Downtown Pauillac

 The streets of Pauillac and Margaux are peaceful again this week. The vast armada of turbo-charged fund managers and investment analysts have ceased to roar up and down the Médoc from one opulent asset to another. Despite the Easter holidays even Saint-Emilion will be a little quieter. The masters and mistresses of the universe have returned to their global homes.

 The major investment banks sent rugby teams of analysts to pore over the 2010 rights issue. Thousands of words were pounded into iPads, laptops or scribbled into notebooks describing and assessing the rights issue, even though it is inherently unstable at present, certain to change, and no-one can be really sure how the issue will look when it is ready to be delivered in some two years time.

There was somewhat of a storm in a pension fund over allegations that some investment analysts had jumped the gun and rushed out their opinions on the new rights issue before their colleagues had had time to even start analysing it.

On twatter the analysts found chocolate, coffee beans, pencil shavings, graphite, cocao, blackcurrants, figs, prunes, plums, morello cherries, nail clippings, terroir, liquorice and large gobbets of all kinds of fruit along with breathless instructions to sell short on this asset or go long on another. There was even a run on shares in leitão.   

It is expected that the market makers will now take time to digest the impressions and the vibes given off during investment week before fixing the price. Doubtless they will suck their pencils. Think of a number, double it. Then look at their neighbour’s new fancy vaults and then double it again.  Expect to see the traditional slow dance of the 37.5 veils run well into  June. Of course, nothing serious will happen until the Warren Buffet of Maryland has scored.

As an antidote to this investment mania, I opened on Saturday a bottle of the 1996 Touraine Gamay from the Clos Roche Blanche. Probably bought in 1997 this is an investment in pleasure that has stood the march of time. With age this Gamay has taken on some of the characteristics of a Burgundian Pinot Noir with an opulent spicy nose and a silky texture.

Santé!

 Jim