The Silver Spring Penguin

MoCo’s department of liquor control announced Monday that it would cash in on wine investments, making some primo bottles of Bordeaux available to consumers.

Many of the wines will be sold in limited quantities at county juice joints, and at prices too high for your broke Silver Spring ass. But other bottles will dodge that Bethesda pricing and go for less than $15 each, a press statement announced.

The stash sprouts from joints like the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Cheval-Blanc, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion in the Bordeaux region of France. All of the bottles were corked in 2005.

The county racked up the hooch on the futures market, which sells stock-like shares on commodities such as grapes. Futures prices are based on factors like climate and rainfall, and there’s no guarantee when the futures are bought that the booze will be any good. However, buying futures allows the county to horde top-notch wines that may not stick around once the grape hits the bottle, the county says.

“So many of the good opportunities to purchase these wines involve buying Bordeaux up to two years before they are bottled,” George Griffin, the department’s top banana said. “Our risk paid off.”

Some of the wines have scored between 95 and 100 points under the Parker wine-scoring system. That puts the wines in the “extraordinary” league, with “profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety,” states one online guide.

“Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume,” the website extolls.

Lead photo courtesy of Flickr user Ricko.