The wine market got an added, welcome boost from the incredible growing seasons and harvests in France in 1982 and 1983. The winemakers of Bordeaux had suffered tremendously in the previous decade. Conditions have to be perfect for a great vintage—with the right combination of sun, rain, warmth, and humidity—and those factors rarely aligned in the 1970s. Across the board, you won’t find an innovative vintage for Bordeaux from the days of disco. You might be able to pick a specific producer who did well during a particular growing season, but it’s important to note that their next-door neighbor may have produced the opposite result. It was a lost decade with a few hit-or-miss productions, but never a Vintage of a Decade, as it has become known.

Then all of a sudden in 1982, there was a once-in-a- century growing season and harvest. The weather was hot and dry, and miraculously, vine diseases and insects weren’t a problem. It started with a dry and sunny April. May had a few rainstorms, but the wet weather didn’t linger. The early summer months offered just the right mix of moisture with abundant sunshine, such that by harvest time in September, the grapes were bursting with ripe, expressive flavors and mature, supple tannins.

Robert Parker, still working as a lawyer at this time and moonlighting by publishing the Wine Advocate, was the loudest to trumpet the vintage. This became a defining moment for him as a wine advisor, as much as it was a defining moment for Bordeaux as a wine region. Marvin Shanken’s Wine Spectator wasn’t far behind. Parker went so far as to recommend that people buy the wine in futures—meaning that they would pay cash for wine that wouldn’t be delivered for at least another year or two. People took his advice, and snatched up the wine before it hit the market. The whole event marked a turning point in wine investment. People were buying rare bottles now for investment as much as for serving or drinking. American wine tastes had finally reached a European level of sophistication after the devastation of Prohibition. An expensive bottle became the ultimate status symbol, especially on Wall Street, where brokers would split one to celebrate a big bonus or a blockbuster deal.

The tidal wave of cash that entered the wine industry in the 1980s changed even how old-school Bordeaux producers did business. They modernized and started employing more scientific methods to combat the effects of climate and pests. They also harvested differently—waiting until the grapes ripened more deeply on the vines, to emulate the full-body taste of the popular 1982 vintage. And finally, they began to recognize the great potential in the rare wine market, so instead of using all of their grapes to produce one wine, they separated the best grapes for a premium label, and the somewhat less high-quality grapes into a second, lower-priced label.