OTBN 13: A Night of Regret & Discovery

Although I was an avid and longtime reader of Dottie Gaiter and John Brecher’s weekly Wall Street Journal wine column, I never have participated in Open That Bottle Night (OTBN). Started in 2000, the event was created as an excuse to open a special wine that remains for whatever reason languishing in your cellar. I [...]

OTBN 13: A Night of Regret & Discovery originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Four 2010 Chateauneufs that have a very real chance of slipping away

I'd estimate there's a 60% chance a 2010 Rhone is named Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year this year. And a 40% chance that wine will come from the Southern Rhone - specifically Chateauneuf.

If that happens to any of the 4 wines listed below there is no chance you'll be able to buy them for less than $100/bottle so it might make sense to buy some now before the opportunity gets away.

One thing that's nice about being on the buy side of the wine game is that you can be selective about how you buy wine. You only have to swing at the perfect pitch.

Here are 4 2010 Chateauneufs Wine Spectator rated 95+ points, have a release price of $100 or less, with 1,000 or more cases produced. They're good buys and they're good picks for Scoop the Spectator. One of these hasn't been guessed yet!

DOMAINE ST.-PRÉFERT Châteauneuf-du-Pape Auguste Favier Réserve
97WS/$58/1,665 Cases Produced

St. Prefert seemed to crush it across the board this year. All of their wines scored well relative to their production levels and price points but this one seems to hit the sweet spot.

I caught a bottle of this at $48.95. Best price I see now is $69.99:

Recommendation: I think the ship has largely sailed on this one. Check out their entry level bottling if you're looking to get a feel for this producer. I thought the 2009 St. Prefert Giraud bottling at $55, especially given that the 2010 Prefert Giraud is completely sold out in the US after raking in a 99 point rating from Spectator (and was it a potential perfect score from Parker?)

LE VIEUX DONJON Châteauneuf-du-Pape
96WS/$66/8,000 Cases Produced

I like the way Donjon produces a single bottling rather than fracturing up their offerings in a confusing manner. But beware that this 2010 isn't as approachable in its youth as the gregarious 2007. That said, I've adored their brambly style across several vintages and this is my favorite play in Chateauneuf.

Although this carries a $66 release price, it's available for around $50 if you look around. But it's drying up quickly.

Recommendation: Buy now from a favored retailer. Even if it doesn't win the top spot it's a great buy at $50. Give it the time it needs and enjoy it over the coming decade. While it's aging consider buying some of the amazing 2007 - you can still find some if you look around.

http://www.wine-searcher.com/find/donjon+chateauneuf/2010/usa?Xlist_format=&Xbottle_size=Bottle&Xprice_set=CUR&Xprice_min=&Xprice_max=

DOMAINE DU VIEUX TÉLÉGRAPHE Châteauneuf-du-Pape La Crau

96WS/$78/4,200 Cases Produced

I put this wine on par with Donjon in terms of prestige. It's fantastic. But it's also a little pricier. I've often seen off vintages of this wine in the mid $50s at Costco but better vintages don't seem to make it there.

Recommendation: Buy selectively in the low $60s. Even if this one wins and it escalates into the $150+ range, it's not like $60 is an affordable wine.


DOMAINE GIRAUD Châteauneuf-du-Pape Tradition
95WS/$54/1,300 Cases Produced

I have no experience with this producer but I love the metrics. Parker rated it 92-94 points so it's not like Spectator's 95 is an anomaly. Nobody has guessed this one in Scoop the Spectator yet!

Recommendation: Give it a try. A $40, 95 WS 2010 CdP? Sold.

They even have it on Wine.com icon

If you haven't gotten your entry in for Scoop the Spectator 2012 you still have time. We're playing for a $200 Amazon gift card so it's worth taking a moment to see if you can find an angle:

http://www.wellesleywinepress.com/2012/10/starts-now-scoop-spectator-2012.html

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/MiB1W702Yas/four-2010-chateauneufs-that-have-very.html

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Field Notes from a Wine Life ? Cover Story Edition

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass…

The Wine Spectator Affect

When I received my November 15th issue of Wine Spectator on October 11th, featuring a cover shot of Tim Mondavi and an feature article on him and his estate winery Continuum, I captured some online research reference points so I could have a baseline to measure the effect that a flattering Wine Spectator cover story might have on a winery in the digital age.

Using Wine-Searcher, CellarTracker and Google Keywords search data to track various data points, the results, while not directly linked to conclusions, do indicate a small bump in interest as a result of the cover piece.

For example, Wine-Searcher data indicates that the average bottle price, an indicator of supply and demand, rose $2 month over month, from $149 a bottle to $151 a bottle.

image

In addition, the Wine-Searcher search rank (always a month behind) indicates that Continuum was the 1360th most popular search in September.  By Friday, November 11th the Continuum search rank had increased to 471st for the month of October. (See the top 100 searches for October here).

Likewise, interest at CellarTracker increased, as well.  The number of bottles in inventory from October 11th to November 11th increased by 177 bottles, likely no small coincidence.

Finally, Google searches increased fivefold from an average of 210 monthly searches to approximately 1000 monthly searches.

What does this all mean?  Good question.  The truth is, a Wine Spectator cover appears to have moved the needle a bit, and while the easy route is to take a righteous Eeyore approach to mainstream media and its blunted impact in the Aughts, as contrasted to what a Spectator cover feature or glowing words from Parker meant just a decade ago, I believe a more tangible takeaway is to realize that these sorts of cover stories don’t happen in a vacuum and that Wine Spectator cover and feature was likely a result of weeks, months or even years’ worth of effort from a PR professional.

In an attention-deficit, social media-impacted, offline/online hybrid world of information consumption with mobile and tablets proliferating, in order to break through to (and ultimately assist) the consumer, the value of the PR professional, an oft neglected part of the marketing hierarchy, in reaching out and facilitating the telling of a winery’s story seems to be more important than ever.

It’s not about press releases, it’s about people supporting and telling the winery story, repeatedly, as a professional function – that leads to media notice, and that leads to 14 cases of wine being sold and inventoried at CellarTracker in a 30-day period of time.  It’s perhaps obvious, but not adhered to.

Wine Labels

To me, a wine bottle is a blank canvas that can either inspire in its creativity or repel in its insipidness.  While I have a reasonably conservative approach to the kinds of wine I want to drink relative to technological intervention, I am unabashedly progressive when it comes to the kind of wine labels that appeal to me.  In support of my interest with wine packaging, I keep an eye on The Dieline wine blog to see what’s happening in wine label design (another example from The Coolist here) and I also pay attention to the burgeoning field of wine label design contests. 

What say you about progressive labels?  Like ‘em?  Loathe them?  I placed a poll to the right.

Below is a slide show of winners from the recent International Wine Label Design competition.

Reconciling the Contradiction

I will lobby the nominating committee of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on behalf of anybody who can help me understand how it is that in the span of a week I can see multiple research reports (here and here) on a revived sense of fiscal austerity by consumers yet other reports (here and here) indicate that wine above $20 is the fastest growing segment this year.

These two clearly don’t jive with each other, yet I’m witless to understand why wine is “trading up.”  Help! 

 

Source: http://goodgrape.com/index.php/site/field_notes_from_a_wine_life_cover_story_edition/

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Follow My Wine Reviews on Pinterest

When I first got started on Twitter I had high hopes of posting frequent reviews there but it never really worked out. It was partially due to the 140 character limit but the transient nature of the medium ultimately kept me only reviewing wines there as part of an organized Twitter live tasting. But with [...]

Follow My Wine Reviews on Pinterest originally appeared on Winecast. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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New Service Offers Fast Wine Delivery to Wellesley and Weston

So I'm driving back running some errands last weekend (a visit to Guitar Center and Home Depot in case you were wondering) and I see an illuminated OPEN sign in the window of Metro West Wines. I'd heard about this business popping up in Natick just over the Wellesley line on Route 9 on The Swellesley Report but I hadn't noticed they'd opened for business yet.

So I pop in and have a conversation with the two guys behind the operation - Fred McIntyre and Paul Lavallee. They've set up Metro West Wines as a DBA (doing business as) of Nine East Wine Emporium which they share a building with. If you've traveled east on Route 9 entering Wellesley you've seen Nine East's "25% 2+ Cases" sign. They're one of several retailers that have set up shop right on the Wellesley border to offer ready access to alcohol for Wellesley residents. Although Wellesley restaurants are allowed to sell alcohol with meals liquor stores aren't allowed in Wellesley.

This limitation, along with an interest in providing the convenience of fast delivery to Wellesley and Weston is the main thrust of Metro West's value proposition. Currently, they're asking for a $50 minimum order and charge a $15 delivery fee. They deliver wine, beer, and spirits to Wellesley and Weston within an hour.

I spent about a half an hour or so talking with Fred and Paul. They're enthusiastic, motivated guys. They come from a tech background and paired with Nine East's assortment of products they've got some nice things to offer. By law Metro West's pricing must be exactly in line with Nine East's.

They shared that the idea for the business came from looking around at Weston and Wellesley households who have their dry cleaning delivered, their groceries delivered, their lawns taken care of, and take-out delivered a few times a week. In Manhattan you can have practically anything delivered to your apartment quickly. They feel there's an interest in eliminating "one more stop" from people's hectic schedules and they're here to serve.

I wish them the best in this new endeavor and I'm pleased to have them on board as an advertiser here on the WWP. Hopefully for a long time.
Check 'em out:

Metro West Wines

Question of the Day: Under what circumstances would you take advantage of a service like this? Have you heard of similar services in other locales? What suggestions would you have for a business like this?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/5Ckumh2cq10/new-service-offers-fast-wine-delivery.html

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A Return to Normalcy Sets Up a Thrilling Wine Spectator Finale

Wine Spectator revealed wines 5 through 2 in their 2012 Wine of the Year campaign. It was largely a return to normalcy that, in one sense, calmed the experts in our Scoop the Spectator contest, and set up a cliff hanger of sorts to see which wine will be named their Wine of the Year.

More on that in a moment, but here are some thoughts on the wines revealed today...

5. Château Guiraud
Sauternes 2009


What can I say about this one? This wine has won the whole thing before, but I have a hard time even spelling it. Sauternes, a dessert wine from Bordeaux with honey-lemon flavors and a quirky after taste, is a bit of an acquired taste that I haven't acquired yet.

Wine-Searcher

4. Clos des Papes
Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2010

I think what we're seeing here is how reluctant they are to repeat a wine. The 2005 Clos des Papes was Spectator's Wine of the Year in 2007 - can you imagine the groans and zzz's they'd hear from subscribers if they repeated the same wine just 5 years later? What new story would they tell?

Great birth year wine (I've got the '05 and '07 set aside for that purpose) but how many $100+ bottles do we need in our lives? I don't think this nod does much to move the market on this wine. All of the good news was already baked into the price. Even when it won it didn't escalate out of control and could still be found months later. And the well-regarded 2007 was widely available for around $100 for a long time as well. It's a great wine, but Spectator can only move the market on a widely available $100 wine so much.

Wine-Searcher

3. Two Hands
Shiraz Barossa Valley Bella?s Garden 2010

This wine is always in the Top 10 and you frequently see at at Costco at a fair price. Spectator seems to love it, and as much as Harvey Steiman (who rates their Australian wines along with other categories) has turned me on to some great values I like the more affordable bottlings from Two Hands better.

Kind of like the Schild they seem to go nuts for every year that's got great QPR metrics but ultimately doesn't taste very good in my opinion, I'm a pass on this one. But I probably shouldn't bash it until I try this vintage.

Wine-Searcher

2. Château de St.-Cosme
Gigondas 2010


I definitely had this as the favorite going in. Thomas Matthews' comment earlier this week was interesting. In hindsight it seemed to carry a conciliatory tone:
But I must note the love shown for Chateau de St.-Cosme. Louis Barruoul was at our Wine Experience last month presenting his Gigondas Valbelle 2009, our #10 wine of 2011, and both he and the wine were extremely impressive. I hope you all get to enjoy some of his wines, no matter what rank they may take in our Top 100. 
Kind of a "their wines are great! we love 'em! but we could only have one winner!". I think this wine getting the number 2 nod (as opposed to number 1) is a good thing for people wanting to buy this wine because it won't vaporize quite as quickly as if it had won. But the net of it is St. Cosme is on value hunter radar screens now more than ever. I'm interested in trying other bottlings from them. They crushed it (once again) this year.

Wine-Searcher


Although @EvanDawson (our first entry this year) is in the lead now, I think we all agree it's likely someone has guessed the winner already.

I've got to think it's @RichardPF's entry - the 2010 Le Vieux Donjon. There might be some concern about 2010 Rhones taking 3 of the top 5 spots, but I think since the Cosme is a Gigondas and not a true Chateauneuf-du-Pape the Donjon is still the favorite. I've heard of some panic buying of this wine today - kind of like the rush on D batteries before Hurricane Sandy.

@NWTomLee has been beating the drum for 2009 Bordeaux. It was a great vintage for sure, but so was 2010 Bordeaux. Further the Leoville Barton was already in the top 10 along with Sauternes. I think Bordeaux is done in this year's Top 10. More importantly - where's the value in Bordeaux? I don't see it. But I could be eating my words tomorrow!

If the Donjon doesn't get it, I think it would be a statement from Spectator that the wine wasn't all that great. Remember, a panel of their senior editors get together to taste the contenders for the Top 10. I've tried the wine, and it's tight. It needs time. But I think they can see through that near term stuffiness and I think it will win.

If it does, expect the price to shoot through the roof and further fuel interest in future Top 10s. It's a wine you've likely walked past if you've been an a fine wine shop the past couple months. As of this morning you could still find it in the $50 range. And Magnums for $110. Certainly a great arbitrage/flipping opportunity if you think this is the one! I've never resold a wine ever and I'm not interested in starting. But if I had to bet I'd think this is the one.

But you never know - a Bordeaux could sneak in there.
We shall see tomorrow at 11 am Eastern.

If you haven't already, have a look at the videos Wine Spectator produced for each of the Top 10 wines. They're quite good I think and provide insight into how to pronounce some tricky French wine words.

So what do you think? Will it be Chateauneuf or Bordeaux in the top spot?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/1NMxWnVWacc/a-return-to-normalcy-sets-up-thrilling.html

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Scotland to women: wine makes you look old and fat

Health officials in Scotland have come up with a new weapon in their campaign against excessive drinking: an app that makes you look fat. And old. The app, called The Drinking Mirror, shows a projection of what the user may look like if they keep drinking at current (elevated) levels. The results are not pretty. [...]

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