I HAVE never been one of those people who feel they live in the wrong era. I am eternally grateful, for example, to draw breath in the age of anesthesia. But I have occasionally lamented that I was born just a few years too late.

If I’d learned about wine in the 1960s rather than the ’80s, perhaps I, too, could regale you with annoying stories of buying cases of ’59 Lafite and ’61 Latour for $8 a bottle. Maybe my cellar, such as it is, would be bulging with grand cru Burgundy that I got for a song because, after all, who back then cared about Burgundy?

By the time I had some money and the inclination to splurge on wine, these historic benchmark wines had become absurdly, ridiculously overpriced.

Consider that back in 1975, Kermit Lynch, the importer and shop owner in Berkeley, Calif., was retailing a case of Domaine Leflaive Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet 1972 for $125, not cheap then by any means, but doable for the determined. Adjusted for inflation, this excellent white Burgundy from a decent vintage would be the equivalent of $500 today. How quaint. Now, at Sherry-Lehmann in New York, a case from the 2008 vintage runs about $4,800.