I'm looking for advice about purchasing a bottle of wine I've had my eyes on lately. The 2001 Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta (Wine Spectator's #2 wine in the 2004 Top 100 list)is hard to come by these days but I've noticed that a local supermarket has had 5 bottles on the shelf for over a year now. There are no shelf talkers drawing attention to this wine and the $65 price is probably keeping the casual supermarket wine buyers away. The only thing that's holding me back is that these bottles have been stored upright for this entire period. Am I taking a chance in getting a less than stellar bottle of wine or is this not likely to make much difference. My budget doesn't allow a $65 bottle of wine very often and I'd hate to wind up with something that was off because it wasn't stored properly.

It shouldn't matter too much that they were stored in an upright positions for months. If it were years, then I would have a problem.

More important that being store upright is the temperature it was stored at and if it was exposed to a lot of light.

Double check the label to make sure this is the wine you want.

Also, check with the store manager to see if they will take returns if the bottle is bad.

By the way, welcome to the boards.

Ask a manager about the store return policy. If it's bad and you can take it back, your are no longer taking a gamble.

I'd be concerned w/ the temp the wine has seen. Has it been cool in the store, or is the temp in the low 70's? Even that would be OK, as long as there were no heat spikes.

But I agree w/ the return policy... find out!!!

That's not a bad price for a 01 Clos Apalta, but it is not a great price either. In addition to the advice listed above, you can buy one of the five bottles and try it before deciding whether to buy the other 4. Also, a few places on wine searcher are selling it for $59 a bottle (depending on where you live, shipping costs and taxes, it might work out to be cheaper buying it online).

For what it's worth, my vote would be to splurge and buy it.

It may not be a "great" price but it's a fair price, and the WS hype doesn't seem to have hit since there's no hanging tags. In my local store it went from $69 to $80 and still sold out.

Online may not work so well for just one splurge bottle...

Let us know if you get it. Are you going to drink it or do you have good storage conditions?

Definitely a fair price at this point. In the auction ended last night, a 12-Pack went for $110 per bottle.