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Our Favorite Liquid Assets
From Baltimore – The Oxford Club is about more than creating a richer life through investing… It’s also about adding new dimensions in your life through greater community, adventures and learning.
So today I invite you to revisit a wonderful annual tradition at our historic Clubhouse, one that’s focused on collecting and tasting our favorite “liquid asset” – wine.
Associate Publisher Rachel Gearhart, Chief Income Strategist Marc Lichtenfeld and Chief Investment Strategist Alexander Green enjoy themselves in today’s Market Wake-Up Call as they exchange thoughts on several special wines from Argentina, all curated by the founding family of The Oxford Club, the Bonners.
The Bonner family is the reason I came to the Club in 1989. And to this day, Bill Bonner’s global perspective on investing and living continues to permeate the Club’s outlook.
But what many Oxford Club Members may not know is that Bill grew up outside of Annapolis, Maryland. And his family continues to farm there today. He also bought a grand historic country château “fixer-upper” in France in the early 1990s.
But today’s Bonner story begins when Bill and his son Will traveled to Argentina in the early 2000s. It was there that they discovered a dark, bold red wine found only in a remote mountain valley…
In 2006, Bill bought a vast ranch high in the foothills of the Andes Mountains.
I’ve always wanted to travel to the Bonner family’s ranch. But getting there is an odyssey – a seven-hour flight to Buenos Aires, then a three-hour flight to the mountain town of Salta, followed by a six-hour trek (if the roads are passable) in an off-road 4×4 across riverbeds, peaks and plateaus… to a place known as the Calchaquí Valley.
This stunningly beautiful land was Bill Bonner’s retirement dream – the Old West landscape reminded him of the cowboy novels he read as a child. And, in fact, Argentine cowboys – gauchos – still drive herds across the high plains as women work looms in the dawn’s early light.
But little did the Bonners know, this majestic landscape also produces one of the highest-altitude wines in the world, a dark red vintage so opaque it’s known as “black wine.” It was unlike anything they had ever tasted.
When he returned to the States, Will Bonner tells me he couldn’t find this wine anywhere. On the rare occasion he did, bottles went for more than $500 apiece!
That’s when Will had an idea. If he could just get enough people together to fill a whole shipping container with wine, he’d be able to bring these fantastic wines to America, many of them for the first time.
Will and his brother Jules assembled a team, including a full-time “wine explorer” to do the legwork of making deals, a private wine importer in California, an internationally recognized sommelier and a retired winemaker from France’s most famous winery.
And so the Bonner Private Wine Partnership was born…
Year-round, this team scours the globe for great wine, making deals directly with vineyards.
And as Alex points out in today’s video, the advantage of getting wines from the Bonners are many -including the tasting notes and the uniqueness of the bottles. These wines come from small-batch vintners, so they’re hard to find. Often the Bonners are the sole importers.
I signed up for the Bonner Private Wine Partnership myself a few years ago, and I’ve gifted it to friends. It’s a delight to receive a box of six different bottles every quarter. And when I don’t get to drinking them all in those months, no problem… Many of them are great for aging down in my cellar, and others make wonderful gifts for friends or employees.
Today you can watch Rachel, Alex and Marc tasting several Bonner Private Wine Partnership wines from Argentina. But the Bonner Private Wine Partnership has also delivered hard-to-find wines from different regions of Italy, France, Spain and California to my door.
“What I enjoy most about the Bonner Private Wine Partnership is that I get to taste wines from all over the world that I would never have had the chance to try otherwise,” Marc says. “The wines I’ve had are unique and flavorful. I love opening a new bottle for friends because I know I’m delighting them with a delicious wine that they can’t get anywhere else.”
The Bonners tell me that Argentine wines tend to be just as complex and intense as the creation of Argentina’s wine industry, which began with the Spanish conquerors in the 1550s. That’s what’s so wonderful about great wine: The soil of a region seems to convey its history and culture directly into the grapes and the bottle.
Interestingly, most Argentine wines, including Argentina’s well-known malbecs, are naturally high in alcohol.
According to a guide to Argentine winemaking from the Bonner Private Wine Partnership, “The vines enjoy sunny days with strong ultra-violet rays and cool nights. This means ripe grapes at harvest time, with high sugar levels. But the resulting wines are not necessarily high in sugar. The sugar turns to alcohol when the juice ferments. Salta wines can reach 17%, though most winemakers are careful not to exceed 14%.”
Another reason I love the Bonner Private Wine Partnership is it’s not one of those monthly wine clubs that bombard you with the same mediocre wines until you decide to cancel. The wine the Bonner Private Wine Partnership sends you is truly exclusive and superb. As Will tells me, “It’s not because we want to be exclusive. It’s simply because the wines we get tend to be extremely limited.”
The Bonner Private Wine Partnership puts out shipments just four times a year directly to your doorstep, complete with special reports and tasting notes that will certainly deepen the experience – and add to a richer life.
“I’ve been collecting reds for over 30 years, have a decent-sized cellar and have developed a fairly good nose,” Alex says. “To my astonishment, the Bonners’ Private Wine Partnership wines weren’t just good. They were exquisite.”
Click here for your invitation to the Bonner Private Wine Partnership from the Bonner family…
Enjoy your Monday,
Julia