My Bordeaux buying has been way down as well the last few years. Living here in the heart of Washington's wine country has certainly offered many more local options for my wine buying dollars. There was a time, back in the early 2000's when Bordeaux was an excellent value. I remember picking up bott...

Does the capsule serve any real purpose? wouldn't we be better off with bottles that left the cork exposed such that it could be seen through the glass like on those sub $10 Mondavi bottles?

I had a couple bottles of the 78 Ducru about 5 years ago. I thought it was good but didn't have much time left before decline. 78 LLC had maybe 3 years ago was in similar shape. I also remember having a 78 Palmer about that same time frame that was better, but it came straight from the chateau. I'm ...

I enjoyed the article. It seems like the auction houses could have done a better job vetting some of these wines, particularly, checking with producers to see if any of the wine had actually been produced in a certain vintage. I imagine this is a big issue for the major auction houses, certainly big...

Some briefs notes on wines from Thanksgiving. Glad the 78 La Mission showed well. Tawny ports are really growing on me, I'd love to give a 30 or 40 year example a shot. * N.V. Gruet Brut Rosé - USA, New Mexico (11/26/2009) Very pink color with quite a bit of fizz/bubbles. Strong raspberry notes on t...

Saw this article on Slate today (http://www.slate.com/id/2229518/pagenum/all/#p2) as validation of what I've been thinking for a while now. The internet is weakening the influence of the "famous wine critic" role. Since the 90's the number of regions producing top flight wine has expanded ...

I'd make some crack about a fool and their money, or there being a sucker born every minute, but really anyone who has the means to seriously consider spending $1m on a book, is probably neither a sucker nor a fool... Certainly you could argue there are plenty of other things which might deliver bet...

Congrats to Ben!

That's an excellent price!

Robert Parker is 61 years old. Other people are waiting in the wings to take over. And I predict that no one will ever again hold the same sway, because we now communicate in a very different way. There is *feedback* and we don't have to live under anyone's dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise ;-)...

I resubscribed to WS after a long hiatus this year as well. I had almost forgotten how nice the photos were I'm finding the articles on travel and celebrities as annoying as ever, but the number of reviews published is hefty.

Thanks for the notes. I had a 1998 Vérité La Joie a while back that was really quite nice as well.

Wow, I haven't seen prices that good on SM in a very long time. Hopefully this is a trend and not a fluke.

Are we still looking at the 17th? I've got a bottle ready to go...

I'm curious about this too.

Given the state of the world economy, it's hard to imagine less than 2000/2005 quality vintages selling very well today. I've got to think that both 06 and 07 will be slow sellers and are likely to be offered at substantial discounts down the road. Other than buying a rare wine early to ensure stora...

If it's what you're looking for, the ancient TN archive can still be found here http://mikecase.net/wine/Home.asp

That's awesome. Thanks Billo

It does appear as though all messages and photos made it to Multiply (although I can't find my link to it anymore). Given that it's all over there now there's still a good chance it can be extracted.

I could do either date, but the 10th would be better for me. I have both vintages ready to go.

I'll second the idea.

It's good to see the prices coming back down to earth. Maybe the days of $30 Lynch and GPL are coming back again

Hey with a pocket full of TARP funded bonus, the prices might not looks so bad.

same story here

Thought I'd try posting from CT. Here's a smattering of notes from over the holidays. ⋅  1998 Vérité La Joie - USA, California, Sonoma County (1/4/2009) Reserved at first. This wine came out of it's shell over two hours and ended up being a really nice expression of Cabernet Sauvignon. Pro...

I have the 96 GPL as well. A compare and contrast tasting would be very interesting. I'll have to see if Erika can help me with the leftovers

I have the 95 GPL and would be interested in participating

Thanks Phil/Eric for getting the CT integration worked up. The CT community is large, I know lots of BWErs use it, so the ability to enter notes there for record keeping and have them show up here for commentary is going to be a big plus for our group. Plus, maybe some people will stumble upon us th...

We're up to 61 members and the site hasn't been up for a full day. I think this has gone better than any of us might have expected. Long live BWE!

I've visited the site from my crackberry and while there are a couple of formatting issues it's mostly usable for browsing. I've not tried to post from it yet though...

My fingers are crossed that Billo's work has everything backed up already. However, since we'll loose the opportunity sometime in February, I'll continue my efforts as a backup plan.

Now we'll get to see all the lurkers on the MSN forum who were unable to log in. Nice to see some of the old standbys popping up again (Whuzzup_!). Long live BWE.

I'm not sure what format Billo has the archive in, but there's a fair chance it'll be usable. I worked some more with the archive program this weekend and I'm not sure it's going to do it. It gets too many of the wrong files and take a long time. A while back I wrote my own Java-based thread crawler...

I think we're ready...

I figured out how to delete threads. In the top left, under user control panel, you should see a link for Moderator or Administrator control panel. Click this link while on the General Discussion forum menu and you'll see a listing of threads. Check the boxes of the threads you'd like to delete, cho...

I think we're really close, but I'd go with Monday to be sure we have everything squared away.

The welcome message looks like a good start. I'd like to see a more prominent link from there to the forum though.

Something else to consider before we go live might be a "Sticky" thread where users can post suggestions on site improvements. Another "Sticky" thread might be Jim's welcome message and some general comments about what's new here.

I did some BWE/MSN archive testing last night with a program called HTTrack. Took about 5 minutes to build up ~15 Megabytes of files. Looks like it's pretty thorough in vacuuming everything up. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how usable it will be once I complete the "backup". It will be an ex...

The CMS module sounds perfect for Jim