A friend called the other day, practically hyperventilating. “So, whaddya think?” he said. “Should I buy 2005 Bordeaux?”

In case you missed this particular tumult, 2005 vintage red Bordeaux have been universally declared by the big barrel-tasting mandarins as not to be missed. Even by florid and hyperbolic wine writing standards, the gush has been extraordinary – and doubtless sincere.

“I can’t remember tasting such fabulously aromatic young Bordeaux before,” James Suckling wrote in Wine Spectator. Robert M. Parker Jr., in his newsletter, the Wine Advocate, headlined his own glowing tasting report “Is 2005 The Perfect Vintage?”

You won’t be surprised to learn that Bordeaux fanciers around the world – rich ones, anyway – are snapping up 2005 red Bordeaux futures like ravenous trout at the first hatch. (The 2005s will not actually be released until 2007, at the earliest.)

The most expensive wines, first growths such as Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and Chateau Margaux, will sell as futures in America for – brace yourself – as much as $700 a bottle. This, mind you, for wineries each producing about 20,000 cases.

If you want to do the envy-inducing math, the opening offer from Chateaus Latour and Margaux to the Bordeaux wine trade last week was 350 euros ($438) a bottle. That’s just what’s called the first tranche, or slice, a kind of test-the-waters approach. Buyers quickly flipped these futures to yet other intermediaries for more than 400 euros ($500). Knowing this, you can be sure that the second tranche will be offered by the chateau at a higher price.

Now for the math: If a first-growth chateau sells, let’s say, 15,000 cases at $500 a bottle, that’s $90 million. Pas mal, as the French might say, especially considering that the cost to produce and bottle a firstgrowth red Bordeaux wine is about $10 a bottle.Who says the French don’t believe in the free market?

So what did I say to my futures-hungry friend? The answer is obvious: If you’ve got the dough, go.This kind of Bordeaux-buying hysteria occurs quite regularly, by the way. It always acquires an intensity of desire that cannot be slaked except in the time-tested, classic way.

Yet everyone wins. The wine producers win, of course. Also the merchants win, as their customers pay them the full price two years in advance of delivery.And the buyers, for their part,get to savor an exquisitely prolonged anticipation between – as T.S. Eliot so memorably put it – “the desire and the spasm.”

HERE’S THE (GET IT NOW) DEAL

LAS ROCAS GARNACHA 2004, SAN ALEJANDRO The story here is that Las Rocas is the bespoke creation, if you will, of its American importer, Eric Solomon. Mr. Solomon, working with a French winemaker he retains for such purposes, persuaded a winegrowers’ cooperative in the Calatayud region (which lies about 150 miles northeast of Madrid) to segregate garnacha or grenache grapes from vines that are 70 to 100 years old.

The resulting wine, brand-named Las Rocas, is a summer red supreme. Las Rocas 2004 offers the raspberryish fruit characteristic of grenache with no “makeup” of oak and no tannins clutching at you on its way down the gullet. It is pristine. And it is unusually savory, a red wine with popping fruit buoyed by refreshing acidity. This is lovely red wine. Serve it cool and – here’s a concept – get it right now for $9.95 a bottle. Look for a street price a buck lower than that.

COTES-DU-VENTOUX 2004, DELAS Every time someone suggests that France today is a wineproducing also-ran (yes, they are having marketing and quality problems), I tell these naysayers to grab a good Cotes-du-Ventoux. This is one. Actually, it’s more than a good Cotes-du-Ventoux: It’s a great Cotes-du-Ventoux.

Delas is a Rhone shipper that, prior to its acquisition by the champagne house Louis Roederer in 1993, was decidedly second-rate. No more. Quality has soared at Delas in the last decade and you can taste for yourself in this intense, beautifully balanced, and flat-out superb red Cotes-du-Ventoux.

Composed of 80% grenache and an unusually flavor-informing 20% of syrah, this is surprisingly dense red wine that fairly begs for a good steak, pasta with a meat sauce, or thick slices of a really good salami. The regular price of $8.95 a bottle is mighty cheap. Yet the street price becomes almost preposterous at $5.97 (at P.J. Wines). Who needs futures when real-time wine is such a good deal?

COTES DE PROVENCE ROSE “LES DOMANIERS DE PUITS MOURET” 2005, OTT SELECTION Roses are a personal passion and I intend to keep ’em coming all summer. The trick to a good rose is that it’s dry, possessed of real wine savor and yet makes no insistent demands on your attention. It leaves you refreshed, invigorated, and hungry.

This bottling, offered by the famous Provencal producer Domaines Ott, is not made by them. Instead, it’s a purchased wine sold under the designation “Ott Selection.” No matter. It’s lovely rose, offering a perfect tincture of pink, is utterly dry and in its austerity is clearly meant to accompany solid food such as pork, chicken, light pastas, and the like. This is no sunset-sipper. It’s the real, substantive pink thing. This is standout rose. $16.95.