By now, most of you know that I am not an advocate of chasing wine prices.  I have preached in earlier articles waiting for the wines to “come in,” especially in the current economic climate.  I feel that, eventually, most wines will settle into a price range that is reasonable in my mind.  While there are many (ok…..lots of) wines that I would love to have in my cellar now, I can be patient and wait to be certain that I am not overpaying the marketplace.  That mantra challenged me recently and re-taught a valued lesson.

The Southern Rhone wine, Vieux Telegraphe, is just a marvelous wine.  This baby usually displays deep blackberry fruit along with fig and an almost briary, earthy and garrigue character.  It’s a wine made for lamb and beef.   The 2005 and just released ’07 are probably the best of the last 10 years, the former having produced nearly 16,000 cases and the latter, 17,000.  That’s a lot of wine!  An added benefit is that these wines have a very long life ahead, perhaps as long as another 20 years.

The ‘07’s have been receiving a lot of positive press from a few of the internationally renown wine critics and with good reason.  After receiving, what seemed to be nearly endless online accolades about the vintage and Vieux Telegraphe specifically (of which I have a few ‘05’s), I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm any longer……..Maybe Southern Rhone vintage in decades….perhaps in a half century…..I was smitten like a young child in a toy store. So I took the plunge and placed a pre-arrival order for a case, knowing that it would not arrive for another several months .