WineBid.com and 1982 Bordeaux - Chateau Coufran

WineBid.com is an online wine auction site based out of Northern California that offers thousands of wines on a weekly basis in a format similar to e-bay and other online auction sites. It’s a resource especially worth checking out if you like to try hard to find wines or older vintages that are no longer being offered in most wine stores. On the extreme end, a recent search unearthed a 1905 Chateaux Margaux for a cool $400 to $500 if you’re interested in trying a 100 year old bottle. Overall, prices run the gamut from affordable to stratospheric. Current examples include a a 1999 Cote de Baleau from St. Emilion for a $5 bid all the way up to a 1985 Domaine De La Romanee-Conti-Romanee Conti for a clean $9000. With the thousands of wines on the site though, there are plenty of bargains if you’re willing to troll the site.

This is how I came across a 1982 Chateau Coufran from the Haut Medoc region in Bordeaux for $30 (not including auction and shipping costs.)

If you’re a fan of Bordeaux you probably know that 1982 was one of the best vintages of the 20th century and the better bottles are selling for at least a couple hundred dollars to upwards of $1000+ for the likes of Lafite Rothschild and other first growth chateaux. I can’t afford that but I wanted to at least taste a wine from the legendary vintage.

Now $30 is a pretty cheap price to pay for a 1982 Bordeaux so I wasn’t expecting much. I was basically hoping it hadn’t already turned to vinegar. It was in fact over the hill but my overall impression was “not bad.”

It was red clay in color (a sign of a fading wine) with smoky wood on the nose alongside fading notes of chocolate and cherry. Chewy texture with a medium long finish but overall a bit out of balance. Still, aged Bordeaux wine is a taste unto itself and I basically thought I got my money’s worth.