Elin McCoy

Buying Bordeaux 2012 futures was always going to be a question of prices. Now that the majority of chateau owners have released theirs, it’s apparent they’re tone deaf to today’s market. Most prices are down less than 10 percent, nowhere near low enough.

Chef Daniel Boulud still remembers the unique smokiness when he took his first sip of scotch at age 12. “Not many liquors are as interesting and complex as whisky,” he says, recalling the decadent, charming countess who gave him a taste when he delivered goat cheese from his family’s farm in France.

His ponytail tucked into a tight knot, Baptiste Guinaudeau dodges raindrops and ducks into the tiny cellar of his family’s famed property in Pomerol, Chateau Lafleur.

Colorado construction magnate Joseph Phelps arrived in the Napa Valley in the late 1960s to build someone else’s winery. In 1973 he ended up founding his own.

Burgundy bash La Paulee de New York kicked off this year with something new: affordable wines.

If you stand on the road next to Burgundy’s most famous property, Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, you’ll see no discernible aura hovering over its collection of grands crus vineyards. Yet these plots are where the world’s benchmark chardonnay and pinot noir wines come from. (There are eight: one white, Montrachet, and seven reds: Corton, Echezeaux, Grands Echezeaux, Romanee-St-Vivant, Richebourg, La Tache and the crown jewel, Romanee-Conti, for which the estate is named.)

“We’re trending above Nascar and the Oscars on twitter,” crows auctioneer Fritz Hatton, as he opens the 17th Premiere Napa Valley trade barrel auction with sharp bangs of his gavel.

“Think of wine like music,” says Georg Riedel, the head of the famous Austrian glass company that bears his family’s name. “We’re toolmakers. We don’t write the score; we’re the amplifiers.”

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will release the first wine with their names on the label next month.

Whenever a first growth Bordeaux chateau is ready to share some behind-the-scene secrets, there’s no way I’d miss out.

In the cavernous sixth floor ballroom at New York’s Marriott Marquis hotel, 110 top Bordeaux producers are busily pouring the region’s reds and whites from the 2010 vintage. Now that they’re bottled, the wines will start showing up on retail shelves. Should you buy now?

In Sonoma’s Bedrock Vineyard, I’m surrounded by 124-year-old twisted vines with the arthritic look of stumpy bonsai trees.