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Bargains Galore ~ Vintages Summer Sale
Discounts on 1,215 items
© Michael Vaughan 2004
National Post Weekly Wine & Spirits Columnist
Saturday, August 21, 2004

How often can you walk into an LCBO store and buy a wine that has been marked down $500.05? Well, today you can because it is the annual summer Vintages bin end sale, which features some 199 items. Of course, there is a bit of a catch, to avail yourself of these savings, you have to invest $3,999.95 in a bottle of 1982 Chateau Petrus. For the well heeled, there were still six available in Toronto, five in Ottawa and one in Tecumseh, just east of Windsor, earlier this week.

Needless to say, this was only one of many, many wines not presented at LCBO lab tastings. In fact, of the 199 bin end items on the list, more than 64% (or 129) were never tasted – almost all coming from the Classics catalogue. It proves the point that the failure to get a wine reviewed (along with keeping Classics products far from public view hidden in a warehouse) translates into poor sales performance. My suggestion would be to immediately put all unsold just-released Classics on the shelves of a few selective Vintages stores upon release.

This recommendation is supported by the fact that as of today, Vintages is also having an unannounced “retail purge” of some 1,016 additional items mostly from 2003. Unfortunately, none of the discounted 393 items from the Classics catalogue have been tasted/reviewed.

Unlike the bin end sale, the LCBO has not provided its customers with any information of the retail purge. After considerable work, I have been able to provide National Post readers with the inside scoop. Sale items have been organized by wine type and are presented with my evaluation notes and are linked to the LCBO store database. To see the list of sale items click here and use the password npreader to access this mosaic of bargains galore.

I was quite amazed to discover that there are still six best buys on the bin end sale, along with 14 recommended items. Port fans: make sure you pick up a few bottles of the stunning Manoel D. Poças Junior 2000 ‘Porto Poças’ Vintage Port (909150). It was terrific value at $48.95 and a remarkable buy at only $39.95 with many cases still being available. It shows excellent length and promise and could age gracefully for another decade.

If you fancy turns to spirits, there are 12 in the bin end sale and another 72 in the unannounced Vintages retail purge. Plenty of recommended/best buys are still available. The fine Spanish brandy Gonzalez Byass Soberano 5-Year Solera Reserva (903484) has been reduced from $32.95 to only $24.95. The very tasty, creamy, pepper-tinged, plummy, caramel-marzipan flavours go on and on. 

For fans of Chardonnay, very limited quantities of the delicious Matanzas Creek 2001 Chardonnay (932707) reduced from $44.00 to only $34.95 gets my maximum  *** rating with its rich buttered toast flavours balanced by great ripe Anjou pear flavours and perfect acidity. California wine fan John Tait, manager of the Sherwood Forrest Mall store (1900 Dundas Street West), had 27 bottles earlier in the week.

With this incredible selection of items on sale, one has to pick and choose with care to avoid the clunkers. While some of these things will fly off the shelves, there is basically too much available to be quickly soaked up by the market. It certainly doesn’t auger well for the upcoming Vintages releases. Almost 1,000 new items will be appearing over four months. If you add in the upcoming Classics, one has to ask: who is going to buy all this stuff?