 in the '77 vintage. It was
more expensive than some of the others (Conn Creek, Dehlinger) that I
bought in the same era.


> Now I have not checked into this much, but I had the impression in the late
> 90s in the US that a frenzy of fashion for premium California Cabs was
> rapidly boosting some prices. I saw labels unheard-of a few years earlier,
> being snapped up by people newly obsessed with the subject (and maybe
> unaware of the newness of the labels, as they also were unaware of the
> oldness of other labels newly hip). But that seems to have moderated after
> the economic shocks, and in the last year or two there's talk of high-priced
> goods not moving. A general California "lake of wine" at the wholesale
> level is finding, sometimes, discreet outlets, as lakes do.

Starting in the '90 vintage, prices of CalCabs started escalating on an
almost exponential basis. By the time the much-ballyhooed '94 vintage
arrived, many high profile CalCabs had hit the $100/bottle mark, with
Caymus (sigh) leading the way in pricing.

>
> This all leaves me wondering (and not just me), where, or how, are good
> values found now in the more serious, well-made, artisanal California cabs,
> the the wines that might compare to those at the beginning above, though
> maybe a bit more expensive today (as premium wine prices have certainly
> outpaced inflation).

I think that this forum provides one of the best guides to
value-oriented cabernets still to be found in the market. If you peruse
the last few years' discussions of value-oriented CalCabs, you'll find
references to Sawyer, Sullivan, Milat, Dutch Henry, Clos du Val and BV.

Mark Lipton