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The French have never been short on self- regard—but then again, they have a lot of civilized achievements to crow about.

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The auction market for wine is roaring, and at the head of the pride is Bordeaux. Since May 2004, the Liv-ex 100 Fine Wine Index, which tracks the prices of 100 top wines, has shot up by a startling 150 percent. Currently, 94 of those elite 100 are red Bordeaux, which has always been the focus of the international trade.The percentage of Bordeaux among the lots at Sotheby’s sales, for instance, is generally around 70 percent. And one of the region’s most venerated wines, Château Lafite Rothschild, has been acting more like a hot growth stock than a blue chip. The 1982 vintage, priced near $600 per bottle just three years ago, brought $3,300 at a Zachys sale in Los Angeles last May.

What makes Bordeaux so dominant? It starts, of course, with the region itself, a great swath of more than 300,000 acres in southwestern France that don’t support most crops but are ideal for grapes. Then factor in the wine’s distinguished pedigree: The Bordelais have been fine-tuning their product for centuries. At the first general Christie’s auction,in 1766, the house included a lot of “high Flavour’d Claret,” using the traditional English term for red Bordeaux.

As for longevity, no table wine can match Bordeaux, which is built to last. If properly cellared, a great bottle can still scintillate a century or more after its birth. There’s also the welcome simplicity of the names. While choosing among Burgundies, produced by a multitude of growers in a jigsaw puzzle of appellations, can be a brainteaser, it’s a cinch to buy a single wine called, say, Château Latour—the estate whose stupendous and all but immortal 1961 vintage fetches about $2,900 per bottle at auction.

The preeminence of Bordeaux also flows from its sheer volume of production, which provides the liquidity required for an active auction market. Fewer than 800 cases are turned out annually of Burgundy’s best wine, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti, whose ready-to-drink 1985 vintage averages a mind-boggling $12,000 per bottle. But the five top Bordeaux producers, or “first growths”—Lafite, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Haut-Brion—average almost 20,000 cases each.

Bordeaux in its prime has one more essential attribute: Its fragrance, finesse and balance are unsurpassed at ennobling the art of dining.

Market Outlook

Bordeaux’s five year bull run shows no signs of stumbling. Even if the U.S. economy and the weakened dollar dampen domestic demand, foreign buyers should keep the market buoyant, their ranks swollen by an expanding cadre of eager bidders, clutching relatively strong currencies, from China, India, Russia, Mexico and Brazil. Hong Kong’s elimination last spring of its 40 percent tax on wine will make it even more of a vinous hot spot. “Any slackening off here could be made up over there,”says John Kapon, president of the New York–based wine merchant Acker Merrall& Condit, which conducted a successful auction in Hong Kong last spring. 

Buying Strategies

Be clear on why you’re bidding on Bordeaux. Is it to acquire wines for near-term drinking? In that case, you’ll need to identify mature vintages. This can be tricky—2001, for example, and even 2003 are readier to drink than 2000—so the tasting notes of the experts come in handy. Or is your aim to lay down wines, possibly for the 21st birthday of a child not yet born? Then you’ll want to buy immature vintages of wines known for longevity, ideally first growths. Or do you intend to hold wine as an investment vehicle only? If so, plan to purchase the very best bottles you can afford, ideally in big formats; these age more slowly than standard ones and are rarer—strong selling points when it comes time to take your profits.

Vintages to Buy

+ Certain years—notably, 1961, 1982, 1990 and now the glamorous 2005, which will debut at auction this fall—are superb throughout Bordeaux. For other vintages, however, peaks occur either in the area known as the Left Bank, comprising the districts of the Médoc peninsula and Graves, or in the Right Bank, around the towns of Saint-Émilion and Pomerol. Look to the Left Bank in 1983 and 1996, when Cabernet Sauvignon–based wines thrived, and to the Right Bank in 1998, when Merlot, which dominates there, ripened almost perfectly.