Recork and Recoup
November 26, 1997 | The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition | by SCOTT R. SCHMEDEL.
I make no claim to be a wine connoisseur, but down in our cellar (alongside our vintage Christmas decorations) is a magnum of 1964 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild that might fetch around $250 at auction.
In truth, I got the wine as a gift 30 years ago and have saved it ever since for some undefined special occasion. Lafite, of course, is a Bordeaux premier grand cru, a first among firsts. For two decades, I was so awed by this treasure that no event was quite special enough. And after I resolved to conquer my miserly inhibition at the next suitable opportunity (still undefined), I worried that I hadn't cared for the wine properly. Was it still fit for any occasion at all?
Then I had a stroke of bonne chance. I was invited to a rendezvous in New York, where my wine was opened and the Lafite cellar master himself--come all the way from Pauillac, France--sniffed its bouquet. He topped it off with wine of the same vintage, recorked it and announced that my "beau vin" was good for "10 ans sans probleme, minimum." The reassurance was not only priceless but also free of charge.
The Domaines Barons de Rothschild send a maitre de chai to the U.S.occasionally to perform this favor gratis for anyone--private collector, dealer or restaurateur--who brings in any number of bottles that were last corked 25 years or so before. Now assistant cellar master Francois Nodet is scheduled to visit New York, Chicago and the Napa Valley in February to offer this beneficence for the first time since his former chief assuaged my fears with genial Gallic charm in 1992.
Chateau Lafite says its own bottles, dating back to 1797, are recorked every 25 years to safeguard the wine and prevent deterioration caused by oxidation through decayed corks. Offering the free public service is an adroit public-relations move to burnish the chateau's reputation as a winemaker for the ages and to prevent investors of extravagant sums infamous vintages from pouring themselves glasses of bitter gall.
Michael Aaron, chairman of the New York retailer Sherry-Lehmann, which is associated with Sotheby's in holding wine auctions, cautions that having an old fine wine recorked by just anyone may reduce its auction value by 10% to 20%. However, he says, "if you have the opportunity to have the chateau come to you, which is an incredible service, I highly recommend recorking. I'm going to look in my own cellars to see what Lafite I have."
This time around, the service has been scaled back from the 1992 performance. Then, the Domaines also offered recorking for two lesser family wines, Carruades de Lafite and Chateau Duhart-Milon-Rothschild, and for any vintage before 1967. The oldest Lafite submitted was from 1806. In February,though, the recorking is to be limited to Chateau Lafite vintages of 1959 through 1975. According to Lafite's U.S. distributor, Seagram Chateau & Estate Wines, that's because the logistics for doing more years--including bringing over bottles of old vintages from France--are too burdensome.
In 1992, Lafite cellar master Robert H. Revelle visited six U.S. cities and recorked about 3,000 bottles of wine at a cost of about $40,000. Some 200 wine owners, 20% of them from the trade, submitted bottles. A wine owner's only expense is in taking bottles to and from the appointed place. Some collectors carried in just a bottle or two, as I did. But one man delivered 130 bottles to the New York site. A Seattle collector used his private jet to transport 80 bottles representing most 19th-century vintages to the Los Angeles site.
I learned about the recorking--le rebouchage--from a posting in a wine shop and wrote to Seagram for an appointment. When I presented myself at Seagram's Park Avenue headquarters in New York, I was directed to the wine library, a cool, darkish room with bottles racked all around its walls. There I met Mr. Revelle, a stocky, bespectacled man wearing a red jacket and a blue apron, who has since retired. He had been Lafite's cellar master since 1970 and had succeeded both his father and his grandfather. With him were two aides. One was his amiable wife, who operated a machine that crimped new red capsules around the bottle tops to protect the corks. The other, Mr. Nodet, withdrew the old corks with a common plastic-handled corkscrew.
One collector had brought in three bottles of 1959 Lafite with shrunken contents, due to decrepit corks. Mr. Revelle took up a bottle that had been wiped clean and opened, poured a little wine into a glass, held the glass to his nose and then to the light, and returned the wine untasted to its bottle. Then, selecting from the 60 bottles of 21 vintages, ranging from 1872 to 1964, that he had brought with him, he added a few drops of 1959 Lafite to the inspected bottle. Just before inserting a new cork, dated 1959, with a sort of hand press, he injected a dose of carbon dioxide to expel debilitating oxygen from the bottle.
Mr. Revelle then affixed a label stating that the bottle had been recorked by Lafite's maitre de chai in 1992 and passed it to Mrs. Revelle for a new capsule. Recorked bottles shouldn't be reopened for at least a year, Mr. Revelle said in French, but the wine in these three should be drunk within five years.
Next the cellar master examined a jeroboam, equal to four bottles or 3 liters, of 1962 Lafite. The label was faded and tattered. The wine was brown. Its savor had faded, too. The bottle must have stood upright and exposed to sunlight, Mr. Revelle said, but something there was worth preserving. He put the bottle (too huge for the machines) between his knees and tapped in a new cork with a worn wooden club. He replaced the shabby label and tightened the new capsule by twisting a pigskin lanyard around it.
Then it was my turn. The 1964 Lafite isn't a great vintage, but it's good. My bottle might even last another 20 years, Mr. Revelle said, smiling as he autographed my label. I had done my duty to the wine. I put the precious bottle back in a shopping bag and headed toward the subway.
I still haven't tried the wine.
For more information about the recorking of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild wines, get in touch with Seagram representative Angela Freire at Balzac Communications, (707) 255-7667; fax (707) 255-1119. The deadline for applications is Dec. 15.
Mr. Schmedel is a writer in Mountainside, N.J.