Diamonds in a Haystack
Treasure-hunting in Mexico City's wine shops
Recently I found a wine shop called La Europea somewhere in the heart of Mexico City. It took about 45 minutes to drive there from my friend's office because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Gridlock is the norm here. It only adds to the filth of the thin, polluted air that makes you feel each day like you have smoked a pack of Camels before breakfast.
We arrived at La Europea at about 1:30 pm, to pick up something to accompany lunch at a chic, clubby restaurant called Estoril, where Mexico's top executives and politicians lunch. The wine shop is actually a warehouse that sells fancy foods as well as booze, beer and wine. We made a beeline to the wine section.
It wasn't a pretty picture. The selection and prices for fine wines in Mexico verge on the ridiculous. Good wine importers are few and far between. Duties and taxes, plus retailers' greedy markups, make many wines double or triple the price compared to the United States. Most of my Mexican friends buy their serious wines in the States.
For instance, La Europea was selling Château Gloria 2000—a very good Bordeaux—for about $120 a bottle. You can still pick that up for about $40 in the States. The Bordeaux first-growths from 2001—a very good to outstanding year—were about $400. They sell for less than $200 in the U.S. Forget about buying vino Italiano or California wines. There's apparently none available because there's no demand. "Mexicans think California wines are overpriced," a consumer told me emphatically as we looked around the shelves.
All this said, the Spanish wine selection was excellent. I found everything from majestic Riojas to cult wines like Pingus. The latter was about $1,000 a bottle.
Just as I was shaking my head thinking about the locos who buy Pingus for a grand a bottle, I noticed some loose bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in a box in the corner. They were Romanée St.-Vivant, the Burgundy estate's fourth-string wine, but still a grand cru. And they were from the fabulous vintage of 1990. The levels weren't perfect, but good enough, and the labels and capsules were good, with no signs of seepage.
I looked at the price: 2,800 pesos. That's about $260 a bottle. I didn't want to look surprised. But I was really happy. It was like winning the lottery.
I asked the clerk in the store to check the price, acting shocked that they could be so expensive. "Yes, señor, the wines are that price," he assured me apologetically after looking on his computer.
We bought all four bottles—with a discount because they felt sorry for us. I promptly called my office in New York to check the price. I found out the wine normally goes for about $550 to $600 a bottle at auction in the States.
It was time for a fiesta. We took one of the bottles to lunch at Estoril, and it was magic. It started off a little smelly and stinky, but within 20 minutes it opened into a rich and decadent mature red Burgundy with lovely dried flowers and ripe fruit on the nose and the palate. The texture was velvet. The acidity was refreshing and captivating.
It went incredibly well with all the courses, from tortillas filled with deep-fried parsley and bacon, to crepes of cheese and corn-husk mushrooms, as well as sea bass stuffed with an Aztec herb called Huauzontle in a spicy tomato sauce. The herb reminded me of sorrel, with a bit of kick on the palate. The food and service were excellent, even if the ambiance was over-formal. Everyone but me was wearing a suit and tie.
Hell, let's face it—I would have enjoyed that bottle if I had eaten curbside tamales from a stand on one of the back streets of the city. It was our booty, and it tasted all the better that it cost about half the normal auction price and three or four times less than in a restaurant. Sometimes you find treasures in the most unlikely places.
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Estoril de Polanco
Alejandro Dumas No. 24
Col. Polanco
Mexico City
Telephone: 52803414
